KEY POINTS:
The characters in this family feud come straight out of central casting. Top billing goes to the Soviet-era president of Kazakhstan, who last week gave himself the right to run for office as many times as he likes. His eldest daughter, an opera singer who has been tipped
to succeed her father in a post-communist dynasty, has a secondary role.
And then, of course, there is the ineffable Borat, the creation of comic Sacha Baron Cohen, who put the oil-rich central Asian state on the map by inventing the oafish satirical character, famed for such outrageous declarations as "throw the Jew down the well".
Borat actually has a walk-on part in this drama. But this is no soap opera. President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan has been accused of overseeing one of the most nepotistic, ruthless and corrupt regimes in Central Asia.
The feud burst into the open over the weekend when President Nazarbayev summarily sacked his son-in-law as ambassador to Austria and ordered his arrest.
Rakhat Aliyev, who is married to Nazarbayev's eldest daughter Dariga and who has political ambitions of his own, is accused of masterminding the kidnapping of two executives of the Kazakh bank Nurbank, which he controlled.
On Monday, an international arrest warrant was issued for Mr Aliyev. A Kazakh Interior Ministry spokesman said he was accused of running a mafia network in Kazakhstan, in addition to the charges related to the kidnapping last February.
Mr Aliyev is applying for political asylum in Austria and says the accusations are politically motivated. It is not by chance, he says, that his dismissal was ordered hours after he publicly accused his father-in-law of a "retreat to totalitarian Soviet past".
He even invoked the name of Borat to attack the lack of political freedom in Kazakhstan, by claiming that the fictional character had said he would run in presidential elections - but only in 2045.
Borat has become so well-known in Kazakhstan that President Nazarbayev laughed off questions about his film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan during a visit to London in November.
"For President Nazarbayev it may be major news that the wish to participate in presidential elections is not a crime but the constitutional right of any citizen, and I am no exception," Mr Aliyev said. "Several months ago I told Nursultan [Nazarbayev] that I had taken the decision to stand for the presidency at the next elections in 2012 ... Soon after this conversation the Nurbank robbery saga began," he said.
President Nazarbayev, 66, who has ruled Kazakhstan for 17 years in a self-styled "Asian democracy" in which political parties are tightly controlled, signed a constitutional amendment last week allowing himself to seek re-election in 2012 and in any subsequent vote.
He clearly intends to consolidate his rule at a time of increased jockeying for power from within the political elite, and has now set himself up as president for life.
But Mr Aliyev, a former head of national security for Kazakhstan's commercial capital Almaty and a powerful businessman, had made no secret of his own political ambitions. "Until recently Nazarbayev could divide and rule. But now he realised that he could no longer rein in his son-in-law, who had been strengthening his position on the back of others," said Saule Mukhametrakhimova, a Central Asia analyst with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
"He had become a liability," Ms Mukhametrakhimova added. Mr Aliyev had been no stranger to scandal in Kazakhstan, but his wife had stood by him, notably defending him from accusations that he was involved in the murder of a prominent opposition politician, Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, in February last year.
Sarsenbaiuly, 43, was the second opposition leader to be found dead in suspicious circumstances in three months and his death prompted accusations that the government was operating death squads.
His body was discovered in a ravine on the outskirts of Almaty.
Sarsenbaiuly made himself unpopular with the government for criticising Dariga Nazarbayeva over her grip on the country's media. When Mr Aliyev was accused by a Kazakh newspaper of responsibility for the murder, Dariga sprang to his defence.
Dariga herself had been considered a contender to replace her father as president. She had formed her own political party, Asar (All Together) and with her husband control the press and media.
But her party has merged with the ruling party in a sign that the president wants to retain control. Last Friday, after news of the criminal charges against Mr Aliyev were made public, the KTK TV channel and Karavan newspaper, both controlled by the president's son-in-law, were ordered to be shut down for three months.
The country's information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, defended the decision, after the US embassy expressed disappointment and urged Kazakhstan to respect freedom of speech.
Speaking about the press generally the minister said: "There is more than enough freedom in our country." But Mr Aliyev says: "Our president has been persistently building a political system that brooks no dissent, no pluralism."
However, the Kazakhstan opposition - which is weak and fragmented - is unconvinced by Mr Aliyev's conversion to democratic values. "Supporting Aliyev just because he is against Nazarbayev at the moment is not the kind of thing I would do. Not the kind of thing any serious politician would do," said Oraz Zhandosov, the co-leader of the radical Real Ak Zhol party.
In a statement, the party said the official move against Mr Aliyev was "a belated but inevitable reaction to endless complaints by his victims, the opposition's statements and publications in the independent media".
"We must not forget that this is not all about the personality of this concrete citizen, Rakhat Aliyev, but the broader defects of the Kazakh political system." Among the big investors in Kazakhstan are the US oil giant Chevron, of which Condoleezza Rice is a former board member, and the Mittal steel firm whose president is the London-based businessman and friend of Tony Blair, Lakshmi Mittal.
Nazarbayev has been received at the White House and in Downing Street.
Why did Nazarbayev move against his son-in-law now? According to some analysts, he is keen to show that he is observing the rule of law now that the accusations have officially surfaced.
Kazakhstan is actively campaigning for the chairmanship of the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe which is due to be decided later this year - all the former Soviet republics, including the central Asian states, are members of the pan-European body.
But the US and UK have shown no enthusiasm in supporting Kazakhstan's ambitions, although Germany is on the side of Nazarbayev's bid.
The other burning question is the state of Aliyev's marriage and the relationship of Dariga to her father now he plans to be president for life.
"There have been rumours since 1998 that Dariga and Rakhat Aliyev were leading separate lives," said Ms Mukhametrakhimova.
"But she has always defended him in the past. Maybe as a result of this extraordinary case, she may reconsider."
- INDEPENDENT
