This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ALMATY 001627 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR INL (PRAHAR, MCCOWAN), EUR/ACE (MLONGI), SCA/CEN 
(J. MUDGE) JUSTICE FOR OPDAT (C. LEHMAN) 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: POLITICAL
SUBJECT: KAZAKHSTAN: KEEPING THE DRUGS IN THE FAMILY 
BUSINESS 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary: Traders from South Kazakhstan ply age-old 
skills to traffic Afghan narcotics and local marijuana.  MVD 
tries to clamp down but the mostly women drug dealers who 
manage the business get off lightly.  Stiffer penalties for 
drug traffickers, as in Singapore, are on hold pending 
coalescence of public sentiment.  End Summary. 
 
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BACKGROUND 
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¶2. (U) Historically, the families living in South 
Kazakhstan, bordering Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, have been 
well known for their trading skills.  Notwithstanding the 
devastation wrought by a succession of invaders stretching 
back even before a Chinese incursion in 751 AD, the trade 
links were reestablished and even became famous.  One of the 
trade routes passing through this area, which was part of 
the  historic Silk Road, is still in use today. 
 
¶3. (U) The tricks of the trade are passed from generation to 
generation.  The southerners' finely honed merchant skills 
created a rule of thumb in Kazakhstan that the best traders 
usually come from the south, a cultural appellation that is 
similar to the label applied to the "canny" New England 
merchant in the 18th and 19th centuries.  In South 
Kazakhstan, family businesses are a common occurrence and 
neighbors often join together to pool resources to maximize 
profits. 
 
¶4. (U) The drugs flowing northward out of Afghanistan are 
just another product to buy and sell in this age-old trading 
area.  The Afghan opiates coupled with the several million 
acres of naturally growing cannabis in the Chu River valley 
create lucrative opportunities for the savvy traders. 
(Note: the UN estimates that 35% of the total Afghanistan 
opiates, 1.7 tons, passes north to Europe.  The Kazakhstani 
Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) estimates that 
approximately 16 tons of cannabis is harvested every year. 
End note.) 
 
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MVD CRACKS DOWN - BUT NOT ON WOMEN 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶5. (U) The usual route for drug trafficking is Uzbekistan- 
Kyrgyzstan-South Kazakhstan.  As the UN reports, most of the 
illegal substances are in transit to Russia.  In an 
interview with Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, the MVD Chairman of 
the Committee on Combating Narcotics said that usually 
around 20-30% amount remains in the transit country.  This 
creates the opportunity for local residents to earn money 
reselling the narcotics.  The "local people" are those 
family businesses which have historically had roots in the 
south.  They often are large extended families and 
frequently the women serve as the distributors to the local 
addicts. 
 
¶6. (U) Recently, the MVD announced it had opened a case 
against a "family business" in Shymkent, a city of over 600 
thousand inhabitants in South Kazakhstan, where women from 
several families sold drugs to local consumers.  This type 
of business model was discovered after an extensive 
investigation by MVD officers of the South Kazakhstan oblast 
who monitored several families for over a year and a half 
and finally accumulated enough evidence to arrest the 
illegal narcotics traders. 
 
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GIVING CUSTOMER SERVICE A BAD NAME 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶7. (U) According to a recent "Express-K" newspaper, 
Voroshilovka in South Kazakhstan oblast was the settlement 
with the most serious drug problem.  The sales system worked 
smoothly in the outlying settlements like Voroshilovka, and 
neighborhoods of Shymkent.  Until the crackdown, almost 
every street had its own heroin dealer.  The drug sellers 
provided their clients with all necessary paraphernalia, 
including the all important syringe, even going so far as to 
provide the opportunity to inject in special rooms. 
 
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ALL IN THE FAMILY (DRUG) BUSINESS 
--------------------------------- 
 
¶8. (SBU) In an interesting turn from the traditional male- 
dominated culture in Kazakhstan, very few men are involved 
in drug trafficking; almost all of those arrested for drug 
dealing are married women.  (Note:  This is not because men 
are more law-abiding, but likely because men know that they 
will get a stiffer sentence than a woman - especially a 
married woman -- for the same crime. End note.) 
 
¶9. (U) One of the most notorious family businesses was the 
Suleimanov clan.  44-year old Nigara Suleimanova organized 
the family business at the end of the 1980's.  For the last 
twenty years she ran the whole drug network, involving her 
cousins, nieces, and daughters-in-law, and sharing profits 
with them.  Suleimanova had about ten trade outlets; each 
received 150-200 clients a day, charging 200 tenge ($1.50) 
for one dose of marijuana. 
 
¶10. (U) The family businesses enlist the neighborhood to 
protect them.  Each step of a policeman appearing in the 
settlement is monitored and noted.  Some dealers employ drug 
addicts to stand watch, paying them one dose a day to keep 
watch over the territory day and night and inform their 
"employers" if a policeman approaches.  It is very difficult 
for the policemen to detain the criminals at the moment of 
sale, since almost all of the settlement inhabitants support 
the drug sellers.  Even children have their role to throw 
stones at policemen to distract them.  Newspapers report 
cases in which parents required their children to deliver 
doses to drug addicts. 
 
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MVD SAYS YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶11. (U) Drug traffickers, knowing that they can evade 
punishment, spread their sales network all over Kazakhstan. 
However, 40 such sales outlets and 34 "hideways" (places 
where drug addicts take their daily doses of pills, 
intravenous injection, or marijuana cigarettes) were 
eliminated by law enforcement officers in South Kazakhstan 
last year.  The owners of 15 of the "hideways" were women. 
 
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SINGAPORE WANNABE? NOT SO FAST. 
------------------------------- 
 
¶12. (U) According to press reports, police frequently lament 
that drugs and drug use are spreading rapidly.  In some 
articles policemen complain about the insufficiency of the 
existing legislation, according to which a drug sale nets a 
person only five to eight years in jail, after which he is 
released and often returns to the same business.  The police 
also find it unfair that women, using the fact that they are 
pregnant or responsible for raising several children, have 
their sentences commuted for the criminal activity. 
 
¶13. (SBU) Beginning in 2005, the Committee on Combating 
Narcotics proposed toughening the legislation for drug 
traffickers.  The Cabinet of Ministers considered the draft 
law but decided to postpone sending it to the Mazhilis 
(lower house of parliament) without knowing the true state 
of public opinion on this matter.  The amendments contained 
such severe punishment, up to life imprisonment or the death 
penalty for drug trafficking and involving juveniles in drug 
sales, that they were deemed too severe to be acceptable to 
Kazakhstani society. 
 
¶14. (SBU) Comment: The MVD Committee on Combating Narcotics 
sees two ways to eliminate drug dealing - toughen the 
legislation to increase the penalties and, not discussed 
above, implement demand reduction programs for children. 
Given the economic incentives, it appears that demand 
reduction will not deter children from following in their 
parents' footsteps, and there is a lack of societal 
consensus about the desirability of increasing the severity 
of sentences.  At the same time, battling police corruption, 
which is a necessary condition for the survival of the 
"family business", seems to garner only occasional 
enthusiasm at MVD HQ.  In short, drugs are detected, people 
are detained, but in many cases, a quick bribe is all that 
is necessary to free the drug dealer, enrich the officer, 
and undercut all other counter-narcotics efforts. 
 
ORDWAY