 Hello and welcome to yet another edition of Mapping Portlines, this time from the boxes of Zoom, as India is going through another wave of COVID-19. This week, the news has all been about Kazakhstan, where massive protests have broken out over the past few days. The situation is still very much in a flux, of course, to go through it quickly. We know that the protests broke out after price controls were withdrawn from liquefied petroleum gas, which is very important for people there because they use it to run their cars. The protests, of course, broke out in the oil-rich Mangestaw region province in the west, then spread to Almaty, which is one of the major cities. Over time, it also seemed that a variety of other groups also entered into this protest. There was a lot of violence looting of public buildings. The latest updates seem to be that some amount of order has been restored. President Kasim Tokai was forced to sack the government, restore some of the price controls. At one time, he has also made it very clear that he believes that this is an organized group which is working to destabilize the government. And of course, the CSTO, which is the regional organization Peacekeepers have been sent in. So we have with us Prabir Pulkai. I start to talk more about this. Prabir, first of all, your quick take on the situation on the ground based on what reports you've received as well and the significance of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, as you already said, is an oil-rich place, produces I think about 2% of oil, which is not an insignificant amount. It is also the largest producer of uranium in the world. So for energy purposes, this is obviously a very important part of the world. It's also in Central Asia, one of the places which has been very stable. Nur Sultan Nader Bey, who led it for 30 years, who was earlier the Communist Party head of Kazakhstan government. So he has had control over Kazakhstan, which has been always questioned that how much of it is really an oligarchic control or how much does it have the sanction of the people. And obviously, 30 years is a very, very long time. So it's possible that there are opinions, there are strong opinions on his continued grabbing of power, retention of power, which he still is supposed to do behind the scenes. And of course, the fact that Kazakhstan has also pursued open policies with respect to important capital, both in terms of the Chevron running its major oil fields and also other oil majors being in Kazakhstan. So Kazakhstan has a lot of strategic importance being of course central to the ventral initiative as well, as well as a major source of hydrocarbons. It has also a lot more of reserves of oil. So in that oil and as you said petroleum gas. So as you said, this is something which is difficult at first step to really understand in the context of what you've been discussing. Is it a part of a color revolution? Is it just a part of an order which had continued for a very long time and people getting wanting something different? Is it because of the gas prices going up, which it did more than double, which is I think for any government, a very, very drastic step to take. So are all of this contributing to something which is speeding into a larger political issue, which is to how to see that if NATO and its allies can intervene in Central Asia, having lost the prop of Afghanistan. US and its allies are wanting to see how it can intercept Asia. So one should not be surprised if they're behind what you see is Kazakhstan unrest. There are also organized forces in which NATO is also on the US is also a tacit partner if not an explicit one. So all of these are open conjectures. We don't know what it is, but we do know from what little we have seen of the visuals that arms were distributed fairly openly. There were cars going around distributing arms. The people who used the arms appear to have known the arms would be dropped where they would be dropped. There was some kind of an organized resistance which would be coordinated. Mukhar Ablaizov who was a former banker minister who fled the country after having stolen from the bank which he was heading, billions of dollars. He has claimed that all of this being orchestrated by him which might have been exaggeration, but his fingerprints could nevertheless be here. He does seem to have given calls there again, various notifications appearing. One of them strangely enough from the US embassy, which actually foregrounds the calls that he has made before the date. So it does seem that there were also organized forces behind some of these events. So what others have been saying, including the government of Kazakhstan, that this is an attitude to destabilize Kazakhstan and also to break it from its current projectory, which is a part of the larger constellation of forces who want to build the bridge road. Who want to be a part of the Belt Road Initiative and the larger Eurasian economic developments that are taking place. A common Eurasian market, of course, in which saw both Russia and China are big players. So it does seem that this is not simply an outburst of people's anger. There are forces which have been there, which have tried to move it in different directions. 18 policemen have died and one of them apparently had his head chopped off. Now that also seemed to indicate the people in this are not purely normal people protesting over the price price. There is an organized force or organized forces which have moved in and what they represent we still do not know. Let's hope that in the coming days we'll get a clearer picture of this. So Praveer, like you said, of course Kazakhstan playing a very important role in the region because of its size, because of the mineral resources it has. And also immediately after the protest, at least a few days after the protest, Burkart President Tokayev invoked the clause whereby the collective security treaty organization, the CSTO, asked for peacekeepers and I believe around 2500 peacekeepers are on the way, many of them have already reached. Some of them apparently played a role in taking back the Almaty airport from those who had occupied it. So now a lot of this is also being seen in terms of whether this is part of the encirclement of Russia that we talked about in the past. Russia, Ukraine talks around Ukraine, of course, coming up between Russia and US. Anthony Blinken has made some very aggressive statements. So how do we see this in this context as well? I think what it has done is put the CSTO states much closer to Russia. And that is something which will in the future have a bearing on what's also the NATO talks with Russia or more correctly the US talks with Russia about NATO. Is there a possibility of NATO entering Central Asia? At the moment that seems to have been blocked. The CSTO therefore seems at the moment to be the only stabilizing force available in the region. And the fact that you have this appeal by the president of Kazakhstan to come and stabilize the situation. It only had about 2500 CSTO troops which were required in order to stabilize the situation. It seemed to indicate that he wasn't very sure of his own forces. It's also borne out by the fact that he has moved against the chief of the security agency over there. So the fact that he wasn't so sure is perhaps the reason he wanted support from his CSP partners to come and then he could bank upon. And then of course the Kazakhstan security forces have moved in and they have taken back Almaty from the rioters. Seems that Almaty is now under control. Astana the capital which is now also called Lutsultan was never in any case in trouble. So it seems that the initiative has been taken back by Kazakhstan forces with the help of CSQ. CSQ as you know has Belarus in it. It has a number of other central Asian countries in it. So we have seen recently Albania, Azerbaijan and the Russians in fact intervened on that as speed keepers. So increasingly what we are seeing is that this region, the United States or NATO does not seem to have any major footprints. They had bases earlier. In fact the US had bases in some of these countries. Most of these countries have asked those bases to be warmed up and they have left. So increasingly with the fall of Afghanistan as far as NATO is concerned. It does appear the Central Asia is going to chalk out its own path and CSTO as well as for the Shanghai cooperation. The economic deals that are being struck between Russia and China. All of this along with the Belt Road initiative I think is going to see a different trajectory of development. And therefore this particular event what we are seeing in Kazakhstan could be in some sense a turning point. The region turns away from NATO from the United States and looks at its neighbors for stability. And even if internal changes have to take place they will not take place through color revolutions of the kind that we have seen earlier. Or the external forces. Muhtar Ablaizavs. Muhtar Ablaizavs comments notwithstanding that you would like the West to help but the West is actually not helping him. But I don't think that's as innocent as it appears because after all he is in France in a very posh place. And he has been given the fugitive status in spite of the fact that almost everybody including the courts agree that he has stolen money from the banks in setting. So given all of that I don't think that this is a minor issue. I think this is a straw in the wind that Central Asia is now going to chart its own path and Russia and China are going to be important players in that. And increasingly the Western powers are not going to have much of a foothold there since even the direction of school. Thank you so much for me. That's all we have time for in this week's show of Mapping Fortlines. We'll be back next week with major developments from around the world. Until then keep watching us.