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Marat Tazhin, Kazakhstan’s new foreign minister is in DC to plead his country’s case for chairing the OSCE in 2009. We know what he is going to say, as his address to a special meeting of the permanent council of the OSCE last week in Vienna provides a preview of his remarks.
He’ll argue that Kazakhstan is making steady and sufficient progress in democratizing the country to have earned the right to be the first post-Soviet state to have this privilege. Noting that the country is an indisputable economic success, he will add that Kazakhstan is uniquely suited to advance the OSCE’s security agenda in the region, because of its simultaneous commitment to religious tolerance and the eradication of extremism which breeds terrorism.
Kazakhstan’s bid has strong support of Russia and other CIS states, and most EU members are also supporting it. The UK’s opposition is a notable exception, Whitehall is likely to want Washington to continue its earlier opposition, which has been expressed in the form of arguing that a Kazakh chairmanship would be more successful if deferred until 2011.
There is certain to be pressure from various US based human rights groups that Kazakhstan’s 2009 chairmanship bid continue to be blocked. These groups will find plenty of supporting argument in the State Department’s own recent analysis of the human rights situation in that country.
This report continues to find objection with the treatment of political opposition, including the mysterious murder of Altynbek Sarsenbaev in 2006, high thresholds for registration of political parties, restrictions on public assembly, legal restraints on independent media, and persecution of some minority religious sects.
The Kazakh government, though, steadfastly maintains its commit to the advancement of democratic principles. Tazhin’s speech promises a series of reforms in the next several months, increasing the responsibility of popularly elected local legislatures, increasing the independence of the judiciary, enhancing the role of parliament in general, and increasing the rights of assembly and media. Much of the promised legislation is still pending, or not yet publicly available to be read. However, Kazakh parliamentary deputy Alikhan Baimenov apparently leaked the report of the State Commission on Drafting and Specification of Democratic Reforms in Kazakhstan, which outlines much of the planned legislation in some detail.
Kazakhstan’s political opposition is itself split over whether Kazakhstan should get the OSCE chairmanship. Speaking at the recent Eurasia Media Forum in Almaty civic activist Rachid Nougmanov strongly defended the OSCE bid, as providing a necessary incentive for the further consolidation of democratic reforms. But only a few days later a group of political activists from Kazakhstan demanded constitutional reforms precede any successful bid.
However it would be a real mistake for the OSCE members to decide this question solely on the basis of some sort of yardstick of democracy. Had Kazakhstan not made its demand for the chairmanship so public, maybe this could have been the criteria by which such the decision could have been made. But now if the U.S., U.K (and some say Canada as well) refuse to allow the OSCE to make a consensus based decision on the Kazakh chairmanship (which was deferred until the OSCE ministerial consultation of December 2007) the OSCE will lose all credibility in the member states of the CIS.
What should be more important, from the point of view of Washington, is that rebuffing Astana now, means that the U.S. will put its close relationship with Kazakhstan at risk, at the very time when the Bush administration needs dependable partners in an increasingly unfriendly region.
Some object that the Kazakhs are effectively blackmailing the OSCE with their request, but the distinction between blackmail and the demonstration of geopolitical clout is a wholly subjective one. Like it or not, it would be prudent for the U.S. and the U.K. to recognize that the state of Kazakhstan has arrived as a serious player on the international scene. And like all serious players Kazakhstan will not shy away from demanding that it become the beneficiary of international double standards.
Martha Brill Olcott
Senior Associate
Comments
On June 11 at 05:41, Anonymous commented:
I would have to disagree with Ms. Olcott’s statement that the OSCE would lose credibility by denying Kazakhstan chairmanship in 2009. Perhaps the governments of the former Soviet states would thereby drop their ambitions of attaining the chairmanship because of a perception of futility. Still, this would do nothing to destroy the credibility of the OSCE in the eyes of the people of the CIS. In fact, by allowing Kazakhstan to attain chairmanship after its recent actions eliminating the constitutional term limit on the presidency (which caps almost a decade with little to no democratic progress), the OSCE would tarnish any reputation that it still has in the region. This would confirm the widely-held beliefs that the west gives no heed to human rights or freedom where oil is involved, and it would destroy any incentive that the OSCE could provide for reforms in the future.