This year’s Novruz festivities in Kazakhstan was overshadowed by a surge of large-scale violence between Kazakh and Chechen residents of two villages in the Enbekshiqazaq district of Almaty region. While officials go out of their way to dismiss the incident as an ordinary brawl, Chechen families are indignant over the reluctance by the police and local authorities to handle the conflict fairly.

Official accounts of the incident maintain that the fight between Kazakhs and Chechens was triggered by a quarrel between a local ethnic Chechen resident Mamakhanov and ethnic Kazakh Salimbayev on March 18. In the heat of the argument which erupted in a game saloon of the village of Malovodnoye, Mamakhanov reportedly shot a plastic bullet which wounded his opponent in the leg. The next day, around seventy Kazakhs of Malovodnoye armed with stones and iron rods marched to the neighboring village of Kazatkom where the Mamakhanovs lived. The outraged crowd started beating every Chechen in sight. But on the approach to Mamakhanov’s house the vengeful mob was stopped by gunfire that killed two Kazakhs. The incensed crowd began throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Chechen-owned cars and houses and reduced the Mamakhanov residence to ashes. The vandalizing crowd stabbed one Chechen to death; two other Chechens and four Kazakhs were hospitalized in critical condition and died later from severe injuries.

The violence lasted for two days, but the police and authorities, although managing to disperse the vandalizing crowd and taking the Mamakhanov family to a safe place, according to local Chechens, did little to settle the conflict. They suspect the police for having an ethnically biased stance. Chechen residents, eye witnesses to the fight, said that when one of the Mamakhnov brothers saw policemen among the crowd of angry Kazakhs, he went out of his house to talk to them, hoping Kazakhs would not dare to beat him in the presence of the police force. Moreover, he served in the district court and saw familiar faces among the policemen. But as soon as he went out the violent mob turned on him. Police did not interfere as punches and kicks rained on the poor man. Another member of the Mamakhanov family, Amir, two hours before the tragic incident flew in from London where he studied, as it turned out, only to meet his death from the hands of the vandalized rowdies. His disfigured dead body was found near a gasoline station.

The Mamakhanovs, like many Caucasian and Central Asian ethnic groups, had an extended family. But only few of them survived the attack. One of the brothers, Sado Mamakhanov, told journalists the Mamakhanovs were aware of the impending threat long before the violence, and applied to the district police department for protection – but their requests remained unheeded. Some of the Chechens in Kazatkom suspect the violence against Mamakhanovs was a premeditated act tacitly supported by local authorities. But more discouraging is the attempt by locals to identify ethnic Chechens with criminal gangs. In the densely populated and impoverished multi-ethnic Enbekshiqazaq district, the Mamakhanovs are among the few fortunate and well-off families who run a successful business. But many in Kazaatkom believe that the Mamakhanov’s prosperity is based on ill-gotten money and theft. “They have grabbed our best land plots and dammed up the pond, denying us access to irrigation water”, complained some villagers at a meeting which was designed to reconcile the conflicting sides. “Look how they get rich through cattle theft. When Chechens were deported from their land and came to Kazakhstan clothed in rags and tormented by hunger, we offered them food and shelter. Now they are paying back with  ingratitude,” said one of the Kazakh elders at the meeting.

Such extreme views are depressingly common among local Kazakhs and other ethnic groups. Immediately after the conflict erupted, Kazakhs demanded the removal of Chechens from the Enbekshiqazaq district within 24 hours. When elders tried to dissuade nationalists, they blocked the highway running from Almaty to Zharkent. Special police forces managed to clear the highway for traffic within a few hours, but it will take immeasurably more time to restore peace and calm in the district. The Interior Ministry posted checkpoints around the village of Kazatkom, the police searches every vehicle for firearms, and non-locals are not allowed to enter the village.

But even the tightest security measures will not bring life in the district back to normal if adequate solutions for the settlement of interethnic clashes are not found. Unfortunately, Chechens and Kazakhs in Enbekshiqazaq district equally mistrust the police and authorities. Some Kazakh residents believe many high-ranking police officers and officials take bribes from Chechen criminals and drug dealers. Whether true or not, this lack of confidence in authorities is not conducive to a positive solution of ethnic conflicts, the threat of which is persistently underestimated by officials.