Friday, November 15, 2013

Kazakh Statistics

For this week’s blog post I would like to give a broad overview of the data available on Kazakhstan. Out of the five Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan has by far the most comprehensive and navigable statistics website. A broad array of variables are provided, from main socio-economic indicators to the most popular names of children in Kazakhstan. More importantly, the statistics are categorized by province, allowing me to do a comparative study across the country. This will be particularly useful, given that the data availability from many of the NGOs and IGOs are limited to the national level. Moreover, the website provides for each category an explanation of the variables presented in the spreadsheets. These explanations provide a general definition and usually explain how to interpret them. The specificity can vary however. For example, the variable “rate of economically active population” is defined as the “percentage of economically active population in the total population size at the age of 15 and older.” However, “economically active population” is defined as the “part of population at the age determined for measurement of economic activity of the population providing supply of the labour force for production of goods and services”, but doesn’t specify precisely how this part of the population is defined other than by age. Nonetheless, most of the variables provided are adequately explained and usually correspond to a variable we would see in any statistical analysis in the US. An unfortunate restriction is data availability. Some of the data is only available from 2003-2009, other data is limited to 2009-2013, or various periods in the 2001-2013 range. Little data is available prior to 2001, but after 2010, availability is fairly strong.

                Given my focus on drug trafficking, I need to expand beyond the broad criminal statistics that are provided by the official Kazakh site (number of crimes, imprisonment numbers, etc.). The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) maintains a database in partnership with the Paris Pact Initiative that catalogues drug seizure data obtained from both governmental sources and media outlets. Data on drug seizures across the globe is available hypothetically back to 2003, depending on what country you are looking at. For Kazakhstan, nothing is available prior to January 1, 2010. However, from 2010 through the present, drug seizures are provided for at least every week, often every other day. Furthermore, for each seizure the type of drug and amount seized is documented, along with a brief description of where the seizure occurred, what law enforcement agency was involved, and occasionally even the gender, nationality and residence of the suspect. The level of detail increases significantly in the latter half of 2010. An example of the detail that can be found: on 07/26/2013 16.49kg of heroin was seized, and a “Kyrgyz citizen has been detained at the Sortobe customs post in Kazakhstan's Zhambyl Region with a large batch of heroin. During the search of his car, 28 plastic bottles were discovered in its fuel tank.” Key to my research will be the specific location data, in this instance Zhambyl province, on the border with Kyrgyzstan. Out of the 534 cases available for Kazakhstan from January 2010 through November 2013, 105 cases did not specify province and will have to be left out of my final analysis, limiting my final sample size to 429.

                Below I have provided a brief analysis of the relevant UNODC drug data and have attached samples of the data available through the Kazakh website. It should be noted that while the cities of Almaty and Astana are not considered provinces, they can be considered on the same administrative level as a province (with Almaty Province separate from Almaty city), and are treated as such in both the Kazakh and UNODC databases.


Source: http://drugsmonitoring.unodc-roca.org/
               
                As the above graph illustrates, Zhambyl experienced the highest amount of drug seizures by far from 2010 through 2013. At 113 seizures, it is nearly double that of the next, Karaganda, and accounts for 26 percent of countrywide seizures. This could be surprising given how Zhambyl ranks by population, although unfortunately the most recent population data provided by Kazakhstan is 2010. As the graph below shows, at a little over one million people, Zhambyl was the sixth most populous province, which was only 6.5% of the national population in 2010. Certainly, more factors than population should be considered when trying to identify why Zhambyl has experienced so many drug seizures. Zhambyl’s location on the border with Kyrgyzstan is likely a very significant factor. As discussed previously, the Customs Union of the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Belarus agreement created a common, external border across the three nations that only requires one customs check at the Kazakh border before goods can be transported to the Russian or Belarusian border with the European Union. Once a trafficker gets into Kazakhstan, they face little threat of detection if their final destination is in Russia or Belarus. Combined with the mountainous terrain along that portion of the border, Zhambyl would likely be a prime target for a trafficker trying to get into the Customs Union.



The next chart illustrates the type of drug seized from 2010 through 2013. As you can see, heroin is the most commonly seized drug with 318 seizures, followed by cannabis, with opium and amphetamine seizures occurring rarely. This is not surprising given the heavy reliance of the drug trade in Central Asia on heroin trafficked out of Afghanistan. Moreover, opium is less common outside of Afghanistan because most of the opium grown in the Afghan poppy fields is processed in-country at laboratories in the north before being trafficked as the finished product, heroin.[1]  


Source: http://drugsmonitoring.unodc-roca.org/

However, as the next chart show, while cannabis is seized less often than heroin, it is trafficked in much larger amounts, at 19,000kg seized compared to 876kg of heroin.


Source: http://drugsmonitoring.unodc-roca.org/

The following graphs are a sample from the data obtained from the official Kazakh statistics website.








Governmental statistics websites:





*Tajikistan’s website has had issues with malware and should be avoided.





[1] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Opiate Flows Through Northern Afghanistan and Central Asia 2012, Available at: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Studies/Afghanistan_northern_route_2012_web.pdf

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