Posted on 01/13/2022 11:35:14 AM PST by UMCRevMom@aol.com
Russian airborne troop units who departed on Jan. 6 to join the Collective Security Treaty Organisation’s peacekeeping force in Kazakhstan are expected to return in the coming days after successful completion of mission.
This must be a rare page in American diplomatic history that a US Secretary of State has been literally off his rocker. Antony Blinken’s outbursts on the events in Kazakhstan were not only boorish but also illogical.
Blinken questioned the decision by the president of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev to request help from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to deploy forces to help stabilise the grave situation in his country. He said it was unclear why the deployment was happening!
Moscow had emphasised right at the outset that the CSTO deployment would be temporary. Nonetheless, Blinken sniped that “one lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry furiously denounced Blinken’s insulting remarks. It said Blinken spoke “in his typical boorish manner.” The statement went on to say, “When Americans are in your house, it can be difficult to stay alive, and not to be robbed or raped. Indians of the North American continent, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Panamanians, Yugoslavs, Libyans, Syrians and many other unfortunate people who are unlucky enough to see these uninvited guests in their ‘home’ will have much to say about this.”
On Tuesday, Tokayev announced that the CSTO contingent of troops would begin leaving the troubled Central Asian country in two days, with the pullout to be completed in 10 days’ time! Kremlin responded that it is entirely the prerogative of the Kazakh government to decide on such matters concerning national security!
Blinken would know that following the murder of the Iranian general Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad two years ago, Iraqi parliament had demanded the forthwith departure of all American troops. But the Americans are yet to pay heed to it!
Yet, Blinken is an intelligent man. All things taken into account, he deliberately indulged in an act of dissimulation by uttering some nonsensical things: Blinken was actually scrambling to cover up the tracks of the attempt at regime change in Kazakhstan masterminded by the CIA with the approval of President Biden.
Isn’t that a familiar ploy for crafty minds — distract attention from the core issue by raising dust in the air? In this miserable case, the failed attempt by the Biden administration at regime change in a strategically located remote country sandwiched between Russia and China (which is manifold more strategic than Ukraine ever can be) exposes American diplomacy to ridicule in a vast region of Inner Asia. And it forecloses any best-laid plans by NATO to cross the Caspian ever.
Worst of all, the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy will now have a huge arc of geography to the west of China, which is impossible to barricade following such a massive depletion of American influence. Russia achieved all this at minimal cost — a five-day military mission to Kazakhstan.
The Kremlin is reticent about disclosing everything it knows, but from available details, what took place was a failed attempt at colour revolution while “destructive internal and external forces took advantage of the situation,” as President Vladimir Putin put it.
The Russian Ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov has written more explicitly on the Russian embassy’s webpage that thousands of jihadists were involved in efforts to wreak havoc in Kazakhstan.
As he put it, “Kazakhstan came under attack by radicals who preached misanthropic ideology. Thousands of jihadists and looters made an attempt to shatter the constitutional order… This is a new attempt at a colour revolution with the help of gunmen and looters.”
In another interview to Newsweek, Antonov added, “There is serious concern over further spread of radical religious ideology in Central Asia. It comes from the destabilisation in the Middle East and Afghanistan caused, in turn, by the Western military interferences under the pretext of defending human rights and democracy.”
The Kremlin’s close allies, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko openly alleged that “foreign intelligence agencies of various major forces have interfered” in Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday that the country “has been subjected to armed aggression by well-coordinated terrorist groups trained abroad. According to preliminary data, the attackers include individuals who have military combat zone experience in the ranks of radical Islamist groups.”
Tokayev himself spoke about a “well-organised and well-prepared act of aggression against Kazakhstan with the participation of foreign fighters mainly from Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan. There were also fighters from the Middle East. The idea was to form a zone of controlled chaos on our territory with the subsequent seizure of power.”
Putin has drawn a parallel with the regime change in Ukraine in 2014, sponsored by the US where agents provocateurs demoralised the security forces forcing President Vikor Yanukovich to flee and into the resultant vacuum, US diplomats promptly inserted a puppet regime unfriendly toward Moscow.
Foreign militants participated in the riots in Kazakhstan, Tokayev said in a talk with European Council President Charles Michel held via a video conference on Monday. “I have no doubts that this was a terror attack,” Tokayev was quoted as saying.
“This was a well-organized and prepared act of aggression against Kazakhstan with the participation of foreign gunmen mostly from Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan. There were also militants from the Middle East,” Tokayev said. “Their intent was to create a zone of controlled chaos on our territory with the subsequent seizure of power,” he added.
Indeed, sixteen security personnel were killed, over 1,300 suffered injuries and about 500 police cars were burned. There were targeted attacks simultaneously on government buildings in many cities.
Conspiracy theories are galore. The involvement of Turkey and Israel has figured. Kazakhstan has closed 5 out of its seven border crossings with Kyrgyzstan. The talk of the town is that western intelligence transferred battle-hardened Islamist fighters from Syria to Kyrgyzstan to infiltrate the porous border into Kazakh territory.
Bishkek feels so ashamed and guilty that President Sadyr Japarov didn’t show his face at the CSTO leaders’ videoconference two days ago and instead deputed his prime minister!
More details will surely emerge. It’s known that the few thousands detainees held by Kazakh authorities include foreign nationals. An estimated 16000 NGOs are operating in Kazakhstan and many are known to be funded by US organisations such as Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, which funds regime change projects in ex-Soviet republics.
The US has networked extensively with ethnic Kazakh nationalists, pro-Western groups and youth. The “New Kazakh”, educated in America, is a different breed altogether from the “Russified” generation of the Soviet era.
Kazakhstan is a coveted trophy for Cold Warriors. It borders Xinjiang and is the transportation hub for Beijing’s west-bound BRI projects. China has huge stakes in trade, investment, energy cooperation with Kazakhstan.
For Moscow too, the stability of Kazakhstan is of vital concern as 3.5 million ethnic Russians live there. Besides, Russia also has strategic assets there such as the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the Sary Shagan testing range for ICBMs. The sparsely populated landmass is a potential infiltration route for terrorist groups.
Blinken’s provocative remarks about the CSTO and Russia shifted the searchlight moved away from the attempted colour revolution. Nonetheless, the Russophobes in the Biden administration are ending up as losers.
They fancied that while Moscow’s eyes remained trained on Russia’s western border, they could create a fait accompli for Russia along its 7600-km long open southern border. They were clueless that Putin would react decisively.
By deputing a hotshot general with previous record in Chechnya, Crimea and Donbass to command the CSTO troops for the five-day period in Kazakhstan, the Kremlin made its point — ‘No more colour revolutions.’
“Above all, the fact of the matter is that Nazarbayev cronies held the levers of state power, especially over its security apparatus, which gave Washington a decisive edge.
But things have dramatically changed this past week. Nazarbayev may still have some residual influence, but not good enough to rescue the elite who subserved US interests. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a low-profile career diplomat by profession, is finally coming into his own.
Two of Tokayev’s decisive moves have been the replacement of Nazarbayev as the head of the National Security Council and the dismissal of the country’s powerful intelligence chief Karim Masimov (who has since been arrested along with other unidentified suspects as part of a probe into “high treason.”)
Indeed, Washington has much to worry about because, at the end of the day, Kazakhstan remains unfinished business unless and until a color revolution can bring about regime change and install a pro-West ruler, as in Ukraine. The current turbulence signified an abortive attempt at color revolution, which boomeranged.
Unlike in Afghanistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon are not in a position to “evacuate” their collaborators. And the torrential flow of events has shocked the Washington establishment.
Kazakhstan is a large country (two-thirds the size of India) and sparsely populated (18 million), and the CSTO forces who moved in are well equipped and led by a tough seasoned general who crushed the insurgency in Chechnya.
The Russian forces have taken with them an advanced Leer-3 electronic warfare system, which includes specially configured Orlan-10 drones, jamming devices and so forth. Borders have been sealed.
The mandate for the Russian forces is to protect “strategic assets.” Presumably, such assets include the Pentagon-funded labs in Kazakhstan.”
Everyone seems to assume it was a CIA/USAID/Deep-state "color revolution." Given the frequency of such things, that's a fair guess.
But on the other hand, Given the speed of how events rose (and finished) it seemed more like a straight-up Kazakh elite/factional dispute/coup attempt: long-term dictator and his clique, vs. upstart head of state security who had to move before he was purged, etc......Granted, super-power/strategic involvement is never too far behind, but it seems rather that US Fed.gov was caught flat-footed by it all. I have no special information, just trying to read the tea-leaves, by what is said, and what is not said.
Putin may have even been ready for it, and decided on whatever pretext, he was going to move quickly tie Kazakhstan securely to Russia forever, and clean out any of the kleptocrats connected to the West.
Show of street by Russia in lieu of a show of weakness and incompetence by the current Biden Administration?
This thing could have been months in preparation.
AGREE
https://thecradle.co/Article/columns/5668
Good take on the events in Kazakhstan. I follow the Syrian war closely, and I remember when foreign jihadis were being extracted from Syria to Northern Afghanistan via US military.
What is interesting to me is NATO member Turkey/Erdogan’s part. NATO uses Turkey for its expansionist goals, but Erdogan’s goals are not the same goal as NATO’s.
I think what I think of as the white bread faction of NATO can agree/support letting Turkey/HTS carve off Idlib and parts of Syria, and beyond but Turkey ultimately wants a Turkic empire.
Too much assumed cleverness by those who want to weaken and destroy the alliance of Russia, China, and the Stans.
Yet another article that puts Massimov at the center of the coup. That seems to make sense.
I am trying to catch-up and refresh my recent CIS and Kazakh history. I see conflicting reports about Nazarbayev. In the Western media, he is generally portrayed as a tin-pot Asian dictator, but other reports indicate he was quite friendly to the West, and as this article points out, allowed MI6, the CIA, their fronts in NGOs to operate freely, and that his cronies were allowed to stash their money without worry in the West.
Whatever the case, its pretty clear that after thie aborted coup last week, Kazakhstan has been very quickly and firmly tied to the Russia-China camp - for a long time to come.
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