Askar DARIMBET
ALMATY, Oct 22
(THE GLOBE)
The first conference on Kurdish affairs ever held in Almaty on Friday last week, issued an appeal to the Ministry of Education and Science to �support the education of the Kurdish population, to create a wide stratum of intelligentsia among the Kurds.�
Kurds from all regions of the country attended the conference called, �The Kurds: history and modern condition. Conferees focused heavily on the low educational level of Kurds in Kazakhstan. This year only 5 to 10 Kurds entered the universities. This number is too small, said a representative of the Kurdish Diaspora from Almaty.
�We remind you, the Kurds gave Kazakhstan the first Kurdish scholars in the USSR�Kurd Nadir Nadirov, professor Mirzoev, and others. Many Kurds work in the governmental juridical organisations.�
The Kurdish Diaspora living in foreign countries face difficult problems. This ancient people numbers about 37 million almost all of them a mainly mountainous region divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria which Kurdish nationals refer to as �Kurdistan.�
Since their gradual deportation by Stalin from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1937 the Kurds have lived in Shymkent, Zhambyl, and Almaty regions. During the war Moscow moved Kurds because of their suspected ties with Turkey and political instability, though many Kurds fought in the war against fascists.
Along with other peoples they were deported in freight trains with many other ethnic minorities to Kazakhstan. In 1944 6,290 families (i.e. 27,657 persons) were moved from Georgia to Kazakhstan. How many of them were Kurds no one knows. At present more than 70,000 Kurds live in Kazakhstan.
Despite their travails, the Kurds� condition in Kazakhstan seems good due to a stable situation in the republic. As the Kurds were settled in rural areas students were mainly taught in Kazakh.
The Kurds survived thanks to Kazakh families. Many spokesmen mentioned this at the conference. �Only due to hospitality of the Kazakh people, we consider Kazakhstan as our second motherland,� one of the Kurds from Zhambyl region said.
Nadir Nadirov, the chairman of the Kurdish Centre on behalf of his people hoped that �our President would always be able to tell the Turkish government about pain of numerous Kazakhstani Kurds caused by the fate of their motherland and leader Abdulla Ojalan. Unauthorized statements result only in destabilisation of the country, and break the important priority determined by our President in his well-known appeal to the population �Kazakhstan-2030.��
Is the reform of science and education necessary in Kazakhstan?
Recently Presidenbt Nazarbayev appointed a new government in Kazakhstan. This government is supposed to consider the results of the activity of previous governments and to either propose its own programs or correct the current ones taking into consideration present conditions in the world.
To comment on the new government�s impact, THE GLOBE introduces Zeinetulla Insepov, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, who several years ago was invited to lecture at Kyoto University (Japan). The full article will appear in the next issue of �The Energy of Kazakhstan� magazine.
Kazakhstan traditionally is a raw material state, which
exports metals, oil and other irreplaceable natural reserves, but without its own seaports and access to international shipping lanes. Being landlocked exposes Kazakhstan to dependency on neighboring states for access to the world economy.Kazakhstan�s survival also depends on shifting to intensive and highly-technological scientific production, which does not depend on production and export of raw materials. High tech production would utilize the main potential of Kazakhstan (qualified people, their knowledge, skills and abilities).
The objective of the present article is to emphasize that Kazakhstan possesses at least two directions or two scientific industries that can produce profits in hard currency with minimal efforts and investments.
1) Adaptation and re-export of technologies;
2) Export, adaptation and re-export of knowledge.
These two directions may earn money right now, as at present the country has an educational level significantly higher than in many countries of the world, including such fast-developing countries of South-East Asia as Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia. Recent years have shown that Kazakhstani citizens, specialist in basic science, are demanded in the high-technology countries. They work on the contact basis in America, Japan and Europe. If the state takes proper organizational measures, scientists and specialists from Kazakhstan would be able to assist the country to plan technological progress for Kazakhstan into the 21st century.
Most promising Kazakhstani scientists and engineers have spent years at the best scientific schools in Russia, as well as in highly-developed foreign countries. Their experience opens new possibilities for Kazakhstan, including micro-electronic technologies as an example. For Kazakhstan this industry is comparatively new, and specialists of this field are few. For Kazakhstan to take a proper place among the technologically developed countries new measures are already overdue since this branch of the economy is the basis of progress in the next century.
In 10 to 15 years the situation in the country may worsen so that specialists who received a fundamental education during the Soviet period will become useless, and the competitiveness of our education, science and scientific production and technologies will be a disaster. A good scientist or technocrat is formed from decades of education, but he may become unqualified within a few years.
I am confident that among Kazakhstani scientists living abroad there are many patriots, who are not indifferent to Kazakhstan�s future. These people may join discussion of this urgent problem in the media. Under the right conditions, they could return to be involved in the process of transformation of the country from raw materials exporter to exporter of technologies and knowledge.
Last hope of homeless Kazakhs
The election is held, but the life of homeless Kazakhs never changes. Right in the center of the southern capital 57 families keep a semi-destroyed house, to which bailiffs may come any day. But unauthorized inhabitants of the house have their own complaints against owners of the building privatized for US$ 1200 and sold for US$ 350 thousand. Details are in the below material of KSRL.
In first years of sovereignty about ten unions of homeless people were established in Almaty. Their purpose was to stop the perennial ordeal of Kazakhs in hostels and rented flats. A lot of money allotted by the state and donated by different people disappeared in pockets of shady organizers and most of the unions also disappeared. The two or three unions remaining operate in the same way as previous unions. Their main tactics is to capture empty hostels and uncontrolled administrative buildings.
�We have no other way. We do not trust either the state nor any parties. We will settle our fate with our own hands. Real estates as any public property have been plundered. We find destroyed privatized buildings and settle homeless people there,� the chairman of �Ak Otau� Yerzhan Sadykov said in his interview to Radio �Liberty�.
We are going with Yerzhan Sadykov along the corridor of a recently captured building. Numerous windows of the five-stored building have no glass. It is dark. It seems that the building was bombed, though we are right in the center of Almaty at the crossroad Seifullin - Bogenbai-batyr. Stumbling and sometimes groping our way we knocked at a door. People sitting in a dark room stared at something in a lighted window of the opposite building. It happened that a ballroom dances lesson was there.
Dance classes are held in the so-called Democracy House. The Democracy House has become for 57 families their only source of entertainment. The captured building became a source of drinking water and a toilet.
These 57 families are 150 persons including children. They are Kazakhs arrived from all regions of Kazakhstan. Early in the morning they go to earn money to buy a slice of bread. In the evening they go to �bed� on rags on the floor. Often a cup of tea is their dinner.
Some of the new tenants are teachers, doctors and a military officer. When a correspondent came, they lit a candle. The head of the family was a young man Bakhyt Temirgaliev. He works as a guard. His wife Sandugash Nusupbaeva is a teacher with higher education. She has not worked for a half a year. They have a 2.5-year-old daughter Sabina. Originating from Semipalatinsk and Taldykorgan regions, they got acquainted in the homeless community of Almaty. Three months ago they along with other Kazakhs occupied this empty building.
�I had both a family and a flat in Almaty,� 55-years-old Rysty Kurzhanova says. �But it happened so that I became single. I sold my flat and moved to a hostel . Owners of the hostel threw us out and established a hotel in the building. I entered the union of homeless. Now I sell sunflower seeds. This is all my income. Today policemen, who also came from a Kazakh aul [village], took a half of my money.�
According to the chairman of �Ak Otau� Yerzhan Sadykov, the building captured by homeless people had been privatized seven years ago. The five-story building was purchased for 468 thousand roubles (i.e. US$ 1200). Owners of the building changed, and the building mortgaged to the banks. Last in June 1999 the state enterprise �Kazaironavigatsia� bought it. The cost of the building was US$ 350,000.
In July 1999 homeless people shifted to the semi-destroyed building. They hope having proved that the building was a subject to corruption they will be able to own the building. �Kazaironavigatsia� instituted a case against them to the court.
The opinion of �Kazaironavigatsia� was presented to Radio �Liberty� by the chief engineer Akysultan Isa. �We consider these citizens infringed the law. We feel as if unexpected people rushed into our house,� the representative of the owner said.
We asked, �How could the state enterprise buy the building for US$ 350,000? Was any tender held?�
The chief engineer Akysultan Isa answered, �In fact, we bought the building 2 to 3 years ago. Those heads of the enterprise were dismissed. But all documents were registered properly.�
23.10.99
THE GLOBE based on the materials of the Kazakh Service of Radio �Liberty�
(Translated from Kazakh by THE GLOBE)
By Wallace Kaufman
ALMATY, Oct 26
(The GLOBE)
When America�s most famous and respected newspaper, The New York Times, reported that Swiss authorities had frozen two Kazakhstani bank accounts that might be connected to the President and to illegal activity, a friend of mine quipped, �Swiss bank accounts aren�t what they used to be.� Truth is they never were as secret as most people think. The global market place also has created competition for Swiss banks as a hiding place.
Past and present Kazakhstani officials are only the latest in a series of political figures whose �secret� banking activities have been questioned by Swiss investigators. A few years ago survivors of the Nazi Holocaust insisted on an investigation of accounts that held gold and money looted by Nazis from Jewish victims. Swiss bankers at first refused to open their records, but world opinion, the law and the Swiss government bullied them into cooperation.
This year Swiss investigators have been following the trail of money linked to the Yeltsin �family� and Mabetex, the contractor who remodeled the Kremlin. And last week Swiss court documents obtained by Reuters confirmed an investigation into $600 million diverted from Aeroflot. Reuters also reported that the Swiss are investigating funds linked to Russia�s aluminum tycoon Lev Chernoi.
According to the New York Times, when the Swiss investigator received a request from the Kazakhstani government to determine if former Premier Kazhegeldin possessed illegal funds in Swiss accounts, the investigation expanded to other accounts linked to Kazakhstani officials.
Switzerland�s cooperation with intensifying international efforts to trace the movement of funds from criminal activities has indeed proven that secret Swiss accounts are not the sacred hiding place they use to be. The popular understanding of Swiss accounts is that anyone can hide any amount of money there, depositing it and withdrawing it by phone or computer with a code known only to the holder of the account and the banker. Not quite.
The most revered account is the �numbered account.� Numbered accounts are often held by the world�s royalty, by wealthy business people, and sometimes by successful criminals. The bank assigns to each account a special officer. The details of the account are known only to this officer and the account holder. Generally the person who opens or who controls the account must do appear in person. Thus an account that may be for the benefit of Boris Yeltsin or some other head of state, would likely be opened by a trusted family member or lieutenant. It would then receive a secret number or comb ination of letters and the holder forever after will be known as Mr. or Ms. EQ2975Z, except to the special officer.
Once the account is open the holder may use an ordinary credit card and take cash at automatic teller machines around the world. He can also use a computer and the banking system�s �military grade� encryption. As in many spy novels the holder can also call from any phone, say a pay phone in the airport, connect with a special Swiss number, select from a variety of languages and ask that any amount of money be sent to another account somewhere in the world.
Swiss law threatens bankers who reveal details of a numbered account or any account with a prison sentence. Bankers as well as politicians sometimes break the law and information leaks. This is especially true once an investigation begins. Investigators have to spread their nets wide and soon a number of people learn or guess who is being investigated and why.
In the case of the Nazi accounts, the Russian accounts and the Kazakhstani accounts investigations were launched and secrecy compromised because Swiss authorities were asked by foreign governments or victims of crime to investigate criminal activity.
Switzerland has strict laws against money laundering, and the privacy of people who use Swiss banks to hide money from criminal activity or to invest that money in legal activities is not protected. Converting money from drug smuggling, embezzlement, and other criminal activities then moving it into investments that can make it appear legal is called money laundering. The Swiss also waive the secrecy law if the account holder has violated Swiss law.
Effective money laundering often requires the cooperation of numerous people, including accountants, business partners, customers, and, of course, bankers. The more people involved, the greater the chance of a leak and an investigation.
Swiss banks for over 200 years have had an unequalled reputation for secrecy and privacy. They still enjoy that reputation, but the competition is growing. Switzerland also has a reputation for a certain puritanism, and its recent cooperation with international criminal investigations have caused many depositors to seek privacy in new �offshore banks.�
Many Russian businesses have hidden or laundered funds in banks in Ireland and the Caribbean. Even the central bank of Russia was caught with an offshore account whose beneficiaries have not yet been revealed. The kindest explanation offered to date is that Russian authorities did not want the International Monetary Fund and its bond holders to know the size of its reserves.
The Swiss investigations surface like the top of a much larger iceberg beneath the world�s financial waters. The United States has been developing a variety of methods in a desperate attempt to keep up with the laundering of money related to drugs, arms sales and terrorism. Electronic methods of moving money around the world have made the work exceptionally difficult. A few years ago the first internet based banks appeared, often with invisible physical facilities and a Caribbean registration.
Encrypted orders for moving money around the world via the internet are more difficult to follow than an intercontinental missile. A million dollars can now be placed on a chip inside a plastic card and disappear without a trace until it reaches its destination. This year the Clinton Administration, Britain, the United Nations and international financial institutions have begun pushing standards on such banks, requiring that they know who their customers are and where their money comes from and goes to.
Just as the Karakorum of the Mongolian Khans was once among the ten most important trading cities of the world and is now little more than a monastery and a village, the world�s great fortunes may soon consider Switzerland a risky and unnecessary crossroads.
In recent years Kazakhstan like its northern neighbor Russia has attracted the attention of the international community not only due to vast territories, but also because of politics. The Presidential election and the sale of MIGs did not add to Kazakhstan�s reputation. Now the situation was worsened with the allegation of Swiss accounts. We offer the Reader an analysis from the Kazakh Service of Radio �Liberty� (KSRL).
From the end of the last year Kazakhstan has been under intense scrutiny by developed countries. If events in Kazakhstan follow the Russian story, Kazakhstan will become the second most watched country after Russia.. Neither eastern Timor nor Pakistan can be compared with Russia or Kazakhstan in their interest for the international community.
Both Kazakhstan and Russia struggle to stablize internal policy in the face of increasingly unpopular leadership. Chief among the recent scandals are the pre-term Presidential election held early in this year. This election was conducted under clearly anti-democratic conditions and hence, was considered illegal by the West. If supplement to the Law on elections aid an honest Parliamentary election, the West is ready to forgive our country�s previous infringements.
Second, the sale of MIGs to North Korea by Kazakhstan drew fire from the international community.
The President is either directly or indirectly concerned in the Parliamentary election with the participation of different political parties and also with the recently found and frozen accounts in Swiss banks (this information was published in �New York Times�).
Only 8 years ago Kazakhstan introduced itself to the world as an independent state having nuclear weapons, a vast territory and vast reserves of natural resources. But during the last 4 to 5 years the state rather looks like a banana republic, whose rulers do whatever they want.
In September at the joint meeting of the two Parliament Houses the leader of the state said that at the eve or during the Parliamentary election a compromise war might be waged by the opposition and we should not trust them, the President warned parliamentarians and the society. This compromising material was not presented by the opposition, as the President had feared, but appeared from abroad. It was presented by �New York Times�.
Despite measures by the government to keep the story off television and out of the print media, most population managed find it. The point is not if the population believed the information or not. The President�s press secretary Lev Tarakov said, �the Kazakhstan President has never had any accounts in Swiss bank.� Unfortunately, no state or independent mass media touched this theme* , and the press service had to deny only foreign allegations.
This fact proves many things. First, possibly, our people with the so-called developed �slave psychology� can hardly be surprised with this fact, as the population got used persistent theft by leaders of the country since the soviet period. The present leaders of Kazakhstan exploit the popular resignation. Second, at the eve of the Presidential election the opposition newspapers �Dat� and �21st century� published materials about the President�s real estates in foreign countries. Neither the press service nor the President�s administration refuted those facts. Those materials were reprinted from foreign press. If the administration had refuted the fact, representatives of foreign mass media would have made an international scandal. If there is no reaction to the publications, the population will keep silent. For the present authorities this psychology is profitable.
Having ignored materials published by �Dat� and �21st century�, will the President�s administration ignore �New York Times�? It is the head of the state who is to answer this question. His answer is of especial importance for the society. According to the ex-candidate to the Parliament Baltash Tursumbaev, �what are the grounds for the newspaper to write the article. It defames the President. That is why the President is to postpone everything to answer. If he is innocent, he must acquit himself through international courts.�
On Kazakhstan�s independence day the New York Times ran an editorial about the development of democracy and noted, �in nations that enjoyed some democratic progress but fell into strongman rule � such as Peru, Haiti, Cambodia, Kazakhstan or Zambia � classic democracy promotion efforts to reform government institutions have been thwarted by leaders who have little interest in sharing power.� A president who aims to bring Kazakhstan up to the standards of leading world democratic and economic powers within the next generation, so far has only convinced world opinion that he is headed back toward the middle of the fading century.
24.10.99
THE GLOBE based on the materials of the Kazakh Service of Radio �Liberty�
(Translated from Kazakh by THE GLOBE)
* From the editorial staff: We continue weekly reviews of materials of the Kazakh Service of Radio �Liberty� , which touches urgent problems of Kazakhstan. This time we attract your attention to a very important moment. Correspondent of the radio commenting the situation around the �New York Times� article on frozen Swiss accounts of the Kazakhstani President states in his review that Kazakhstan mass media neither touched this theme nor expressed resentment and astonishment with �this fact�. Probably, the author of the review did not read attentively last issues of THE GLOBE dated October 19 & 22. There was not either resentment or astonishment, but we tried to illuminate the theme from different points of view. The opinion of an independent expert is noteworthy. He considers �New York Times� article a purposeful campaign against Nursultan Nazarbaev due to three reasons: the recent election, negotiations with Iran and the President�s obstinacy regarding the sale of the share in �Tengizchevroil� (THE GLOBE # 81(399), 19.10.99). Besides, it was mentioned that �ALMA TV� stopped re-broadcasting of Russian TV channels and other moments. Correspondents of THE GLOBE more than 10 times called the press-secretary of the President�s administration to get comments, but they failed to find anybody who would comment. The publication of the review of Radio �Liberty� correspondent visually demonstrates attentions paid by THE GLOBE to this event.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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