Kyrgyzstan’s ruling tandem breaks amid new sanctions scrutiny

Mountainous, landlocked and impoverished,   Muslim-majority Kyrgyzstan endured revolutions in 2005  and 2010, while authoritarian regimes in neighbours such as  Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were busy consolidating  power. A third revolt, in 2020, brought hardline populists Sadyr  Japarov and Kamchibek Tashiyev to power, following events so  fluid that they even surprised the country’s partners in the  Kremlin. 

Yet now the duo, known as ‘the two friends’, are friends no more;  President Japarov dismissed his powerful national security chief  Tashiyev in March and placed him under investigation along  with dozens of others as part of a coup plotting investigation  later in the spring. In June, a defiant Tashiyev appeared in court  in the capital Bishkek. 

Former security chief Kamchibek Tashiyev, once part  of Kyrgyzstan’s powerful ruling tandem, appeared in  court after being dismissed and placed under  investigation in a widening coup-plot inquiry. Photo:  AKI Press 

With a current population of 7 million people, Kyrgyzstan was  the second-poorest republic after Tajikistan at the time of the  breakup of the Soviet Union. Historically those two countries,  who reached a historic border settlement last year after bloody clashes in previous years, have vied for the title of the world’s  most ‘remittance dependent’ economies with others like Tonga  and Nepal. Last year cash transfers sent home to Kyrgyzstan,  mostly from Russia, amounted to about $3 billion.

Yet few countries have benefited more from recent geopolitical  instability than Kyrgyzstan. Last year the economy grew 11%.  That has partly come from gold, which has nearly tripled in value  since 2021, when Japarov realised an ambition he had held since  his days in opposition by nationalising the flagship gold mine,  Kumtor. But the re-export of goods from third countries to  Russia has been another important part of the story. 

Kumtor, Kyrgyzstan’s largest gold mine, remains central to the country’s economy and a symbol of President Japarov’s nationalist economic agenda. Photo: AP 

A paper by the Brookings Institution flagged exports to  Kyrgyzstan from European countries rising by several thousand  per cent in the years after 2022. Kyrgyzstan’s exports to Russia  rose dramatically, too. The United Kingdom recently sanctioned  the A7 network, a Kremlin-backed financial system that London  says used cryptocurrency and banking channels, including in  Kyrgyzstan, and claimed to have processed more than $90 billion  last year. The application to Kyrgyzstan in April of the EU's  ‘anti-circumvention tool’ applies only to specific dual-use goods  that could aid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. China, Kyrgyzstan’s  largest trade partner, is unlikely to pay too much heed. 

But the new scrutiny on a government that, according to the EU,  demonstrated a ‘systematic failure to prevent’ transfer of such  goods to Russia will give third countries in the Middle East and  elsewhere pause for thought before using Kyrgyzstan as a back  door for trade with Russia. The European Bank for  Reconstruction and Development termed the EU  anti-circumvention measure a ‘dominant near-term risk’ for  growth, alongside higher energy prices. The IMF warned that  rising lending and inflation risked overheating the economy. 

Economic and sanctions pressures come at a time when the  foundation for the regime’s stability – an alliance between  northerner Japarov and southerner Tashiyev – has ruptured,  apparently with no hope of repair. Both were charismatic and  sometimes physically violent politicians, and their political bond  transcended a geographic rivalry that remains important in local  politics. 

Japarov was serving jail time for kidnapping an official at the  time protests over a disputed parliamentary vote plunged  Kyrgyzstan into another bout of instability in October 2020. The  charges – which he always denied – related to a rally against  Kumtor’s private investor, the Canadian company Centerra Gold  that spun out of control in 2013, as a local official was taken  hostage and doused in petrol.

As rival groups jostled around embattled then-president  Sooronbay Jeenbekov, Tashiyev lobbied for the release of Japarov  as their supporters massed in the streets. The two had cut their  teeth as oil trading businessmen and both held posts in the  government of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Kyrgyzstan’s second  president. 

When that government was felled in the second Kyrgyz  revolution in 2010 – which was bloodier and more destructive  than the Tulip Revolution before it – they became the interim  government’s nationalist opponents in a newly emboldened  parliament. They had two clear goals: returning to power and  nationalising Kyrgyzstan’s most impressive economic asset, the  Kumtor gold mine. 

Amid the chaos in Bishkek, even Russia was playing catchup. The  Kremlin had offered a clear show of support for Jeenbekov during  Japarov’s remarkable rise from prison to the presidency and  reportedly gave a diplomat sent by Japarov’s interim  administration a cold reception when he visited Moscow.  Moscow’s discomfort deepened when Tashiyev, a tubthumping  nationalist, was handed the post of Chairman of the State  Committee for National Security (SCNS), an area of Kyrgyz  government where Russian connections run particularly deep.  Tashiyev soon showed he was more than just a senior official. 

Nowadays, the battle for influence in the country is a  head-to-head, with Chinese influence increasing at Moscow’s  expense since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.  While Russia-dependent trade corridors have suffered as a result  of the war, China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have begun work  on a megaproject that offers an alternative: the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, a $4.7 billion link  featuring dozens of tunnels and bridges through high-altitude  terrain.

The China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway is reshaping regional trade routes and deepening  Beijing’s economic influence in Central Asia. Photo: Kyrgyz Government Handout 

At the same time, Japarov’s administration went further than  others before it in targeting media outlets that the Kremlin  regards as proxies for the West. Journalists and civil society  leaders who cooperated with foreign organisations have been  subjected to long stints in jail. The result is a state becoming  more authoritarian at home while trying to remain useful to its  two strategic partners abroad. Days after defeating the  Philippines for a UN Security Council seat, Japarov called for  sanctions to require UN approval — a position that aligns him  with Moscow and Beijing’s criticism of unilateral Western  sanctions.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov meets UN  Secretary-General António Guterres in Cholpon-Ata  in July 2024. Photo: Presidential Press Service of  Kyrgyzstan 

Yet Kyrgyzstan has a long history of confounding expectations,  and neither Moscow nor Beijing can ever be entirely sure what  the future holds there. At the time of his dismissal, Tashiyev  dominated both the security services and a large informal  political network centred on his home land in the south. 

The charges against him centre on the so-called ‘letter of 75’, an  appeal by former officials and public figures calling for  presidential elections to be held in 2026 rather than 2027. While  there was no reference to Tashiyev running in such an election,  Japarov’s team viewed it as the beginning of a mutiny. 

The trial of the former security chief is more than a falling-out  between former allies. It is a test of whether Japarov can  centralise power without provoking the instability that has  repeatedly afflicted Kyrgyz politics.