Embassy of Kazakhstan

POLITICS

Iran, Kazakhstan ink five cooperation deals

Tehran Times, Iran

Iran and Kazakhstan signed five cooperation agreements in different fields. The deals made on the second day of the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Kazakhstan on Tuesday.

An agreement on setting up a joint tanker company and a deal on health, sports, and tourism were among documents signed between the two countries, the Mehr News Agency’s correspondent in Astana reported.

In a joint communiqué, Ahmadinejad and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazabayev also expressed their willingness to cement good ties in trade, economic, and cultural arenas.

Also Ahmadinejad, in a meeting with Kazakh Premier Karim Massimov on Tuesday, said that ties between Iran and Kazakhstan are very promising and expansion of cooperation between the two sides will result in regional development.

He underlined the need to further uphold existing level of mutual as well as regional cooperation, IRNA reported.

“If the world were free of threats from bullying powers, we would remain committed to broadening all-out ties with other countries. Now that such threats exist, expansion and deepening of such ties seems inevitable,” he said.

The two sides should spare no efforts to help prepare infrastructure grounds for such development, he said.

To attain the goal, both sides should help broaden cooperation in various fields such as transportation, finance and monetary sectors as well as joint investment, said the Iranian president.

Iran and Kazakhstan share common views on regional and international developments, he said adding that the two sides are able to bolster and broaden mutual ties to this effect.

Kazakh premier, for his part, voiced readiness to implement agreements signed between the two countries and said the visit by Iranian president to Kazakhstan will leave remarkable impacts on ties between the two countries



President Nazarbayev Welcomes U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Cuts Pledges, Says Will Consider Hosting International Nuclear Fuel Bank in Kazakhstan

Press release

ASTANA, April 6, 2009 - President Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking alongside visiting President Makhmoud Akhmadinejad of Iran in Kazakhstan’s capital, said he welcomes the U.S. and Russian leaders’ pledges to cut their countries’ nuclear arsenals made in London last week and said he would be willing to consider hosting an international nuclear fuel bank in Kazakhstan if it is created.

At a joint press conference with President Akhmadinejad in the Akorda presidential residence in Astana, President Nazarbayev said he also welcomed the statement made by U.S. President Barack Obama in Prague on April 5 that the United States would seek a world without nuclear weapons and that Washington was ready for a dialog with Iran based on mutual interests and mutual respect.
“We have always thought this [dialog] is the best solution to the situation [with Iran],” President Nazarbayev said adding that Kazakhstan has always stood for peace in the region.

President Nazarbayev noted that Iran, like other countries, has the full right to use atomic energy for peaceful purposes. He then said, “If a nuclear fuel bank is created, we could consider hosting it here, in a country which has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons.” The idea of an international fuel bank under the IAEA auspices, supported by the U.S. administration, provides for the creation of a global repository which would allow countries to tap into its reserves to fuel their nuclear plants without the need to develop their own nuclear enrichment capability.

In the early 1990s, President Nursultan Nazarbayev made the strategic decision to shut down one of the world’s largest nuclear test sites at Semipalatinsk in eastern Kazakhstan, run by the Soviet Union, and renounce what could have been the world’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal Kazakhstan inherited after the collapse of the USSR.

Kazakhstan’s people and land suffered from almost 500 nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site from 1949 through 1991. At independence in 1991, Kazakhstan possessed more than 1,000 nuclear warheads of one megaton TNT equivalent each, and more than 100 SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, known in the west as “Satan”.

In partnership with the United States and Russia under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, an independent Kazakhstan destroyed the entire testing infrastructure at the former test site, and eliminated all the nuclear weapons and their supporting infrastructure from its territory.

This nuclear disarmament history has turned Kazakhstan into an ardent supporter of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and freeing the world from nuclear weapons. Specific recent examples include the establishment by Kazakhstan and its neighbors of a Central Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone which went into effect last month. President Nazarbayev has also made numerous calls at the international arena, including at the UN, for greater cuts of nuclear weapons by nuclear weapon states and the renunciation of nuclear weapon ambitions by all countries.

In a message to a recent conference on nuclear disarmament in Oslo, President Nazarbayev said, “Kazakhstan, from the first days of its independence, presented itself to the world as a truly peace-loving state, a responsible and consistent participant of the process of nuclear disarmament and the strengthening of global security. These steps ensured our country a much more effective security and favorable conditions for development. Kazakhstan’s example becomes especially timely and needed today when the world is facing the threat of further proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, the threat of their use by international terrorist organizations is also growing. We see today as all countries join their efforts to overcome the gravest world economic crisis. Even more so, mankind should display collective responsibility for the fate of the planet and for freeing it from the nuclear threat. Only by joining efforts, will we be able to make our world safer and better.”



The implications of Ahmadinejad’s visit to Kazakhstan

Today's Zaman, Turkey

The Central Asian state of Kazakhstan is a rising power with enormous natural gas and oil reserves as well as vast quantities of uranium. Its phenomenal rise has regional as well as global implications. Regionally, it can affect the balance of power more than any other state in the region, and being a Caspian littoral state, it can also play a positive role vis-à-vis Iran, which is also a Caspian littoral state.

This week, this fact made itself evident once more during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's two-day official visit to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, with the aim of strengthening bilateral relations in various areas. The visit served this purpose not only through the signing of five new cooperation deals -- ranging from sports to setting up a joint tanker company -- but also led to two new developments that could influence two major issues of contention.

The first issue concerns the nearly two-decade-old dispute over the legal status of the Caspian Sea, which, of course, is viewed as a new energy basin after the Middle East. In this context, during his talks with President Ahmadinejad, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan offered a new proposal to help solve the legal dispute. “We think it would be more logical to establish sovereign zones, extending 22 to 25 miles from the Caspian shore, which would be considered state territory. I think this would be a good compromise,'' he said.

In fact, Nazarbayev's proposal represents a “third solution” to the dispute because so far littoral states were divided between two possible solutions: to divide the Caspian into national sectors extending from an individual country's coastline to a determined midway point or to divide the Caspian equally among the five littoral states, which Iran is the most ardent and stubborn supporter of so far.

At this point, we know neither Iran nor other countries' responses to Nazarbayev's proposal, but it is safe to assume that this proposal will be considered in one way or another. Of course, time will show how far this proposal will go in solving the dispute.

The other development has to do with the current dispute over Iran's nuclear program. In this context, President Nazarbayev proposed a nuclear fuel repository or bank be created -- and suggested his country could host the facility “as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] and as a country that has voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons.”   

In responding to Nazarbayev's proposal, President Ahmadinejad staunchly defended his country's right to enrich uranium for its nuclear program, but at the same time welcomed Nazarbayev's proposal, “especially considering Kazakhstan's past.'' “We think that President Nursultan Nazarbayev's idea to host a nuclear fuel bank is a very good proposal,” he said. However, he did not say that Iran would give up its right to produce nuclear fuel.

President Ahmadinejad's positive response to the idea of a global nuclear fuel bank is, of course, encouraging. It may help reduce concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions. It came one day after US President Barack Obama announced an ambitious plan to stem nuclear proliferation worldwide in Prague. In fact, setting up a global nuclear bank was a US proposal made some time ago, which would be funded and supervised by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to supply countries with enriched uranium for their nuclear power stations and, thereby, eliminate the need for individual countries -- like Iran -- to enrich their own uranium. Then, Iran did not respond to the proposal at all. Now, President Ahmadinejad at least finds it a good proposal, which makes it one of the possible solutions, among others, to Iran's dispute with the international community.

Let's hope the idea, or rather, the proposal, made by President Nazarbayev is taken much more seriously by others and becomes a viable solution to the dispute.

All in all, the results of President Ahmadinejad's important visit to Kazakhstan have implications far beyond these two countries that we cannot ignore.



Kazakhstan: is Astana aiming to broker US-Iran nuclear deal?

EurasiaNet

Kazakhstan is trying to develop a diplomatic initiative that could both cement Astana’s role as an important geopolitical player and defuse one of the world’s most vexing dilemmas -- the matter of Iran’s nuclear program. If successful, Kazakhstan would emerge as a global repository for nuclear fuel.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev unveiled his initiative during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Kazakhstan. Given the Central Asian nation’s vast territory, as well as its relatively central location on the Eurasian landmass, Kazakhstan would make an ideal host for a global nuclear fuel bank, a concept that has been touted by Washington as a way to control the proliferation of nuclear materials.

"If a nuclear fuel bank is set up, we could examine the possibility of locating it here, as a country that is signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and that voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons," Nazarbayev said, according to a transcript of his April 6 comments as posted on his presidential website. The Kazakhstani leader was referring to a 1991 move that he made to voluntarily give up the nuclear arsenal inherited by the Central Asian state following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Nazarbayev’s initiative received lukewarm backing from Ahmadinejad, who described the idea as "a good one." The bank would offer nuclear fuel to countries that agree not to pursue enrichment on their own. In recent years, Iran has stoked suspicion about the motives of its nuclear program by continuing to enrich uranium, despite growing international pressure on Tehran to desist. The United States and European Union believe that Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons, while Iranian officials insist that their program is designed for civilian applications only.

Media reports say Kazakhstani leaders have been promoting their plan behind closed doors in Washington in recent weeks, and that US officials are seriously mulling the possibility. To advance the process, Kazakhstani Senate Speaker Kasymzhomart Tokayev on April 7 invited US President Barack Obama to visit Astana. The two met briefly on the sidelines of the Alliance of Civilizations forum in Istanbul. "The speaker underlined that Kazakhstan remains committed to the policy of the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and related material, as the results of recent talks in Astana with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad testify in particular," the Senate press service said.

Astana is set to assume the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2010. Developing the nuclear fuel bank initiative would reinforce Astana’s aim to position itself as an honest broker that serves as a bridge between East and West. Kazakhstan is a close ally of Russia, but has also forged warm relations with other major powers, including the United States, European Union and China.

After talks with Ahmadinejad, Nazarbayev welcomed recent statements by Obama that Washington is ready for dialogue with Iran and noted that Tehran has the same right as other states to pursue peaceful nuclear programs. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, took the opportunity to call for a shift in US foreign policy. "We hope [Obama’s] will lies in reforming and changing policy, and we hope he will manage to do this -- to forge relations with other nations and countries on an equal basis," Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency quoted him as saying.

"Everyone knows that [former president George W.] Bush’s policy ideas have not led anywhere and have become deadlocked, so we consider fundamental changes necessary: respect for nations and their rights and, of course, a rejection of expansion, and an adherence to justice," continued Ahmadinejad, who is facing a re-election challenge in June.

On a bilateral level, the Kazakhstani and Iranian leaders agreed to push ahead with a key regional transport project, a rail link between Uzen in western Kazakhstan and Gorgan in northern Iran, which is under construction and due to open in 2011. Ahmadinejad said Nazarbayev had backed his idea of building a highway alongside the railroad, though it was not immediately clear how feasible the project would be technically and financially.

Nazarbayev and Ahmadinejad also discussed trade, agriculture and investment. Astana seeking Iranian investment in engineering, infrastructure projects, transport and telecommunications, while Kazakhstan’s Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. mining and metals giant is reportedly interested in taking part in the privatization of metallurgy and aluminum plants in Iran. The leaders also agreed to pursue an agreement among Caspian Sea littoral states that would ban sturgeon fishing for 10 years.


Kazakhstan offers to help Italy in rebuilding efforts

Xinhua, China

Kazakhastan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has talked with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi over telephone Thursday, offering to help quake-hit Italy in its rebuilding drive, presidential press office said.

During the phone conversation, Nazarbayev also expressed his sympathy to Berlusconi over the earthquake that hit central Italy and left at least 281 people dead.

For his part, Berlusconi expressed gratitude to Nazarbayev for his offer, saying he hoped that Kazakhastan can help repair cultural relics and historic sites.

The 5.8-magnitude earthquake, with the epicenter near L'Aquila some 95 km northeast of Rome, occurred at 03:32 local time (0132 GMT) early Monday. The quake was clearly felt in Rome, the capital city. Nazarbayev had sent his condolence message to Berlusconi after the quake.



Grgic/Petersen: A strategy for Central Asia

OP-ED, Washington Times

As the United States prepares to deploy an additional 17,000 troops to the troubled Afghan theater, Kyrgyzstan to the north vows to close the U.S. air base at Manas, considered vital for continued operations in Afghanistan.

Manas was opened in the American rush to the region after September 2001. Eight years later, the failure to engage the countries of Central Asia has only made efforts in Afghanistan all the more difficult. In view of the Obama administration's goals for a “regional” Afghanistan strategy, White House decision-makers would do well to take into account the entire region, not just Pakistan and Iran.

Afghanistan borders Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to its north. The Tajik-Afghan border has been manned by Russian troops for years, while Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan conduct their own border patrols. All three operations are under-resourced and badly managed, which partly explains the organized crime problem Central Asia faces and the notorious buildup of contraband and smuggling in the region's central Fergana Valley. Weak borders between Central Asia and Afghanistan are a recipe for long-term failure for the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan. We see today how terrorists and other criminals move unbothered through the porous border with Pakistan. Why should it be any different on the Central Asian side?

As the White House conducts a comprehensive review of operations in Afghanistan - to be ready this month - it would do well to emphasize the country's porous northern borders, which also intersect with the main supply routes for U.S. and NATO forces. Huge potential exists to cooperate with regional countries through know-how transfer and institutional capacity enhancements for customs and border security. In 2010, regional leader Kazakhstan will take over the chairmanship of the Organization for Stability and Cooperation in Europe, and Astana has already shown an interest in working with the United States and its allies on stabilizing Afghanistan and the region.

For Kazakhstan, proliferation across the Afghan border presents a major security problem. Organized crime and other elements passing through are not only injecting instability into the region's politics, but are corrupting and undermining the real economy and trade.

At the same time, there is a great deal of concern in Washington and European capitals about the future of the OSCE. The region's broadest security structure is suffering from a post-Cold War “What-do-we-do-next?” syndrome. This is coupled with questions about its legitimacy. Many of its members do not meet most of the fundamental tenants that underpin the organization - namely democracy, human rights and media freedoms.

Since the August 2008 war in Georgia, Russia has sought to replace the OSCE with a security architecture that would exclude the United States in Central Asia. While there have not been many takers in Europe so far, this does suggest that the OSCE needs to actively engage in a purposeful mission if its members wish to prolong its existence. Kazakhstan's leadership is right to pinpoint border security as such a mission, and the United States and NATO forces stand to gain from this in Afghanistan.

The Obama team should make a visit to Kazakhstan a priority to institutionalize cooperation. But Russia can and must be part of a regional effort. Afghanistan's porous borders enable organized crime, terrorist cells and drug trafficking across Russia's vast expanse. Russian troops in Tajikistan are literally on the front line of this struggle. In President Obama's efforts to find common ground with Moscow, border security should top the list.

Regional cooperation also makes sense from a trans-Atlantic perspective. NATO is already engaged in Afghanistan, but the European Union recently launched a Central Asia initiative under the umbrella of its Neighborhood Policy. Part of its focus is on border security, but not much has been achieved since the launch. A U.S.-Kazakhstan push to get a major border security program for Afghanistan and Central Asia up and running would surely stimulate enough interest to get the European Union onboard.

The extra U.S. troops to surge in Afghanistan will mostly be supplied by goods purchased in Kazakhstan and transported across Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. But the instability they are there to combat is partly fueled by the more nefarious trade headed in the opposite direction. Efforts within Afghanistan will only succeed if complemented by efforts outside the country, including increased border security through regional engagement.

Stability in Afghanistan is an objective in the interest of the often squabbling OSCE, European Union, Russia, NATO, the United States and the region. Mr. Obama should not miss the opportunity to take advantage of such convergence on his foremost national security initiative.

Borut Grgic is chairman of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Brussels. Alexandros Petersen is a fellow and associate director at the Atlantic Council of the United States.



ECONOMY

Kazakhstan, China in negotiations over joint ownership of major Kazakh energy company

Associated Press

China National Petroleum Corp. is in talks with Kazakhstan's state energy company on acquiring a 49 percent stake in the Central Asian country's fourth-largest oil producer, a KazMunaiGaz spokesman said Monday.

CNPC's proposed purchase of the stake in MangistauMunaiGaz would consolidate Chinese energy interests in the oil-rich region. MangistauMunaiGaz, which controls oil reserves estimated at 500 million barrels, has also been eyed by Russia and India's national energy companies in recent months.

"KMG and CNPC are currently negotiating CNPC's involvement in the purchase of MMG, and we are planning to sign some documents on that in the nearest future," Arzhan Takachakov, a spokesman for the state energy company, KazMunaiGaz, said by E-mail.

KazMunaiGaz did not specify the terms of the deal. KazMunaiGaz secured its 50 percent-plus-two-shares stake in MangistauMunaiGaz from the British Virgin Islands-registered Central Asia Petroleum in January.

China is seeking to bolster its energy security by sealing long-term deals with neighboring states and reducing its reliance on maritime oil transportation routes.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is to fly to China on Wednesday for a five-day visit. According to recent media reports, China could use the visit to agree on a deal for $10 billion worth of investments in Kazakhstan's energy sector. Analysts say the agreement could pave the way for preferential conditions in CNPC's acquisition of the MMG stake.

China secured similarly advantageous assurances in February, when it signed a long-term oil supply contract and pipeline deal with Russia worth $25 billion.

MangistauMunaiGaz's holdings include 36 oil and gas fields, of which 15 are currently under development. The company also owns a 58-percent stake in the Pavlodar refinery.

CNPC bought Canadian-run oil producer PetroKazakhstan for $4.18 billion in 2005, the largest foreign purchase by a Chinese company at the time. A 33 percent stake in PetroKazakhstan was sold to KazMunaiGaz in July 2006 amid pressure from the Kazakh government for greater national ownership of the energy sector.

In 2008, China imported six million tons of oil through the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline, a 26 percent increase on the previous year. Russia also uses the route, which is jointly managed by CNPC and KazMunaiGas, to transport its oil exports to China.

China hopes the completion of the third section of the pipeline by the end of this year will eventually see an increase in annual capacity to 20 million tons of oil by 2020.

Kazakhstan is eager to diversify its oil export routes, most of which currently go to Western buyers across Russian territory.



Kazakhs look at China's yuan as reserve currency

Reuters

The oil-producing Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan may consider including the Chinese yuan as one of its reserve currencies but will wait until it is fully convertible, Finance Minister Bolat Zhamishev said on Monday.

China's growing economic importance could make the yuan more attractive for some of its trading partners like Kazakhstan, but tight currency controls so far have made this difficult.

Kazakhstan shares a long border with China and trade between the two has become increasingly vibrant. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is due to visit China this week.

'Kazakhstan may use the yuan but more hard work needs to be done for it to become fully convertible,' Zhamishev told reporters. 'It's not linked to Kazakhstan's position but it is linked to the position of the yuan itself on the global market.'

Former Soviet countries like Kazakhstan have complained that weakness in the U.S.-dominated global financial system caused the financial crisis which has hit their economies hard.

Kazakhstan, which uses dollars, euros and other hard currencies for its reserves, had earlier this year proposed a new global currency called 'acmetal' but regional players have so far given the idea a cool reception.

China sees Kazakhstan, a resource-rich nation with access to the Caspian Sea, as a lucrative investment destination and plans to sign various cooperation deals during Nazarbayev's visit.



OTHER NEWS

Getting along key to Kazakhstan

The Herald, Monterey County

Geography molds a country's character.

"We are open in the steppes to all four winds," said Irlan A. Idrissov, ambassador of Kazakhstan to the United States and former Kazakh foreign minister.

He was speaking Thursday on the factors and forces that surround his huge and sparsely populated nation in the heart of Central Asia to students and faculty of Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

The center trains students to become future monitors of nuclear weapons development and exchanges, and works to prevent their spread.

Surrounded by Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan contains a land area larger than Western Europe and a population of 15 million — the same as the Chinese capital city of Beijing.

It was the crossroads of Asia, the path of caravans and conquering armies, and had a "tragic, bloody history," Idrissov said. Kazakhstan suffered the Mongol conquests, was used as a pawn between Russia and British India in the 19th century, and was heir of the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world when it gained independence — 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles, more than the nuclear armaments of Britain, France and China combined.

Part of that heritage is a legacy of radiation poisoning and pollution from the more than 500 "dirty, ugly and prolonged" nuclear tests conducted there by the Soviet Union over the course of the Cold War, including a hydrogen bomb fired aboveground, Idrissov said.

He said 2.5 million Kazakh citizens have been "severely affected" by radiation poisoning in the form of cancers, birth defects and other illnesses, and vast areas of the country have been rendered uninhabitable or economically unusable.

All information about the nuclear tests, number of weapons and aftereffects were closely guarded secrets held by military authorities in Moscow, Idrissov said. When independence came, the Kazakh government had no idea how big its nuclear holdings were or what to do with them.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, he said, Kazakhstan was not given much chance of survival, but it harnessed its resources and people and has raised the country's per capita income from $400 in 1992 to $9,000 today.

Aided by scientists, technicians and military experts from 55 nations, it dismantled the nuclear missiles and on March 21 was a signatory to a treaty declaring Central Asia a nuclear-free zone.

Ninety percent of the economy is in private hands, Idrissov said, creating a middle class whose desire for building government institutions that will protect individual rights and property will lead, ultimately, to democracy.

"Democracy is not the start," he said. "It is a destination."

The Kazakh viewpoint is different from those of its powerful neighbors or the ocean-buffered United States and Great Britain, Idrissov said. The key to its security is getting along with other countries.

On the world stage, "we want to offer ourselves as a platform for genuine cooperation," he said, focusing on common interests in economic, security and stability issues.

Looking at the world as one involved in a "clash of civilizations," Idrissov said, is "a dangerous concept." The road to a secure, stable and prosperous future lies with accepting differences while looking for common ground and accepting the need of compromise.





Steppe Cowboys

By Erik Heinrich, special to the Washington Post

I'm riding into Kazakhstan's high country, to the Assy Plateau deep in the marrow of the Turgen Valley, bearing down hard on the Chinese border only about two hours away. To the south is the impenetrable barrier of the Alatau Mountains, whose snow-capped peaks are an offshoot of the Tian Shan, a muscular range that sweeps down in a semicircle to the Hindu Kush and Tibet before linking up with the mighty Himalayas some 500 miles away. The Alatau spring skyward like heavy prehistoric monsters and pierce through a cobalt-blue canopy.

The morning air packs a clean bite that will soon get burned off by the hot sun; a thin frost makes farmers' fields shine like diamonds. Dau, a heavyset 37-year-old Kazakh with penetrating dark eyes, is in the driver's seat of the Lada 4x4. He doesn't say much, in part because we're able to communicate only with the aid of an English-Russian dictionary.

We met only the day before, at a beer garden in the old capital of Almaty, where I persuaded Dau to take me on this trek into Kazakhstan's high plateau. In exchange I have promised to pay for gas and Derbes beer. We will eat whatever food is offered to us by the cowboys of Kazakhstan's Big Country.

Dau, a married man with two young kids, must bring his herd of sheep down from the rich, thin-aired alpine meadows where they have grown fat these last months. It's early autumn, but winter snows will soon arrive on the high steppe, and his prized livestock must be moved to lowland quarters.

When most Americans think of Kazakhstan, they probably think of Sacha Baron Cohen's character Borat, a clueless Kazakh TV personality from the film of the same name. (Borat, who does not have Asian features, more closely resembles an Uzbek or Tajik in appearance.) In fact, Kazakhs are nothing like that. Even beyond the language barrier, they're often hard to read, perhaps because this country of 15 million has a complex and at times painful history.

In the Bronze Age it was populated by Scythian tribes that left behind mysterious kurgans, or burial mounds, containing gold rivaling that of the Aztecs. Modern Kazakhs are descended from Turkic and Mongol tribes that settled this semiarid plain about twice the size of Alaska in the days of Genghis Khan, some 800 years ago.

The area was conquered by Russia in the 18th century, and Kazakhstan became a Soviet republic in 1936. It remained under Soviet control until that empire broke apart in the 1990s. Today Kazakhstan's nomadic and communist past is at odds with a new capitalist energy fueled by natural resources, including uranium and rich oil deposits in the Caspian Sea. This is my first trip to Central Asia, and I have not come to see the fancy Land Rovers and BMWs that are so conspicuous in Almaty and the new capital, Astana, which in many ways resembles the United Arab Emirates' Dubai.

Kazakhstan has moved more quickly toward a modern and prosperous future than any other former Soviet republic, with cranes erecting shiny towers in Astana at what seems like a floor a minute. Under development is Khan Shatyry, a giant glass tent that will cover an area equal to 10 football fields when completed next year.

On this trip I want to experience the flip side of Kazakh life. I have flown thousands of miles to get a firsthand look at the steely men and women who stubbornly cling to ancient customs and traditions in what can best be described as the Texas of Central Asia.

We turn off the highway to China and stop next to an empty field. Dau checks to see if I'm impressed. I shrug. "Saka!" he cries, poking his finger at a hillock in the middle distance for emphasis. Okay, I get it: I'm looking at a Scythian burial mound from the Bronze Age, long ago plundered for its gold. Behind it is a second one, and to the right a third. Yes, I'm impressed.

Soon we're negotiating a mountain pass, and the wheels of our Lada spin out perilously close to the edge of a deep gorge, hurling rock and shale over the side. Dau remains stoic, and after more than an hour of upward slogging, at 10,000 feet we suddenly pass through an imaginary gateway to Shangri-La.

The country opens up to reveal rolling grassland steppe, ideal pasture with dozens of grazing horses and a smattering of yurts, felt-lined, nomadic tepees that make sub-zero temperatures bearable. Cattle and sheep dot the horizon, and a steppe fox nervously trots along a hillside, wary of eagle talons that can sweep down at any moment.

The snow-capped peaks of the Tian Shan, at least 6,500 feet higher than our plateau and equal to anything you can find in Switzerland, dominate the southern horizon. They mark the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, also a former Soviet republic.

We push farther into the wilderness, to a camp with three yurts sheltered in a gully on the high banks of a stream. When I step out of the Lada, I know I've found Kazakh heaven. The high Assy Plateau is a giant and expanding cathedral where an intensely blue sky ranges over yellow-brown late-season earth. We're surrounded by tundra and taiga forest, a northern landscape of short grass and tall spruces that cluster together along the tops of ridges. Every now and then, a blast of icy wind from the Tian Shan mountains blows through camp and stings my face.

Livestock is brought into makeshift corrals that offer some protection against roving packs of wolves as night begins to fall. I meet Dau's partners. Mesr is a former soldier in the Soviet army with alert eyes and a perpetual grin on his weather-worn face. I also meet Suragan, an expert marksman who loves his vodka and besbarmak, a kind of noodle dish cooked with mutton. They are preparing for a three-day journey down to Chelek, a small village in the nearby low country, with horses and cattle and 350 head of sheep belonging to Dau.

Suragan takes a bottle of vodka from a box and passes it around. He wants to know what I'm doing in his camp. With the help of a dictionary and clumsy hand gestures, I explain I've escaped city living and come halfway around the world for a chance to be a Kazakh cowboy. This makes him laugh, and he invites me to join his cattle drive. It's a great opportunity, but I'm not prepared for sleeping in open, freezing conditions. It doesn't look as if these steppe cowboys have the right gear either, but they're used to it.

Meanwhile, Suragan's wife prepares tea in a Russian samovar, and Mirat, a cowboy in his mid-30s, sharpens a butcher's knife on a rock. He's the local kokpar champion, kokpar being a kind of deadly horseback rugby played with the headless carcass of a goat.

Kokpar is a sport with few rules -- elbowing, kicking and biting permitted -- where the object of the game is to gain possession of the headless carcass and carry it across a goal line. In the summer months it's played two or three times a week here, with plenty of vodka consumed by players and spectators alike. For those not too badly injured, this Kazakh rodeo ends with a big party. (Music in this place with no running water or electricity is provided by car stereos.)

Now Mirat stands over a bound ram, pulls back the head by its curved horns and expertly slices the animal's throat with the blade. The ram bleeds out fast, turning a patch of tawny steppe into a hot scarlet pool in seconds. It will provide meat for the camp's table tonight and tomorrow. There are no Borats here. This is a hard and beautiful country that produces a tough and resilient people. This is Kazakhstan at its purest -- and wildest.

Two days later Dau and I meet up again with Mesr, Suragan and the rest of the Kazakh Wild Bunch. Coming off the mountain at the rear of a big herd, Mesr's a slumped-in-saddle, chilled-to-the-bone figure in a wool cap. He looks tired as hell, and I offer him a Derbes.

I trade my place in Dau's Lada for a cowhand's horse to join the last leg of the drive. Mesr tells me he hasn't slept a wink in two nights. It has been raining, and wolves have shadowed the cattle and sheep down from the plateau.

Our small band rides through the morning sun in a dust cloud, following the cattle, which follow the sheep, cross the highway that leads to China and make for the winter corrals just a few hours away. An hour's drive down that highway, built along a northern branch of the ancient Silk Road, is Charyn Canyon, a super-deep red sandstone gorge cut clean through by a river. This Grand Canyon of Central Asia is popular with Kazakh and Russian tourists for its natural towers and bulwarks resembling a Martian landscape and for Scythian burial mounds, some still waiting to be discovered. I want to turn treasure hunter and find these archaeological gems, but there's not enough time.

Mesr watches a calf born 24 hours earlier. It trails behind its mother and wants to fall flat on its wet snout from sheer exhaustion, but Mesr keeps the newborn moving. Now and again the mother turns her dangerous horns on one of the cowboys' mountain dogs that gets too close to her offspring.

Mesr, who served in Leipzig, East Germany, and Kiev, Ukraine, as a Soviet conscript, asks how many children I have. When I explain I'm not married, he nearly falls off his horse. "How is that possible?" he demands, holding up five digits to explain he has that many sons and daughters. Most are grown and have children of their own.

When he learns I've been to Mongolia, he demands to know whether his cattle are bigger than Mongol cattle. I tell him they are, and this pleases him.

"Qitai," says Mesr, using the Russian word for China. He points east, indicating the last section of a Kazakh oil pipeline. It begins on the shores of the Caspian Sea at the other end of the country and will soon run through here. When that happens, Kazakh oil will be pumped directly into China's energy-starved economy around the clock. That pipeline is the new Silk Road, moving a different and more precious cargo in the opposite direction from the old one: west to east.

The sheep are herded into a corral and counted. Dau selects two he will slaughter for his family. Attached to the corral is a low-roofed brick compound where the sheep will stick it out during the winter months that lie ahead. They're lucky. In Mongolia they would be expected to fend for themselves in the open air.

The conversation turns to a nearby hot spring. Mesr has a bottle of vodka. Suragan has one, too. Tonight there's going to be a celebration, Kazakh style.