CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS
Messages claiming to evoke morality emanated from Kazakhstan long before Blair came to the aid of the party. The President, for example, has sought to trumpet his country’s religious freedom. He has also boasted about its modernity. One has only to make the journey to the extraordinary recently built political capital of Astana, with its raft of glass-and-concrete buildings. The British architect Norman Foster was part of a team that designed what became a new city. It includes the world’s largest tent, the 150-metre-high Khan Shatyr, trumpeted by a leading architectural paper as ‘a spectacular architectural and engineering achievement’. The building was designed by Foster + Partners, the well-known architectural practice of Lord Norman Foster. The message is one of hubristic pride at any price, paid for out of the country’s massive oil revenues.
Coupled with the modernity and excess is the claim to be tolerant of religious diversity. Nazarbayev even commissioned a £36 million Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, designed by Foster, where religious leaders from around the world could meet and find common ground. The rhetoric does not connect with the reality.
In October 2011, the Independent reported that human-rights activists in Kazakhstan were observing an increasingly hostile attitude towards religious groups, and raised serious questions about Nazarbayev’s recruitment of Tony Blair as an adviser.6 Nongovernmental organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, have called on Blair to use his role in Kazakhstan to put pressure on Nazarbayev to stop repression of religious communities and to implement democratic reforms rather than simply to polish the image of an increasingly autocratic state.
Blair’s office told journalist Ken Silverstein that he is ‘supporting the development of the reforms’ under way and that, while he was ‘well aware of the criticisms made of the Kazakhstan government … there are also visible signs of progress’. Local journalists seeing the reality of life in the country and who live under Nazarbayev’s yoke dispute this vehemently.
Strangely, perhaps, for a country that has the founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation as a consultant, Kazakhstan is less than friendly to its Christian minority, although most pressure is exerted on its Muslim minorities, some of whom are revealing alarming fundamentalist tendencies, not something favoured by its President. In a move marking a reversal from claimed religious toleration, in 2011 Nazarbayev proposed a law that was later adopted by the parliament imposing stringent restrictions on religious practices. Religious groups were required to reregister or face closure. The initiative was explained as an attempt to combat Islamic extremism. However, under the new law many minority religious groups, including many Christians, were deemed illegal. In order to exist on a local level, a group must have more than fifty members; on a regional level, more than five hundred; on the national level, more than five thousand. It is estimated that two-thirds of currently existing religious groups have been forced to close down. ‘Kazakhstan has repeatedly gone through the motions of introducing restrictions on religion during the two decades since it gained independence. Those efforts have been routinely quashed in the final stages amid vocal international criticism,’ wrote Peter Leonard, in the Huffington Post in September 2011.
Activists say that minority groups consistently face harassment. ‘This new law has simply legalised the current practice … of persecuting unregistered minority religious groups and limiting missionary activity,’ said rights activist Ninel Fokina, head of the Almaty Helsinki Committee as quoted in the World Post in September 2011. Fokina said authorities had been openly speaking about the need for a purge in the religious sphere. ‘I believe that out of the 4,500 religious groups currently in existence, barely 1,500 will remain,’ she said. Fokina said the new rules would also greatly complicate the life of even relatively large Christian Protestant communities, such as Lutherans, Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Nazarbayev’s repressive activity contradicts Blair’s claim in the video In the Stirrups of Time, where Blair is filmed saying, ‘It’s a country that is almost unique I would say in its cultural diversity and the way it brings different faiths together, and cultures together. In the work that I do there, I’ve found them really smart people, capable, very determined and very proud of their country.’
WHAT EXTERNAL AGENTS COMMENT ON BLAIR IN KAZAKHSTAN
Few people are fooled by Blair’s claims and Nazarbayev’s boasts. Criticism has followed Blair’s role in Kazakhstan. This has come not least from those inside the country.
In January 2012, fifty-two Kazakh youth activists urged Blair to back away from this deal in the opposition newspaper Respublika, after the massacre of at least fifteen oil workers referred to above. They told Blair that ‘the leadership of Kazakhstan in peacetime opened fire on unarmed citizens. Such methods have been the bloody practice in our country as soon as you became an adviser to President Nursultan Nazarbayev.’ Their letter was headed ‘Blood of the people on your hands, Blair.’
‘You are an adviser to the leadership of Kazakhstan on political issues. Why in the last seven months has power been deaf to the demands of oil workers?’ demanded the letter, published on 28 December. ‘And now it has opened fire on its citizens. Many were killed and many more are missing.’
None of the fifty-two people who signed the letter were well-known opposition leaders. The authorities responded by saying that police feared for their lives and even then they only fired into the air.
As the number of voices calling for Blair to intervene increases, one would expect that the pressure he feels to encourage Nazarbayev to make democratic reforms does too. Whether he ever attempts to guide the President away from repression, we cannot, of course, know. Bloomberg has called Mr Blair’s consultancy in Kazakhstan his ‘most controversial, and potentially most lucrative’.
DOES BLAIR GIVE VALUE FOR MONEY?
Blair may be a consummate moderniser and builder of images but are his efforts in Kazakhstan bearing fruit? Cynics, of which there is no shortage inside the country and outside, will say that, as long as Kazakh oil keeps flowing, enabling his bills to get paid, he will remain the salesman of the unacceptable.
Kairat Abusseitov, Kazakhstan’s ambassador to Britain, quoted in the Daily Telegraph, 29 October 2011, has said,
The former British Prime Minister acts as an adviser to the Government of Kazakhstan. He [President of Kazakhstan] is relying on Mr Blair and his key advisers to help him show how he is reforming his country and also to emphasise the key strategic and intelligence role his country played during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He hopes they will help him highlight his role encouraging the United Nations General Assembly to adopt August 29 as the International Day Against Nuclear Tests and his initiative to hold two international forums of world and traditional religions in Astana to foster mutual co-operation between faiths.
The former Prime Minister brings years of experience and we have benefited significantly from his strategic vision and deep understanding of the global economy as well as effective government and international policy making.
The project is supporting the reforms the Government is making aimed at furthering democracy, strengthening the rule of law and improving the economic environment in Kazakhstan.’
This is quite odd. The ambassador seems to be saying that Blair is there to burnish the President’s image, to ‘help him show how he is reforming his country’, to ‘emphasise the key strategic and intelligence role his country played during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan’, to ‘help him highlight his role’ in peace and religious-tolerance initiatives. Blair himself, however, describing his role there in a 2012 speech, spoke in very different terms: ‘The work my team does within the Policy Advisory Group, and outside experts, focuses on areas such as decentralisation, public procurement, judicial and other reforms to do with the rule of law, precisely those types of things identified by the EU and others as necessary for Kazakhstan’s future developm
ent. It is important for Kazakhstan that the reform programme set out by President Nazarbayev succeeds. It is important for the world.’
So whose version do we believe? Blair, who says he is doing policy work, or the Ambassador, who says Blair is there to burnish the President’s image?
There will be those who point to the closeness between Kazakhstan’s wealthy and the British aristocracy and power elite as a sign of a triumph for Blair and his entourage. Rich Kazakhs are increasingly present in London, not least through Prince Andrew, who counts the glamorous energy tycoon Goga Ashkenazi – who lives in a £28 million house in Holland Park, west London – among his friends. She has a young son with Timur Kulibayev, the Kazakh tycoon who bought Prince Andrew’s former home Sunninghill Park for £15 million. It has been widely speculated that this was a very generous price for the property, a fact denied by the parties to the deal. Kulibayev also reportedly spent £44 million on a row of four houses in Belgravia, central London. Kulibayev is said to control 90 per cent of the Kazakh oilfields.7 He stands accused of money laundering, but cannot be prosecuted, having been given immunity in 2011.8
The modernisation of Kazakhstan has been a constant preoccupation of the President, and Blair has discussed with Nazarbayev at Davos how the country can meet its 2050 target of putting Kazakhstan into the group of the world’s top thirty developed economies. A local press report of the talks said that ‘consultation [presumably with Blair] would play an important role’ in achieving this target. London is expected to be the financial hub for future Kazakh companies seeking international capital. The country has the challenge of explaining the ignominy of the departure of Eurasian Natural Resources from London amid a corruption scandal. Perhaps Blair will be involved in showing how that happened and why the country’s companies have learned their lessons.
The severest criticism has come from Labour supporters who once believed in Blair. Mike Harris, for example, a former Labour political adviser and strong supporter of Tony Blair as PM, even during the Iraq War, feels a sharp sense of betrayal at Blair’s activities on behalf of dictators, and especially Nazarbayev. He told us, ‘The man who ushered in the post-Westphalian era, the anti-Kissinger who prevented the genocide of Kosovan Muslims and defended the rights of Sierra Leoneans, is now the counsel of oil-rich dictators.’ Harris widens his attack to any connections the former Prime Minister makes with other nondemocratic countries. ‘Any association, however tangential, with our politicians, is hugely symbolic for authoritarian regimes in helping them legitimise their rule within their countries. That Blair is involved is deeply depressing. The majority of despots are not household names – for a reason. Well-paid lobbyists tempt journalists over to write puff pieces on the burgeoning tourism trade. Or outfits like the European Azerbaijan Society use MPs like Mark Field or Mike Gapes to help promote the country’s interests with little reference to human rights violations.’
BLAIR IN AZERBAIJAN
The promise of a role in Azerbaijan’s energy boom may be what drew Tony Blair to a country whose President, Ilham Aliyev, locks up his critics and shuts down newspapers. We learn from a WikiLeaked cable in January 2010 that ‘observers in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, often note that today’s Azerbaijan is run in a manner similar to the feudalism found in Europe during the Middle Ages: a handful of well-connected families control certain geographic areas, as well as certain sectors of the economy.’
Blair’s interest appears to have been the Southern Gas corridor pipeline, which runs from Azerbaijan through Turkey and across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy. This pipeline, which frees European countries from Russian control of gas distribution, involves Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Egypt, Uzbekistan and Iran. The pipeline is expected to bring at least 60 billion cubic metres of gas to Europe and is now in the process of being built. One source described the pipeline as ‘one of the most complex gas value chains ever developed in the world. Stretching over 3,500 kilometres, crossing seven countries and involving more than a dozen major energy companies, it is comprised of several separate energy projects representing a total investment of approximately US$45 billion.’9
It is understood that Blair is involved with an organisation known as the Southern Corridor Advisory Council, whose key interest is protecting Western emerging and construction companies. The Southern Corridor Advisory Council has three directors, namely Blair, Peter Sutherland and Hans Genscher.
Blair appears here to be acting as a representative – whether formal or informal is not clear – of the British government, one of whose largest energy corporations, BP, is building the project in conjunction with a number of other European companies. Alan Riley, professor of law at London’s City University and an expert in international energy law, says that Blair is protecting ‘the strategic interest of the British state who regard the pipeline as a “key element in their energy security”.’ This coincides with the discreet involvement in the committee of Peter Sutherland, a former executive chairman of BP and former chairman of Goldman Sachs. Hans Dietrich Genscher, a former German foreign minister, is thought to be protecting the interests of the German companies participating in the construction of the pipeline.
Azerbaijan has had an allure for Blair since 2009, when he visited the country and met the President. He observed that Aliyev had a ‘very positive and exciting vision for the future of the country’. It was noted in the course of a diplomatic cable in 2009 that Azeri foreign policy had a ‘helpful bias toward integration with the West’. The same could not be said of the President’s internal practice.
Azerbaijan’s big presidential election in 2013, according to the Washington Post, was ‘anticipated to be neither free nor fair’. During the election campaign, President Aliyev, who took over from his father ten years previously, stepped up intimidation of activists and journalists, and they complained about free-speech restrictions and one-sided state media coverage. The BBC’s headline for its story on the election read ‘Azerbaijan election: the pre-determined president’.10
But, said the Washington Post on 9 October 2013,
… one expects a certain ritual in these sorts of authoritarian elections, a fealty to at least the appearance of democracy, if not democracy itself. So it was a bit awkward when Azerbaijan’s election authorities released vote results – a full day before voting had even started.
The vote counts – spoiler alert: Aliyev was shown as heading toward a landslide – were pushed out on an official smartphone app run by the Central Election Commission. It showed Aliyev as ‘winning’ 72.76 per cent of the votes, although with only about 15,000 votes cast, as Azerbaijani officials later noted as part of their defense that the results had been partial and a test run. That share is on track with his official vote counts in previous elections: he won (‘won’?) 76.84 per cent of the vote in 2003 and 87 per cent in 2008.11
This has not fazed Blair, who has visited the country to make well-remunerated speeches for politicians who are close to Aliyev. He was reported to receive £100,000 for one speech in the country. The country has also been a generous supporter of a Westminster-based pressure group called the European Azerbaijan Society.
The final piece of Blair’s Central Asian portfolio is Mongolia, where he is reported to have burgeoning business interests. Blair has indeed signed a contract to advise the country’s leaders on ‘good governance’. Mongolia is a landlocked country, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and also the largest city, is home to about 45 per cent of the population.
It was a dirt-poor nation, but it is about to become more like a conventional Blair client – very rich, thanks to vast copper and gold mines in the Gobi Desert.
Wherever one looks in Blair’s portfolio of business interests, one encounters the same problem: potential conflicts of interest. When Blair sits on the board of the Southern Corridor Advisory Council is he rooting for Britain – as you might expect a former prime minister t
o be – or is he rooting for Blair and hoping to receive a fee from a commercial interest such as an oil company? Conflicts in Kazakhstan are not dissimilar: when Blair uses contacts he has made as Prime Minister to promote the interests of a dictatorship – albeit not the world’s worst – should the remuneration be scrutinised by the British state that he served? Perhaps the cash-strapped state that Blair led to economic crisis deserves a portion of his earnings.
In any event, the shameless deference Blair shows to politicians who flout every democratic principle and lock up opponents and who are brazenly corrupt is sharply at odds with values he once espoused. Blair’s nonchalance about the claims of the striking miners mown down by Kazakh police sits uncomfortably with a man who once laid claim to principle. Autocrats claim the right to use their looted money to buy what advice they can. The seller of such advice must be regarded as a public-relations agent for a disreputable client.
Where Blair is conflicted out of the market is that he wants to be seen as principled to some audiences – namely the Middle Eastern parties – and a mere salesman of messages to another – namely a bunch of corrupt dictators. Cynicism of that kind infects each and every Blair enterprise. Not least his offer of help to Asia’s international pariah regime.
Notes
1 New Republic, 4 October 2012: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/
magazine/107248/buckraking-around-the-world-tony-blair
2 Ken Silverstein, The Secret World of Oil (Verso, 2014)
Blair Inc--The Man Behind the Mask Page 14