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:
Kazakhstan: http://www.eng.stat.kz/Pages/default.aspx
Turkmenistan: http://www.stat.gov.tm/
Uzbekistan: http://www.stat.uz/en/index.php
*Tajikistan’s website has had issues with malware and should
be avoided.
UNODC website: http://drugsmonitoring.unodc-roca.org/
[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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