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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kazakstan
Index
The quality of military support installations declined in the first
years of the post-Soviet period. For instance, the chief planner of
Kazakstan's Institute for Strategic Studies has estimated that only in the
next century will the republic have the capability to use air-to-surface
missiles for defensive purposes. In addition, sensitive facilities
inherited by military authorities from the Soviet army all are said to be
on the point of collapse. Facilities in bad repair include nuclear test
and storage facilities at Kökshetau, the BN-350 breeder-reactor at
Aqtau, and a tracking and monitoring station at Priozersk. Even the first
Kazak cosmonaut, who was sent into space with great pomp in June 1994, was
in fact a Russian citizen and career officer in the Russian air force, as
were his two "Ukrainian" shipmates.
Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kazakstan was the most
significant site of military-industrial activity in Central Asia. The
republic was home to roughly 3 percent of Soviet defense facilities,
including more than fifty enterprises and 75,000 workers, located mostly
in the predominantly Russian northern parts of the country.
A plant in Öskemen fabricated beryllium and nuclear reactor fuel,
and another at Aqtau produced uranium ore. Plants in Oral manufactured
heavy machine guns for tanks and antiship missiles. In Petropavl, one
plant produced SS-21 short-range ballistic missiles, and other plants
manufactured torpedoes and naval communications equipment, support
equipment for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), tactical
missile launcher equipment, artillery, and armored vehicles. There was a
torpedo-producing facility in Almaty as well. Chemical and biological
weapons were produced in Aksu, and chemical weapons were manufactured in
Pavlodar.
By 1994 most of Kazakstan's defense plants had ceased military
production. All of them required component parts from inaccessible sources
outside Kazakstan, principally in Russia. Even more important, the Russian
military-industrial complex was itself in collapse, so that Kazakstan's
military enterprises no longer could rely on Russian customers. In
addition, the great majority of key workers at all these facilities were
ethnic Slavs, the most employable of whom moved to Russia or other former
Soviet republics.
Substantial elements of Kazakstan's military-production infrastructure
nevertheless remain in the republic. In addition, in early 1992 the army
nationalized all of the standard-issue Soviet military equipment remaining
on the republic's soil. An unknown percentage of this equipment is still
in use in Kazakstan, and another portion of it likely has been sold to
other countries. Since independence, at least one new ship, a cruiser
named in honor of Nazarbayev, has been commissioned.
The weapons of greatest concern to the world, however, have been the
1,350 nuclear warheads that remained in Kazakstan when the Soviet Union
disbanded. Although two other new states--Ukraine and Belarus--also
possessed "stranded" nuclear weapons, the Kazakstani weapons
attracted particular international suspicion, and unsubstantiated rumors
reported the sale of warheads to Iran. Subsequent negotiations
demonstrated convincingly, however, that operational control of these
weapons always had remained with Russian strategic rocket forces (see
Foreign Policy, this ch.). All of the warheads were out of Kazakstan by
May 1995.
Kazakstan's other military significance was as a test range and missile
launch site. The republic was the location of only about 1 percent of all
Soviet test ranges, but these included some all Soviet Union's largest and
most important, especially in the aerospace and nuclear programs. Test
sites included a range at Vladimirovka used to integrate aircraft with
their weapons systems; a range at Saryshaghan for flight testing of
ballistic missiles and air defense systems; a similar facility at Emba;
and the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Weapons Proving Grounds, which was the more
important of the two major nuclear testing facilities in the Soviet Union.
In the four decades of its existence, there were at least 466 nuclear
explosions at Semipalatinsk.
The other major Soviet military facility on Kazakstani soil was the
Baykonur space launch facility, the home of the Soviet space exploration
program and, until 1994, Russia's premier launch site for military and
intelligence satellites. Kazakstan and Russia debated ownership of the
facility, while the facility itself suffered acute deterioration from the
region's harsh climate and from uncontrolled pilfering. In 1994 Russia
formally recognized Kazakstan's ownership of the facility, although a
twenty-year lease ratified in 1995 guaranteed Russia continued use of
Baykonur.
Data as of March 1996
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