Why are the Uzbek and Kyrgyz governments clamping down on organised crime?

02.02.2024, 16:14 exclusive.kz

At the end of last year, Uzbek and Kyrgyz authorities launched large-scale crackdowns on organised crime, notably targeting ‘top dogs’ known to be linked to the respective governments.

In a special operation in October the Kyrgyz security service killed the country’s most powerful crime boss, Kamchy Kolbayev, before going after everyone linked to him.

In early December, Uzbek authorities arrested mafia boss Salim Abduvaliev and carried out sweeping raids in Tashkent and other cities, arresting about 200 criminal gang members.

It looks like the current Uzbek and Kyrgyz regimes have begun to see criminal structures – or rather the long-established practice of co-opting them — as a threat to their existence.

It is possible that they drew lessons from the story of Russian President Putin’s relationship with Prigozhin, the late head of the Wagner mercenary group.

The practice of co-opting criminal leaders comes from the Soviet past. In the Soviet Union there existed an unofficial status quo between the state and the criminal world — law-enforcement effectively partially ‘incorporated’ criminal figures, letting them be within certain boundaries in exchange for favours, when needed.

Alisher Ilkhamov, head of the London-based analytical centre Central Asia Due Diligence, said the trigger for the Uzbek crackdown on crime was a run-in that happened between the National Guard and criminal groups in late November.

The National Guard was called in to restore order during a concert by a popular rapper in Tashkent — about a thousand tickets sold for the event turned out to be fake, which caused unrest.

Ilkhamov said criminal groups, which were behind the ticket scam, “crossed a red line” by attempting to resist the National Guard — “President Mirziyoyev’s main armed pillar” — and this “gave the authorities a fright”.

The arrested Uzbek crime boss Abduvaliev has long been a household name in Uzbekistan. Officially, he has been recognised as a sponsor and functionary of sports, serving as a deputy head of the National Olympic Committee and head of the Wrestling Association.

US diplomatic cables leaked in 2011 described him as a mafia boss with close ties to Uzbek government ministers.

In a photo widely shared weeks before the December 2016 presidential election, which would complete the transition of power from the late president Karimov to Mirziyoyev, Abduvaliev was shown wearing a T-shirt with Mirziyoyev’s picture on it and the words “My President”.

According to reports, Uzbek authorities also attempted to arrest another criminal boss, Gafur Rakhimov, who the US government describes as a drug baron and member of the Brother’s Circle, a ‘council’ of leaders of several Eurasian criminal groups.

However, a video emerged later which supposedly showed Rakhimov visiting a café in Tashkent.

But nowhere else in Central Asia did criminal groups become as openly involved in politics as in Kyrgyzstan, where they became an indispensable tool for politicians vying for power.

Criminal mobs ‘acting’ as opposition protesters were instrumental in toppling at least three Kyrgyz governments since independence.

It is widely known that the late crime baron Kolbayev helped President Japarov and security chief Tashiyev to rise to power amid the October 2020 anti-government protests.

Kolbayev repeated the fate of another crime boss, Rysbek Akmatbayev, who helped topple former president Akayev in 2005, bringing Bakiyev to power. The following year, when Akmatbayev’s influence started to undermine Bakiyev’s, he was shot dead.

In Kazakhstan, there are no signs that criminal leaders have influence on politics. However, some ‘interaction’ does exist. This became evident during the January 2022 riots, which the government says was an attempted coup.

Among the key figures arrested for their roles in the unrest were the security chief, his two deputies and a known criminal authority, Dikiy Arman.

Ilkhamov suggested that the Central Asian governments could also be going after organised crime because they “do not rule out the possibility that the criminal world could be used by Russia’s government to destabilise the region”.

“The lines between organised crime and government have become very blurred. The story with Prigozhin is a very good illustration of that. In essence, the Wagner mercenaries can be described as an organised criminal group.”

It is known that the criminal groups operating in the post-Soviet space form, in essence, one single network.

Notably, In January, Kyrgyz authorities arrested MP Emil Jamgyrchiyev. According to officials, in the past he had secretly met the arrested Uzbek mafia boss Abduvaliev, to try to get his support to remove the Japarov-Tashiyev tandem from power.

According to political observer Rafael Sattarov, in Uzbekistan authorities might be targeting criminal groups because of the link between them and Islamist radicals.

He said that informal Uzbek religious leaders were “proud of and do not hide their closeness to criminal authorities”.