Reforms are coming in the law enforcement agencies of Kazakhstan. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev instructed to restructure the work of the armed forces, law enforcement agencies, national security agencies and foreign intelligence. He stated this at a meeting of the Majilis. MK experts offered their own options for “correcting mistakes”.
As Tokayev stated, a “debriefing” is coming. “All of them (siloviki. – “ MK ” ) should work harmoniously in the name of one goal – the most effective protection of our citizens, the constitutional order and sovereignty from threats of any nature and scale. This is required by the fundamental interests of our state,” the head of state said. He announced the imminent meeting of the Security Council, which will consider specific areas for the implementation of the task.
Expert of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) Sergey Denisentsev told why the law enforcement agencies of Kazakhstan were unable to independently ensure security and what changes they will have to undergo changes in the near future.
– The events that have taken place have shown that the key problem of the law enforcement agencies of Kazakhstan is a very strongly shifted balance in the direction of the National Security Committee -KNB. In the system of power structures of Kazakhstan, the KNB conditionally stood above other departments. To a certain extent, he controlled appointments to senior positions, thereby promoting his own and pushing others. But it was to the KNB that the most questions arose in the end: why they “slept through” the whole story, and why they didn’t react, and why there are many cases of desertion when employees simply abandoned important objects. It is not clear how the border service, which is also under his jurisdiction, worked. Let me remind you that the head of the committee, Karim Massimov, has now been arrested and is under investigation on charges of treason. And it is not for nothing that Ermek Sagimbayev, a person who is personally devoted to Tokayev and heads his security, has now been appointed to the position of head of the KNB.
The second obvious point is that a lot of people in the system of law enforcement agencies are henchmen of the clan of ex-president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The third thing that also caught my eye was that when these events unfolded, in many settlements where it was quite possible to cope on their own, local leaders of law enforcement agencies simply sat and waited for the situation in the capital to unfold there. There was no initiative at all.
What reforms will be carried out ?
– For the power structures of Kazakhstan, it is necessary to reconsider the issue of balance. And it will be revised, the role of the KNB, I think, will be reduced, and the role of the armed forces and the Ministry of Internal Affairs will grow. There will be a new structure that will be directly subordinate to the president. It has already been announced, these are special operations forces – MTR. Now all power structures are subordinate to Tokaev through several heads, while the MTR will be under his direct subordination.
The second point voiced by the head of Kazakhstan is raising the role of the National Guard in terms of funding and equipment. It was created in 2014 under the impression of the Ukrainian events, and now its role in the system of law enforcement agencies is very weak.
Third , strengthening the role of the intelligence community so as not to oversleep such events in the future, and especially the participation of some external authors in them. It is planned to add a rather serious military component to the foreign intelligence service of Kazakhstan, an analogue of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate. There is a suspicion that the border service will be withdrawn from the KNB system.
Tokayev also mentioned the strengthening of responsibility on the part of regional leaders, so that they do not sit and wait until the order comes or how everything will unfold, but take the initiative on the ground…
In turn, Major General of the FSB Reserve, member of the Council on Foreign Defense Policy Alexander Mikhailov is convinced that before reorganizing work in the Kazakh law enforcement agencies, it is necessary to carry out a number of reforms within the state itself.
– In a state with tribal relations that prevail over statehood, it is difficult to talk about any serious reforms. We are well aware that all special services, as well as all law enforcement agencies in general , are incubators for the “thieves” in the main. That’s why they missed everything. This is on the one hand, and on the other hand , the degree of their readiness for this kind of mass protests is zero. Nobody does anything without a team. Therefore, it is quite difficult to talk about some large-scale reforms.
I don’t know what exactly the president of Kazakhstan plans to do, but it seems to me that he will have a very long way to go. It is quite difficult to destroy the principles of life, the stereotype of relationships, the established type of state relations in Kazakhstan, as in a number of our other Central Asian republics. For a long time, Nazarbayev was the only and indisputable authority, and without his “green whistle” no one even dared to move anywhere.
To be honest, I don’t really believe in serious reforms in Kazakhstan. What will be the result? One clan will replace another? That’s all, by and large. But, nevertheless, we helped the Kazakhs at least a little to put things in order, and then, of course, let them do it themselves, as it will.
– One of the points of the reforms Tokayev outlined an increase in the number of units and an increase in their material support. Will it somehow affect national security?
– At the expense of whom to raise? And, as Suvorov said: “We must beat not with numbers, but with skill.” You can create a load on the state budget as much as you like by expanding the staff and additional funding for law enforcement agencies, but if there is no training system (and I think, based on what happened, there are a lot of questions about the training system), then there will be no sense.
To begin with, it is necessary not to increase the number, but to destroy the “bai” relations in the country. Only then will the power structures be able to go on an “independent voyage” for the rapid and inevitable solution of problems that have arisen in a given period of time. And the question is not only how to act in a particular situation, but also how to approach the defense of the state in general from the position of an intelligence officer. If they continue to wait for the command, and without it no one moves, then no matter how hard you strengthen, the same thing will happen.
Again, this will be a very long period of reforms. If the President of Kazakhstan is ready for this, then perhaps in the future the situation will change.
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