NBN Book Review: Dark Shadows - Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan
Joanna
Lillis
Dark
Shadows
Inside
the Secret World of Kazakhstan
I. B.
Tauris 2018
October
23, 2019 James M. Dorsey
Joanna Lillis’ Dark
Shadows, Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan (I. B. Tauris, 2018)
takes the reader on a penetrating, colourfully written journey into the
recesses of a little known Central Asian nations on the frontier of tectonic
shifts across Eurasia. Kazakhstan, a sparsely populated oil-rich former Soviet
republic that shares borders with Russia and China that stretch thousands of
kilometres, in which demographics amount to geopolitics, walks a tight rope in
a world increasingly dominated by leaders who to varying degrees define their
states in civilizational rather than national terms. Russia’s annexation of
Crimea and stirring of unrest in two regions of Ukraine coupled with veiled
threats uttered by Russian President Vladimir Putin raise the spectre of
Kazakhstan’s worst nightmares. China’s brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims,
including ethnic Kazakhs, in its troubled north-western province of Xinjiang
fuels long-standing public suspicion of Chinese ambitions and put the
government between a rock and a hard place. Led for almost three decades until
he recently stepped down, former Communist party boss Nursultan Nazarbayev has
moulded Kazakhstan in his image: an authoritarian state with some trappings of
democracy that increasingly are being curtailed. Lillis paints a compelling
picture of a nation that is still grappling with the consequences of Joseph
Stalin’s devastating disruption of its demography and identity as it seeks
forge its path in a post-Nazarbayev era against the backdrop of big power
jockeying for influence in the heart of Eurasia. With the keen eye of a
journalistic fly on the wall and the ability to turn words into images, Lillis
portrays a strategically important country at the crossroads of geopolitics
that are likely to shape an emerging new world order.
James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies and the National University of Singapore’s
Middle East Institute.
To listen to the podcast please click on https://dcs.megaphone.fm/LIT9267940037.mp3?key=4634500baed2986b2e9049f46e2c0247
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