Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, has been taking a British tabloid beating over the controversial links he has cultivated in his role as a trade envoy. Touring the world for years drumming up business for the United Kingdom with assorted dictators and despots, the underemployed prince seems to roll with a motley crew, including some movers and shakers in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
Earlier this week Andrew managed to cling on to his envoy role despite his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This furor seems not to have bothered the “Prince of Sleaze,” as he’s come to be known. Even as his position was under intense scrutiny on March 7, he was lobbying a member of Britain's parliament to promote business links with Azerbaijan, a country he has visited on numerous occasions. He is said to be a frequent dinner guest of President Ilham Aliyev.
On March 8, the prince's friend Goga Ashkenazi, a London-based Kazakh socialite, rushed to his defense.
Kazakhstan is patting itself on the back after the Asian Winter Games came to a close on February 6 and its athletes topped the award table with a haul of 70 medals. Officials -- pointing to their success as both host and competitor -- already have their hearts set on hosting the Olympic Winter Games.
“We have learned to understand each other better. I believe this is the main achievement of these Games”, announced President Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking at the closing ceremony in Almaty. He added that the games showed to the whole world that Kazakhstan has the infrastructure and facilities to host a major international sports competition.
Kazakhstan picked up 32 gold medals, 21 silver medals and 17 bronze medals, well ahead of its nearest rivals Japan and South Korea. China placed a disappointing fourth at the medal table. Kazakhstan cleaned the board in a new event for these games, ski orienteering, winning eight golds. It also won the inaugural bandy competition, crushing Mongolia 16-2 in the final. Only three teams took part in the tournament, which gave Kyrgyzstan a rare chance to pick up a bronze medal.
Kazakhstan pulled out all the stops as the country's latest PR project -- the Asian Winter Games -- got under way in the capital on January 30. The games opened with a lavish ceremony in the covered Astana Arena in front of a crowd of assorted dignitaries and thousands of local spectators, who had paid up to $100 for the privilege of being there.
The opening ceremony featured a colorful music and dancing show based on Kazakh epics and a parade of athletes from the 27 countries taking part in the games. It culminated with the lighting of the Olympic flame and an extravagant firework display.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev was on hand to declare the games officially open, strongly hinting he would like to host the Olympic Games in the future: “Today the Olympic Games are threads of friendship which unite peoples and countries. I am convinced that the spirit of the Asian Games will bring us closer together on the native Kazakh land,” he said.
Athletes from countries as diverse as Iran, Nepal, Bahrain and Singapore will be competing in 11 disciplines, with the events shared between the flashy new capital Astana and the country's commercial hub, Almaty, over the next week.
Almaty is bracing itself for traffic chaos. The city's main arteries will be closed January 12 as officials parade the Olympic flame through Kazakhstan's financial hub in the run up to the seventh Asian Winter Games, to be held in Astana and Almaty from January 30 to February 6.
Almaty Mayor Akhmetzhan Yesimov will meet the flame on arrival from Kuwait -- home to the Olympic Council of Asia, which oversees and organizes the games -- at 11:00 a.m. local time.
After touring Almaty, the flame will travel across Kazakhstan and will arrive in the capital on January 30 for a grand opening ceremony. The torchbearers will be mostly young athletes, with 1,020 involved in the relay. A television crew will follow the torch on its procession around the country, documenting its daily progress.
Even President Nursultan Nazarbayev may don his tracksuit and run with the flame, as he did with the Olympic torch when it passed through Almaty in 2008. He surely won't miss this chance to interact with his adoring public -- he's currently riding a wave of popular love after more than a quarter of the country's population signed a petition calling for a referendum to do away with pesky presidential elections until 2020.
As 2010 draws to a close and Kazakhstan’s chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) winds down, the country is shifting the focus of its image-shaping efforts from politics to sports. The country’s next big project – hosting the seventh Asian Winter Games -- will run from January 30 to February 6.
Kazakhstan is joining an illustrious bunch by avoiding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony today in Oslo. This year the award goes to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. But despite their invitations, the likes of Kazakhstan, China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Sudan will not attend.
Mr Liu will also not attend, as he is serving an 11-year prison term for his human rights activism.
When pressed about the visible absence, Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov said that the diplomatic representative accredited in Oslo was unable to attend the ceremony due to a previously arranged business trip.
The awarding of the prize to Liu Xiaobo for co-authoring a document calling for political reforms, has caused widespread controversy, with China accused of behind the scenes arm-twisting to encourage countries to boycott the event. Of the 65 diplomatic outposts invited to send representatives, 44 have agreed, 19 have declined and two have abstained.
China, which shares a land border with Kazakhstan, has significant investments in the country's oil and gas sphere. Astana, in turn, is a staunch supporter of Chinese foreign policy. Democratic reforms are also a touchy subject in Kazakhstan, which has a one-party parliament and a long-serving president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who can stay in the job for as long as he likes while reveling in his official title, Leader of the Nation.
In the run-up to World Aids Day on December 1, Almaty's Central Museum is hosting a photo exhibition to draw attention to the spread of HIV and TB in Central Asia. The images on display give an insight into the daily lives of people affected by the HIV epidemic, which is quickly spreading throughout Kazakhstan and Central Asia. According to official statistics there are around 50,000 infected people in the region, though the real figure may be much higher.
The exhibition, entitled “We are Near! We are Together!,” brings the work of Ukrainian freelance photographer Alexander Glyadyelov to Kazakhstan for the first time. Glyadyelov has been working on documentary photography projects involving socially deprived children and the HIV/AIDS epidemic since the mid-1990s.
His striking black and white photos are being exhibited alongside images taken by young photographers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan who are working in the NGO sector, living with HIV, or are from groups at high risk of contracting the virus.
Juxtaposed with everyday scenes of people living with HIV are some harrowing pictures from prison camps in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. HIV and TB are chronic in Kazakhstan's prisons.
It's not only the prison population that is suffering from these infections, however. According to the UNAIDS/WHO 2009 report “AIDS Epidemic Update,” Central Asia and Eastern Europe are the only areas of the world where HIV infection rates among all sectors of the population remain on the rise. The problem is most acute among people injecting drugs and those having unprotected sex.
Almaty's commuters have a new choice. Since last weekend, the sidewalk on central Abai Street has been divided into lanes for cyclists and pedestrians, offering two-wheelers a safer alternative to the chaotic, traffic-choked streets of Kazakhstan’s financial capital.
The new bike lanes are the first in a planned 40-kilometer network that will snake alongside some of the city's main traffic arteries. The first section runs from KIMEP University to the city's Central Stadium. The routes will eventually follow Dostyk and Zhandossov streets through downtown.
Plagued by traffic jams, Almaty ranked ninth in a 2008 survey of the world's most polluted cities. However, it may be some time before biking catches on. A walk along Abai this morning revealed not a single bicycle, but simply pedestrians taking advantage of the wider pavement.
Yesimov has made tackling the city’s chronic traffic problems central to his tenure, undertaking a massive project this year to widen central arteries. The city also wants to present its best face to the expected international inflow when the 7th Asian Winter Games – to be held in Almay and Astana – open on January 30.
Over the last few weeks, yellow and black signs have begun appearing on Almaty's sidewalks. They warn drivers of a new weapon in the war on atrocious driving -- speed cameras. City authorities are finally getting to grips with Almaty's nightmare traffic problems by installing cameras at points all over the city.
Some 1,100 cameras are to be installed at traffic intersections along with a network of more than 100 control centers at a cost of 4.5 billion tenge ($30 million) in a bid to bring some order to the city's unruly drivers, Vecherny Almaty reports. The cameras will not only check for speeding violations but also collect data on illegal stopping and red light violations.
The suits that run Kazakh football are impatient for success, but the mission to gain three points in qualifiers was always going to be a tough one for a team ranked 126 worldwide, especially with fixtures against Germany, Turkey, Belgium and Austria.
Storck, who took charge of the team in July 2008, was an unusual choice given his lack of managerial experience, especially at an international level. He worked as assistant coach at a number of clubs in his native Germany and Serbia before arriving in Kazakhstan. During his tenure the national team played nine competitive games, losing seven and winning two, but those wins came against relative minnows.
The football federation has ambitious plans. The 30,000 capacity Astana Arena, the national team’s new home, recently opened in Kazakhstan’s capital, but it will take time before the country has a team worthy of playing in these impressive surroundings. The new boss will have to continue Storck’s work focusing on the next generation of players if Kazakhstan is to achieve the success the suits crave.
