[lg policy] MONGOLIA: ETHNIC KAZAKHS EYE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY TO THE WEST

Wed Nov 4 21:27:23 UTC 2009

MONGOLIA: ETHNIC KAZAKHS EYE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY TO THE WEST
Joanna Lillis 11/04/09

There was a festive mood in a village in Mongolia’s Khovd District recently
as family and friends gathered to celebrate the birth of a baby into an
ethnic Kazakh family. A new arrival is always cause for celebration in a
Kazakh household, marked with a succession of events from the "cradle party"
soon after the birth to the "string cutting" ceremony to snip a symbolic
string when the child starts walking. n this case, the celebrations were
rolled into one: many relatives and friends of the Bakhyt family were seeing
the child for the first time, because she was born over the border in
Kazakhstan. This is just one of many families whose members straddle the
frontier, and a visit from the other side is a chance to exchange news --
and a good excuse for a party.

Amid the celebrations, Tilek Bakhyt, the baby’s uncle, was looking westward
to where his niece was born, wondering if there might be better prospects
for him over the border, too. He has a job teaching English in a village
school, but life is not easy in this underdeveloped rural area. "It’s hard,"
he said. "It’s better in Kazakhstan, for sure." Kazakhstan has a state
program known informally as the oralman (returnee) scheme to lure ethnic
Kazakhs living in other countries to move to Kazakhstan. Since 1991 over
700,000 have moved to the country under the scheme, which offers financial
incentives and fast-track citizenship to attract migrants. The program has
both political and economic goals: boosting Kazakhstan’s population of 16
million to meet economic needs is a priority, but so is redressing a
demographic imbalance Kazakhstan inherited at independence, when ethnic
Kazakhs were in a minority. Partly thanks to this program, Kazakhs now
comprise about 67 percent of the country’s population.

The Kazakhs of Mongolia mainly inhabit the western Altay area, where some
families have lived for generations. Some moved over the mountains in the
1930s, fleeing Stalin’s collectivization edict. They are a target group for
the oralman program, and tens of thousands have migrated to Kazakhstan since
1991. Reliable figures are hard to come by, but Seriktes Shadet, deputy
governor of Bayan-Olgiy District on the border with Kazakhstan (where around
90 percent of the population is ethnic Kazakh), told EurasiaNet an estimated
87,000 ethnic Kazakhs have left Mongolia since 1991.

More are contemplating the move. Adilbek, a driver from Bayan-Olgiy with two
young children to support, counts himself lucky to have a steady income.
Nevertheless, he believes a better life might be waiting for him over the
border. "Mongolia is developing less than Kazakhstan," he told EurasiaNet.
"There are more prospects there."

Adilbek has a point. Kazakhstan’s GDP per capita is forecast at around
$7,000 this year, over quadruple Mongolia’s estimated $1,600. Job
opportunities are few in Bayan-Olgiy, where livestock outnumber people
five-to-one, and herding is the mainstay of the economy. Ulaanbaatar lies
1,200 kilometers to the East, two days by bus on unpaved roads. The closest
city is the capital of East Kazakhstan Region, Oskemen (also known as
Ust-Kamenogorsk), over the Altay Mountains. Its bustling atmosphere
contrasts with the rural ambience of the town of Olgiy, Bayan-Olgiy’s
district center, where yurts jostle for space with houses and paved roads
soon peter out.

Some ethnic Kazakhs migrating to Kazakhstan from other countries, such as
China, cite as a factor political pressures stemming from their minority
status. The Kazakhs of Mongolia, however, are mainly seeking a better
standard of living. "We do not have discrimination," says Adilbek. "The
problem is we have limited jobs, and lots of students and young people are
joining the workforce every year." Neither is there religious tension
between the Muslim Kazakhs in mainly Buddhist Mongolia, the country’s chief
mufti, who is based in Olgiy, told EurasiaNet. "There is no pressure from
the state," Oserkhan Kazhi Mukayuly said, as worshippers streamed out of
Friday prayers.

But a lack of economic prospects makes many look west for opportunities, and
the Kazakh government is keen to attract them. This year Astana has expanded
its migration program with the launch of the Nurly Kosh (Blessed Migration)
scheme at a cost of some $1.3 billion.

The program targets the estimated 3.5-4.5 million ethnic Kazakhs living
outside Kazakhstan -- some 100,000 of them in Mongolia -- with incentives to
move to specific areas identified by the government. East Kazakhstan, seen
by many Kazakhs in western Mongolia as their ancestral homeland, is one of
them. Publicly, officials say the selection was determined by economic
considerations -- and indeed Nurly Kosh targets not only ethnic Kazakhs but
also skilled former citizens of Kazakhstan and citizens living in depressed
zones. However, there is an unspoken factor: East Kazakhstan has a large
Slavic population, and migration is viewed as a means of addressing the
demographic imbalance, which the government tacitly -- for fear of offending
Moscow and its own minorities -- views as something of a national security
threat.

Kazakhstani officials have visited western Mongolia to promote the benefits
of Nurly Kosh, which include one-off subsidies, paid travel costs and
low-interest mortgages. Observers have questioned the wisdom of tying
migrants into long-term debts, but the scheme might resolve a key problem:
Bakhyt, the English teacher from Khovd, has already given life in Kazakhstan
a go, but housing costs forced him back to Mongolia. "I lived there for a
while but it was really difficult for me to buy a house? It’s really
expensive," he told EurasiaNet. "If I could make some money for a house, I’d
like to move to Kazakhstan."

Bakhyt is just the type of well-qualified migrant that Astana would like to
attract -- and that Mongolia can ill afford to lose. The outflow of ethnic
Kazakhshas had an economic and cultural impact that is difficult to assess,
but observers say it is tangible. "Outward migration of the intelligentsia
has a negative impact on the [Kazakh] diaspora [in Mongolia]," Ospan Nabi, a
journalist at Bayan-Olgiy’s broadcasting center, told EurasiaNet. "We’ve
already experienced an outflow of members of the intelligentsia, and our
political and intellectual potential decreased."

Many still want to take the plunge, though, and for some it’s more than just
an economic issue. Bakhyt wants his children to grow up in what the Kazakh
government calls their "historical homeland. There, he says, they will have
the chance to "become real Kazakhs."

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insightb/articles/eav110409a.shtml

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