UNIPATH STAFF
Improving military discipline, upgrading equipment and maintaining combat readiness were among the security goals set by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev at a meeting with the Ministry of Defense in late 2016.
At the same meeting, the president appointed Saken Zhasuzakov as minister of defense and emphasized the Army’s critical role in handling threats against the country.
“The Army is the main guarantor of the republic’s sovereignty,” he said. “Amid uneasy conditions in the region and in the world, the role of the Armed Forces increases. The threat of international terrorism, hybrid wars and the arms race makes us focus on national security issues.”
He said money will be budgeted to train Soldiers and upgrade their equipment. Since 2011, more than 60 planned terror attacks have been interrupted in Kazakhstan, preventing the loss of countless lives, according to Nurgali Bilisbekov, the country’s deputy chairman of the National Security Committee (NSC).
He told a gathering of security officials in Astana in September 2016 that many of the attacks were planned to maximize casualties. “Terrorist attacks in crowded areas, as well as attacks on the facilities and employees of law enforcement and special state bodies, have been prevented,” he said.
During the past five years, more than 400 people in Kazakhstan have been convicted of crimes linked to terrorism, Bilisbekov said, and hundreds more had been recruited by terror organizations, but prevented by the NSC from leaving the country. Sources: Kazinform, Xinhua, Sputnik