Cattle Rustlers Ride Out in Kazakstan

Raiders lift livestock as old tradition is amended to suit new reality of economic crisis.

By Daniyar Bakhtagaliev in Almaty (RCA No. 574, 24-Apr-09)

Shokan, a farmer from the countryside around Almaty, was out tending his sheep recently when three riders trotted up.

“These guys on horseback approached me and asked me to sell them a sheep, but I refused,” he said. “Two of them pushed me aside, and the third man grabbed the nearest sheep and hoisted it onto his horse. And away they galloped.

“Where could I have gone to get help? There was no one around. I didn’t even resist, as I’ve heard you can get shot.”

Shokan was just another victim of a new breed of crime – or rather an old one, revived in a modified form – that is being seen as a direct result of the economic downturn in Kazakstan.

Police say cattle-rustling is rising sharply as the economy slumps, As farmers struggle to protect their livestock, some are resorting to armed protection.

The raiders are known as “barymtashy”, after an old custom practiced among the Kazak nomads before the Soviet period. Known as “barymta”, it was applied to livestock raiding to settle scores in a feud.

These days, the nomadic lifestyle is long gone and the term is used for outright theft.

“They’ll steal anything – chicken, ducks, turkeys,” said Shokan. “They stole my neighbour’s only horse.”

A retired police colonel, who asked not to be named, told IWPR that the resurgence in livestock theft was a direct consequence of falling living standards and unemployment caused by the economic crisis.

“People are forced to turn to theft – including of animals – out of a desire to provide for their families,” he said.

The retired police commander explained, “As a general rule the stolen livestock is slaughtered out in the steppe, far away from the villages, to make it easier to move. The meat is divided up, with one part for the families – the barymtashy usually operate in groups of three to four – and the rest sold in neighbouring towns.”

The rustlers find traders who will not ask too many questions. “They offer the meat cheap at half-price so that retailers won’t ask for documentation [health certificates] and the traders close their eyes to its source,” said the ex-police officer.

A Kazak interior ministry spokesman, Oleg Ivaschenko, confirmed that livestock theft was on the rise, noting that an 11 per cent rise was recorded nationally from the beginning of this year to the end of February.

In one western region, Aktobe, the prosecution service reports that in the whole of 2008, crimes of this kind showed a 70 per cent increase on the previous year.

Announcing the news on February 3, Aktobe’s deputy regional prosecutor Manarbek Saduov said things were likely to get worse.

“We are predicting an even larger rise in the incidence of livestock theft as a result of the global financial crisis,” said Saduov, in remarks quoted by the Kazakhstan Today news agency. “The economic slump is causing unemployment, which in turn is driving people to steal others’ property and animals.”

Thousands of people across Kazakstan have been put out of work by the closure of businesses as banks refuse to lend as freely as before and commercial investment falls.

Shokan was right to be worried that the raiders might be armed, as one recent incident showed. According to an April 6 report by the KazTAG news agency, a policeman was shot dead while investigating an alleged case of rustling.

Ivaschenko said police were doing everything they could to counter crisis-related crimes, and would target resources on particular “problem areas”.

When arrests are made, the penalties are severe. In March, a court in Karagayly in the Karaganda region sentenced four people to prison terms of between five and seven years for stealing a herd of 92 horses.

KazTag reported that all the horses had been returned to their owners.

Lieutenant-Colonel Elena Kosharina, a departmental head with the Kostanay police force, told IWPR it was important to note that while the incidence of cattle theft was increasing, so was the number of cases successfully solved.

She also suggested that in some cases, farmers did not take sufficient care of their herds.

Agriculture ministry spokesman Talgat Makhanov said farmers as well as police needed to work to protect their stock, for example ensuring that each animal was marked to identify it.

While noting that the ministry was not monitoring the theft problem, Makhanov argued that “this is something farmers themselves have to deal with. Of course it’s harder for the small-scale livestock breeders.”

Some villages are beginning to take matters into their own hands, as a farmer who lives close to Almaty told IWPR.

“The residents of many villages are trying to provide their own protection for their livestock. The village elders appoint young men as guards and the villagers collect money to pay them,” said this man, who did not want to be named.

“Now the shepherds won’t go out unarmed. It used to be that you needed a rifle to scare off wolves. Now it’s for the barymtachy.”

Daniyar Bakhtagaliev is a student at the Kazakstan National University in Almaty.