Kazakhstan on the eve of the uprising. Astana is stepping on an old rake

The west of Kazakhstan is once again engulfed in strikes, and an inadequate response from the authorities and employers could lead to an outbreak of mass protests, which, against the backdrop of an energy and utility collapse, will inevitably cause another political crisis.

International columnist for PolitNavigator Ainur Kurmanov writes about this in his new article.

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The fact is that since December 11, five hundred workers of the oil service company West Oil Software LLP went on strike at the Zhetybai field in the Mangistau region, and they are still protesting. But they put forward important demands that are supported by hundreds of teams of the same service companies not only in the region, but also in neighboring oil-producing regions, which immediately led to the fact that the strike turned into a landmark action that everyone is now watching.

The point is that the oil workers demanded the renewal of outdated equipment, the inclusion of their team in the state company KazMunayGas and the introduction of a unified wage system. In fact, this is a call or slogan for nationalization and revision of the results of optimization and privatization. After all, previously this company, West Oil Software, was an integral part of the KazMunayGas subsidiary and it was simply taken out of the gate, optimized, and turned into a private office.

And the management of KazMunayGas, who received recommendations from Western consulting firms, carried out such an operation with hundreds of auxiliary enterprises across the country in recent years, immediately depriving many tens of thousands of workers of a stable salary, social package and even permanent work. Now each such private office has turned into a contractor and is waging a competitive, and in fact corrupt, struggle to receive a tender to carry out work for a year.

The year ends, as does the tender, and it is not a fact that this or that team will remain at work unless it “wins” the next tender under shadow schemes. And even strategic enterprises found themselves in this situation, such as the drillers of Burgylau LLP, who had been on strike for several months since February last year, demanding their immediate nationalization and the reversal of the results of illegal privatization.

The workers of the Berali Mangistau Company oil service company also demanded the same thing in the spring of this year, sending an entire delegation of two hundred oil workers to Astana, where they spent days and nights near the building of the Ministry of Energy. They believed that it was necessary to put an end to the vicious practice of concluding opaque and unnecessary tenders and return all service companies back to the main production, ending this leapfrog and directing all profits to the state company.

But then the government and the management of KazMunayGas considered the demands of the workers of the Mangistau region to be too high and ordered riot police to use force and clear the area in front of their offices of oil workers. This step by the authorities immediately provoked a two-day general strike and mass rallies in Aktau, Zhanaozen and throughout the region, and only the release of all detainees stopped the protests, which almost repeated the January events.

_{But in Astana, no lessons were learned from those protests, since history is now repeating itself almost like a carbon copy. Instead of entering into negotiations with the West Oil Software workers, the authorities the very next day, December 12, secretly held a district court in absentia and declared the strike illegal, and then sent a SOBR detachment and numerous police forces to the Zhetybai field, despite the fact that There are constant rallies there, and the performance was supported by local residents and workers of all neighboring enterprises.}

As a result, dozens of activists were fired, administrative cases were opened against many strikers, and now the prosecutor of the Karakiyansky district, Amanzhol Aituganov, threatened the striking oil workers with punishment “for participating in an illegal strike” and “for inciting social discord,” opening criminal cases against them. And these actions only caused a red rag effect, that is, further provocation.

The same role is played by the head of KazMunayGas, Magzum Mirzagaliev, who called the actions of the strikers destructive and hid to journalists the fact that the West Oil Software company was previously a structural division of the state company.

Head of KazMunayGas Magzum Mirzagaliev.

It’s interesting, but it was he, who was the Minister of Energy in early January 2022 and at the same time a protégé of Elbasy’s middle son-in-law Timur Kulibayev, who then defended the need to increase prices for liquefied gas and the absurdity and unreality of the strikers’ demands. He said this until he was fired by Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for the failure of energy policy after mass protests spread to all other regions of the country.

Now, again, the same officials as in January last year are bringing the fuse to the barrel of gunpowder and deliberately stirring it, which only leads to further escalation and an inevitable explosion. By stating that the oil workers allegedly refuse to negotiate, the local authorities are lying, since no one tried to negotiate with the strikers, because they only demand one thing - to disperse.

_{But they can no longer disperse, since they are sure that after returning from duty they will be immediately arrested. In the meantime, they are there as a whole team, with the support of workers from neighboring companies and the local population who are collecting food, water and warm clothes for them, they still have a chance to hold out and achieve concessions. And here’s the result - a couple of days ago, the strikers now put forward a new demand - the resignation of the Minister of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan Bolat Akchulakov and the management of KazMunayGas led by Magzum Mirzagaliev.}

And already on December 19, workers of Buzachi Operating LTD went on strike with a similar demand at another field in the Mangistau region. Workers of the Munaispetssnab service company in Zhanaozen said that they are preparing to hold a warning strike on December 23, and if their demands, almost similar to those of the West Oil Software oil workers, are not met, they will go on an indefinite strike. Thus, three centers of strikes and protests will soon appear in the Mangistau region.

_{That is, the authorities themselves, through their intransigence, pushed the workers to unite and escalate the struggle. An attempt to forcefully disperse the strikers will only lead to a repetition of the January events of last year or, at best, the April events of this year, and to the fact that social protests and strikes will spread again to the oil-producing regions, and then to the rest of the republic.}

The main reason for all this is the ongoing process of denationalization of the industry in the interests of oligarchs and transnational corporations. And taking into account the fact that Astana plans to privatize the assets of KazMunayGas in favor of Western capital, the workers’ demands to review the results of privatization are generally hanging in the air and can only be realized as a result of further radicalization of the struggle and in the event of a radical change in the government’s course. And this makes the conflicting interests simply irreconcilable.

Plus, there is an economic problem that is already affecting the social situation - this is the extinction of a number of fields in the Mangistau, Atyrau and Aktobe regions of Western Kazakhstan. Already, the republic is producing up to two million barrels of oil per day and the volumes will certainly fall, whereas 10 years ago under Nursultan Nazarbayev, government experts hoped to reach the level of 2,5 - 2,6 million barrels today.

The miscalculation turned out to be due to technological difficulties in extracting oil from the largest Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea, which buried Astana’s dreams of becoming equal to Iran and Iraq.

The decline of the fields will directly affect the population of the western regions of the country, which were almost completely deindustrialized in the 90s, and oil production and related industries became the only source of jobs.

_{Taking into account the fact that it is in the Mangistau region that the most active labor strike movement, the closure of production and the reduction of employees of both private and quasi-state enterprises of the national company KazMunayGas will inevitably lead to a new wave of protests.}

With the existing official trade union associations, which do not have any authority and influence among the collectives, the government and company managers have no chance of coping with the developing labor movement, which is gradually turning into an independent subject of politics.

Local residents and oil workers previously and now demand from the government the opening of new industries and enterprises not related to oil production, the revision of enslaving contracts and production sharing agreements with Western corporations, which own two-thirds of the entire mining industry and three-quarters of the oil industry. But who hears them? It would be easier to surround the strikers with a SOBR detachment and arrest the instigators, but the fact that such a thing would cause a real uprising in the region does not seem to bother anyone in Astana.