Concern at Township Plan for Diaspora Kazaks

For the last decade, Kazaks have been making their way from places as far afield as Turkey and Mongolia back to the land their grandparents called home. Once in Kazakstan, however, they have not always found it easy to adjust, and some feel the government has not lived up to its pledge to welcome them with open arms.



Now the authorities have announced a new deal for the immigrants under which they would be housed in new purpose-built settlements. However, some commentators say this will create ghettos that will make it harder than ever for Kazaks from the diaspora to integrate into society.



In the early Nineties, the newly-independent state of Kazakstan threw open the doors to ethnic Kazaks abroad who wanted to settle there, and accorded them special legal status as “oralman”, meaning “returnee”.



Many thousands of Kazaks fled to Mongolia, China and other countries in the late 1920s and 1930s, as the Soviet policy of “collectivising” farming wreaked havoc on their traditionally pastoral way of life. Others lived in what is now Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and found themselves citizens of those states after 1991.



Apart from righting the wrongs done by Stalin, the government also wanted to increase the numbers of Kazaks, at the time significantly in the minority.



About half a million Kazaks have come back over the last decade and a half, some under a quota system where they get subsidised, and others making their own way and trying to start a new life by themselves.



Coming from a range of countries including Mongolia, China, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan, some oralman have found it hard to make the adjustment, while for others it is a question of finding work.



Andrei Chebotaryov, director of the Alternativa Political Studies Centre, notes that some returning Kazaks have gone back to their home countries after finding they were worse off than before.



Asylbek and his family of three children moved to southern Kazakstan region from neighbouring Uzbekistan. For the last year and a half he and his family have been living in a rural settlement, but he is unable to afford a place of his own on the money the Kazak government gave him.



If he had moved here before 2004, his family would have been allocated housing, but since they arrived after that they were awarded a cash sum calculated by the number of people in the household. In their case, the housing subsidy came to just over 550,000 tenge, worth 4,500 US dollars. Asylbek had left behind a house and land plot in Uzbekistan which he was unable to sell.



“I had faith in the Kazak authorities’ invitation,” he said ruefully.



To help people like Asylbek, the government has come up with a new scheme to build concentrated areas of housing specifically for oralman. The plan, announced on September 30, is to create townships in the vicinity of major cities, together with some kind of industry or other economic activity to provide a ready-made source of jobs.



The authorities have already set aside 300 hectares of land for one such settlement on the outskirts of Shymkent, the main city of South Kazakhstan region. An estimated 1,700 families will each receive a plot of land and a cheap loan to build a house on it. The government has committed itself to providing schools, hospitals and other services.



An official from the state migration agency told IWPR that the best job prospects for oralman Kazaks lies in agriculture, where there is a shortage of more than a million workers.



The housing plan has given rise to concerns that if diaspora Kazaks live apart from the rest of the population, it will only perpetuate their isolation.



Asylbek would be a possible candidate for a home in the Shymkent housing scheme, but he is sceptical.



“I don’t see why we need to isolate us from the indigenous residents and placed in reservations,” he said. “Even as things stand, we find it hard enough to adapt to conditions here.”



Abubakir, a market porter in Kazakstan’s second city Almaty, is equally unenthused.



After arriving from Iran with his family of seven, he found it hard to communicate as Russian rather than Kazak is in widespread use, and even the written Kazak language is inaccessible to him since it is written in Cyrillic script. The old Arabic alphabet is still used by some diaspora Kazaks.



“When I came to my historical homeland, I was surprised to find that the majority of people in Kazakstan speak Russian in daily life. It’s been difficult for me to adapt to life here,” he said. “I can’t read documents or newspapers in my native language.”



Abubakir fears that such cultural barriers will persist into the next generation if the oralman are made to live in separate areas.



“Now they are going to settle us separate from the local population. That means my children will grow up as foreigners in their ancestral homeland,” he said.



Many analysts are concerned that the scheme will not benefit the oralman community, and that in any case it may be badly executed.



Anton Morozov, a political analyst with the Institute for Strategic Studies, thinks the resettlement plan will work only if it is accompanied by a programme to help people integrate into society.



“If the oralman are settled in particular locations around cities and work is done to help them with the process of adaptation, then the idea can only be welcomed,” he said. “On the other hand, I don’t know whether it will work, given the way local government operates. It’s a good idea per se; the problem is how it’s going to be put into practice.”



Another analyst, Pyotr Svoik, recalled that previous initiatives to support returning Kazaks have not been entirely successful.



“Given that the government hasn’t been able to solve their problems before now, it’s going to be even more difficult to do so now,” he said. “I fear it won’t work, and the enclaves won’t take shape as people will just move out of them again.”



Chebotaryov predicts that the exodus of oralman from Kazakstan will continue.



“It isn’t clear whether the authorities will be able to provide a decent living for them,” he said.



Natalya Napolskaya is an IWPR contributor in Almaty.