What’s happening in Kazakhstan?

Since the start of the new year, riots have spread throughout Kazakhstan. In the former capital of Almaty, the airport has been taken over and the mayor’s office stormed. Dozens of security forces and civilians have been killed in violent clashes while hundreds have been wounded. Is this Kazakhstan’s Tiananmen Square moment, in which the government is shaken to its roots but survives? Or will it be like the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in which a pro-Russian ruler was overthrown by the mob?

The main cause of the uprising is not dissimilar to Tiananmen Square. It is not a demand for democracy, which some inept journalists at the BBC and CNN ascribed as the main cause of China’s urban uprising in 1989. In China it was the rise of food prices, the classic cause of urban revolt; in Kazakhstan, it has been rising liquid petroleum gas prices. This is the car fuel of choice for 80 per cent of Kazakhs.