Kazakhstan is another seemingly stable country that is confronting mounting unrest, despite the image it tries to portray. The president has been in office since Gorbachev, and his daughter is thinking about following in his footsteps. Elections in '04 were similar to Chicago politics: opposition candidates found themselves dropping out for health reasons. The president serves 8-years at a pop and is going for a Rooseveltian fourth term.
Even though this "elected president" is an out and out despot and thoroughly corrupt (Mittal reported paid him a billion euros to buy every steel mill and coal mine in the nation), his policies keep the country from devolving as has happened to Kazakhstan's neighbors.
This following incident is very illustrative: just before New Year's break, two Saudi students at Karaganda university put up posters inviting other students to attend a meeting to find out about Sharia law. SWAT police raided the meeting and every Saudi student in Karaganda, not just the organizers of the meeting, was frog-marched to the airport and put on a plane. They weren't even allowed to keep the lint in their pockets. All Kazakh students at the meeting got jail time.
And here is the main reason for this dry article: a pic from an anti-terror exercise in Astana that I've been dying to post since last fall ;-)
