New Model Army for Kazakstan

Kazakstan is doubling defence spending this year, but NBCentralAsia experts say the increase has less to do with the appearance of a new threat from abroad than with a modernisation programme designed to result in more mobile forces.



The Fergana.ru news agency reports that Kazak defence expenditure will be over a billion US dollars in 2007, twice the amount spent in 2006.



Other Central Asian countries including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are also planning to spend more on the military, and in those cases the reasons may well have to do with domestic political instability.



NBCentralAsia analysts say Kazakstan is incurring higher costs because reshaping the military into a more mobile force will be an expensive business.



According to Ilyas Karsakov, an analyst with the Alternativa think-tank, “Heavy reliance is being placed on air-mobile troops, which will be very costly as the Kazak army is shifting [from conscription] to professional soldiers, and there is also the major expense of buying modern military equipment.”



Last year, the defence ministry designed a new military doctrine that will require the introduction of modern equipment, the formation of a mobile professional army, and the creation of a naval flotilla on the Caspian Sea to safeguard major oilfields.



Political scientist Dosym Satpaev believes the doubling of defence spending has been made possible by the government’s oil and gas income.



“I believe the funding increase comes down to two factors – first, the availability of this money and, second, the need to pursue [military] reforms,” he said.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)