ABSTRACT
In this chapter and in the following one, I will focus on the second type of problem that oil has been creating for Nazarbayev’s regime – dissatisfaction in the oil-rich areas. Chapter 2 demonstrated how resources can motivate secession movements in the resource-rich regions, manipulated by dissatisfied interest groups, which on occasion led to violent uprisings and effectively prolonged civil wars. Scholars who deal with the problems of resource-rich areas argue that for a violent situation to emerge, at least a few requirements from a long list have to be fulfilled: first, the resource-rich region should be located far away from the centre; second, the resources must be extracted by ‘outsiders’ who are perceived to extract ‘local’ resources without sharing the wealth; third, a highly centralized system of procedures for economic decision-making must be present; fourth, there should be a lack of economic diversification in the resource-rich regions; fifth, widespread poverty; sixth, a local population which is displaced by the extractive industry or suffers from its environmental costs; and finally, the resource-rich region must be inhabited by an ethnic minority (Robinson 1998; Le Billon 2001a).
