Kazakhstan, failed colour revolution?

[johnofgwent]

Who invented the term "colour revolution" and what is it trying to hide.

For me, the term bring up images of Shaka Zulus mob beheading South African white farmers while a laughing Winnie Mandela lights up another batch of necklaces for the house boys ....

is it a posh vegan term for the sort of bollix the US went full tilt at in places where a democratically elected left wing president gets to due by dodgy accident so they can install a GOP worshipping glove puppet (another term leftist vegans have replaced because they clearly feel uncomfortable denigrating the reality of a master having his hand up the arse of his puppet (

[cromwell]

Very good and informative,I'd have just said it's that **** Bliars fault 

[Sampanviking]

So what is happening in Kazakhstan?
On the face of it, it appears to look like and have many of the ingredients of a Western Sponsored Regime Change operation (Colour Revolution) but on close inspection some key ingredients appear to be missing.

Having spent some days following these events, I think I can provide a general outline as to how the situation developed, and it is quite complex.
It contains three main components.

1) Genuine popular grievance - the original protests in the West of this vase country, in the the main Oil and Gas producing areas, seem to have been exactly that, peaceful protest against economic reforms (actually being insisted on by Western Financiers as part of liberalising the economy and doing away with subsidies and other such caps.

2) A Power Struggle at the top between the still very powerful former long term President Nazarbayev and the new President Tokayev. Nazarbayez retained great power and control of the main security apparatus of the country, with many of his people (often family) in key positions within the Security Departments. He was someone who was a nationalist and had led a drive against the large Ethnic Russian population in the country including measures such as replacing the Cyrillic Alphabet with the Latin. He was courted in the West and included such luminaries as Sir Anthony Blair among his friends.
Tokayez by contrast was far more inclusive and for more pro Eurasian than his predecessor.

3) Opportunist Militants many of them extreme Islamists.
Its no great secret that when the US invaded Afghanistan, this was intended as the first move of a project that was to repeat in the former Soviet Space of Central Asia, that which they had achieved in the former Soviet Space of Eastern Europe and this included building up and developing militants to lead "Colour Revolutions" in order to install pro US Client Regimes. These groups had been built up over twenty years and there most of have region wide despair when the US departed from Afghanistan this year, leaving them effectively out in the wind to dry,

So, at the very least, I think we can say the following:
As a wave of anti reform demonstrations swept the country, maybe themselves a facet of a power struggle at the top of the Political system, these largely Islamist Militant groups (mostly on Almaty) saw a last ditch opportunity to act and so took to the streets, Their first act was to storm an Armoury in the city and obtain military grade weapons. These militants then went out ans started to attack Police and Police stations.
When Tokayez tried to call out Interior Troops and the Military to deal with them, he found himself blocked by Nazarbayez and his allies, which left the Almaty Police Force on their own to face the heavily armed militants. They retreated to their Police Stations in an attempt to defend them, while the Militants then took advantage to seize and burn Government and Media buildings and then storm the city airport.

At this point is seems Tokayez was able to gain full support from Russian President Putin and this gave him enough authority to face down Nazarbayez, remove him and his allies from Power and install his own people into the security Ministries. This enabled all the security forces to enter into the situation, which was rapidly brought back under control. Key to the support was for Tokayez to be able to trigger the CSTO military alliance to lend its support citing "external backed forces". This trigger showed that the support from Putin was total and will have made up minds from any officials still wavering.

So while this has many elements of a colour revolution and involved elements prepared for such, this has been at best a misfire. The obvious sign of this has been the lack of total wall to wall, consistent and on message political and media coverage/narrative, which has been the hallmark of all similar operations. In contrast this media response to this has been muted and incoherent.

If some parties in the West thought that this would have been a way to damage the position of Vladimar Putin ahead of his summit with Biden next week, it has been an utter failure and total debacle. All it has achieved has chased the best friend the West had in Kazakhstan out of power, probably for ever and given Mr Putin a fresh example of western meddling in former Soviet States. It has further brought Mr Tokayez more firmly into the Eurasianist camp and provided further impetus to strengthen all Regional security and development structures, with Beijing now weighing in very heavily with Moscow and Astana.