Inequality is driving protests against an authoritarian system

Almaty, the commercial capital of Kazakhstan , is the kind of mirage that oil-rich nations so often produce. It has all the trappings of comfort and consumer excess: swanky shopping malls, luxury car dealerships, high-end hotels. This is the image of prosperity that the country’s rulers enjoy projecting. For decades, Kazakhs have been encouraged to take out expensive loans to buy flats, cars and even holidays they can barely afford.

- Peter Leonard is Central Asia editor at Eurasianet

Beyond the limits of Almaty and the capital city, NurSultan, however, the illusion begins to look threadbare. And the causes behind the protests that have gripped the central Asian nation come into focus. Average monthly salaries are less than $600. Police, doctors, teachers and all kinds of government workers supplement their meagre pay with bribes.

In the distant west of this vast country there is the arid Mangystau province, where most of Kazakhstan’s oil reserves lie. It’s where the unrest that broke out at the start of the year has its roots.

The government is all about bringing in free-market rules and finally burying the vestiges of the command economy that prevailed when Kazakhstan was a Soviet republic. It was in that spirit that it gradually phased out subsidies for liquid petroleum gas, the fuel that many in western Kazakhstan use in their cars. On New Year’s Day, motorists awoke to find it would cost twice as much as the day before to fill their tanks. Demonstrations ensued.