Backstory: The most unwanted man in Kazakhstan

Then there's uranium. Little more than a decade ago, nobody was laughing at the fragile new state with more than 1,400 lightly guarded atomic warheads, a legacy of four decades of Soviet tests. Though Kazakhstan subsequently became the first Muslim nation to voluntarily dismantle its nuclear arsenal, its vast steppes still hold a fifth of the world's uranium reserves. Driven by the high global demand for both fuels, Kazakhstan's GDP has grown 9 percent this year alone.

Bordered by nuclear giants Russia and China, and with volatile neighbors in Afghanistan and the Middle East, this secular Muslim nation is central to the economic and political fortunes of a region where the US needs friends.

This Sunday, a high-stakes presidential election will test Kazakhstan's stability and commitment to democracy. In the past two years, neighbors Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan all have ousted entrenched leaders in popular uprisings (a fourth, in Uzbekistan, was violently repressed).

Now, as Kazakhstan faces its own political watershed, President Nursultan Nazarbayev is embroiled in an international scandal involving billions of dollars of misappropriated oil revenues. And just before Cohen's spoof made headlines this month, prominent Kazakh opposition member Zamanbek Nurkadilov was shot dead after vowing to go public with information about government corruption.

* * *

When I landed in Kazakhstan, one of the first things I noticed was a shared sense of humor that seemed to thrive at the expense of the nation's own post-Soviet quirks. Had I heard the one about the building with the tank parked in front of its sign? The sign reads "Ministry of Defense" - until the tank pulls away, revealing " ... and Attack."

Or that one about Dostoevsky? When moody Russian dissidents were packed off to Siberia, that often meant northern Kazakhstan. Novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky spent four years in exile there, most of it mooning over his future wife, whom he wooed by threatening to throw himself into the Irtysh River. The Irtysh, my translator pointed out, runs just waist-deep.

Or the one about the major wedding hall in Almaty, a round, concrete Soviet edifice in Kazakhstan's most cosmopolitan city. What does an Almaty gal say to guy she doesn't want to date? "Sure, meet me at the corner of the wedding chapel."

Other times, the jokes told themselves. Late on the eve of Nauryz, the Kazakh New Year, some friends and I were crossing in front of the president's residence in Almaty when a car pulled up, disgorging 10 men and boys. They began hurriedly erecting a yurt, the round, wood-and-felt tent used by nomadic herders for centuries before the Kazakhs were forced into collective farms to fill the Soviet breadbasket. A yurt, it turns out, can be lashed together with incredible speed. As we stood gaping, we were approached by Anatoly Cizco, a gray-bearded fellow. He told us he was planning to stay overnight in the yurt, "to guard some high-fashion dresses" being stored there for the next day's festival, and he offered to share the honor. "I've slept in yurts on the steppe," he said, "but in front of the president's house? That's exotic!"

* * *

Whether the Kazakh sense of fun will extend to Cohen, though, remains a question. His feature mockumentary, "Borat: The Movie," is expected to appear in theaters next year. But Vassilenko isn't worried: The Borat flap landed him spots on major US TV and radio networks, and hits on the Kazakhstan Embassy's website tripled as a result.

"[Cohen] has made people more aware of Kazakhstan and he helps spread information," Vassilenko concedes. "I just wish it was the right information."

Page: 1 | 2