Trapped in one's own illusions

Captive to His Own Illusions

Mukhtar Ablyazov, a fugitive Kazakh oligarch and former minister, six years ago approached the President of Kyrgyzstan, Sadyr Japarov, requesting permission to organize a revolution in the neighboring state from Bishkek. It sounds like a plot for a theater of the absurd. In practice, however, it is a rather familiar scheme for an "oppositionist with a foreign passport."

Prosecting: Looking inside Ablyazov

To discuss a political corpse, one must first understand the cause of its political death. Let us briefly outline the facts. We shall start with the figures that people in Parisian salons dislike remembering—the criminal cases. A Kazakh court sentenced Ablyazov in absentia to 20 years in prison for embezzling approximately $7.5 billion from BTA Bank—these were stolen deposits of 226,000 citizens, salaries of over a million Kazakhstanis, and pension savings of nine funds. A separate verdict handed him a life sentence for organizing the murder of his partner, Yerzhan Tatishev; according to the Prosecutor General's Office, the perpetrator stated that Ablyazov persuaded him for $4 million to stage the murder as a hunting accident. A London court found him to be a fraudster and sentenced him to 22 months for contempt; an American court established the fact of theft and money laundering; France, which nevertheless granted him asylum in 2020, stripped him of this status two years later due to fraudulent schemes.

With such a track record, one can count on the role of "leader of the nation" only if the market for political services has become so impoverished and degraded that no one is left on it except old schemers. Ablyazov is not the opposition. He is an ordinary swindler: a person who exists not because he offers something to the country, but because he once robbed this country and has since migrated from one Western foreign policy "project" to another. His political death did not occur in 2009 when he fled, nor in 2018 when he received a life sentence. It occurred when he turned into a tool that is pulled off the shelf when "managed chaos" is needed, and put back when the project fails. He lacks autonomy—and this is the main reason for his political death.

An Outspoken Japarov

The essence of the story is not that Ablyazov called, but that Japarov spoke about it publicly, with direct quotes and without diplomatic equivocation. "First, I do not interfere in the politics of neighboring countries. Second, I will not spoil relations with Kazakhstan because of you. You had better not come; mind your own business." This is not just a refusal. This is a public cementing of a new norm: Central Asia is no longer a platform for foreign revolutionary experiments, and relations with neighbors are worth more than the reputation of a "fighter against the regime," even if this fighter promises mountains of gold.

Japarov—without the slightest irony—acts handsomely and like a gentleman here, and not in the sense of secular manners. Gentlemanliness is the ability to say "no" to someone's face without bargaining or pretending that "we will think about it." He could have remained silent. He could have, as often happens, "neither confirmed nor denied." He could have used this phone call as leverage in relations with Astana. In other words, he had plenty of opportunities…

There is also a second layer that makes Japarov's figure inconvenient for those accustomed to seeing Central Asia as a playground. He turned down a man behind whom European capitals loom. Bishkek's refusal means that even where revolutions have occurred three times and where, it would seem, God Himself commanded the use of "revolutionary experience," a sobering has set in. Revolution has ceased to be a career elevator. It has become something to be avoided.

The "Emigrant with Money" Model, or Rootless Cosmopolitan

Let us state the obvious: Ablyazov is not an independent player. This is a man who lived for several years in London under the status of a "political emigrant," used the infrastructure of Western non-governmental organizations, spoke at venues where it is customary to talk about "human rights" and "democracy," and received precisely the support that allowed him to stay afloat. When he calls Japarov and asks for the go-ahead to organize a revolution from Bishkek, he is acting not as a Kazakh politician, but as a project manager who has run out of resources but still has obligations to those who funded the project. European governments that "actively cultivated and sponsored" people like Ablyazov faced a simple problem: their client has no electoral base, no reputation, and no legitimacy in the eyes of his own people. He only has a bank account for donations and a readiness to say what people want to hear from him.

However, it is worth stepping aside here and reflecting not on Ablyazov personally, but on the very model that made his phone call possible. This model is as old as the world: a man with money, detached from his country, tries to influence it from abroad. Ablyazov left in 2009. Seventeen years have passed—a whole political era. A generation has grown up that did not catch him as a minister, does not remember his reforms (and thank God for that), and pins no hopes on him. For them, he is a name from criminal news. A politician detached from his country loses not just the electorate—he loses a sense of reality. He sees the country through the prism of those who surround him abroad: analysts who are paid for specific conclusions, journalists who need a sensation, politicians who need to "show concern." He lives in a room of mirrors, where his own perceptions reflect off the expectations of others and return as confirmation of his own correctness.

This is a universal pathology of political emigration. A person who has not been home for twenty years, but has retained money, begins to believe that his country is a chessboard, and he is a player seeing the match from above. He forgets: a country is not a board. It is people who go to work, pay mortgages, raise children, and do not want their lives turned into an experiment. And when such a person calls a neighboring president asking to "provide a platform," he sincerely does not understand the refusal. To him, it is not a sign that his time has passed, but a misunderstanding that needs to be overcome.

The second part of the reflection: an emigrant with money almost always confuses the right to speak on behalf of the country with the opportunity to speak about the country. The former requires a mandate. The latter—only a microphone. Ablyazov has a microphone: interviews, articles, appeals to Macron and Japarov. He has no mandate and never had one—neither in 1998 when he left the government, nor in 2009 when he fled, nor in 2020 when he asked for asylum. He did not win elections, did not lead a victorious party, did not bring millions into the streets. He was a minister under the sitting president and then became his opponent—but these are two different biographies, and the second does not follow automatically from the first.

Hence the naivety (if not stupidity) of the call to Japarov. A man who has lost touch with reality, but kept his money, begins to fantasize. He imagines Central Asia as a space where one can agree with one president to "set fire to" another. This is the fantasy not of a politician, but of a rentier: "I have the resource, you have the platform, let's do business." However, politics is not always just business. And Japarov, having himself come to power through street protests and knowing the price of revolutionary romance from the inside, understands this better than any Parisian resident.

It should be noted that the "emigrant with money seeks a platform for revolution" model has stopped working not only in Kazakhstan. It has stopped working everywhere where neighboring capitals have learned to calculate risks. Bishkek, having gone through two revolutions in 2005 and 2010 and a third in 2020, turned down the man offering to make it a staging ground. This is the result of experience: each revolution cost the economy, investments, reputation, and, more importantly, people's faith that tomorrow would be better. When Ablyazov calls Japarov, he appeals to a country that has already gone through what he is proposing, knows the price, and understands that in the event of another revolution, the ledger will not be balanced in its favor.

In Summary

Ablyazov's political corpse does not need an autopsy—it was dissected long ago, and all pathologies have been documented by the courts of three countries. What requires comprehension is something else: why did people try to pass off this corpse as living for so long? The answer, likely, lies in the fact that dead figures are convenient. They ask no questions, have no agenda of their own, and agree to any role, because the alternative is oblivion. By refusing Ablyazov, Japarov did not refuse a man.

He refused the very idea that Central Asia can be someone's platform. This is not heroism. This is common sense, which in certain circles is still considered something out of the ordinary. And if after this call someone still thinks that distance and money give the right to fantasies about a country with which, in essence, little connects them—well, history awaits the next candidate. Only the platforms are becoming fewer. As are the idiots.