An ethnically motivated attack alarms multi-ethnic Kazakhstan

IN A BUCOLIC setting, fringed by the snow-cloaked mountains of south-eastern Kazakhstan, lie two adjoining villages separated by a field of bleating fat-tailed sheep. This week the ethnic Kazakhs of Qarakemer were going about their business as usual, a man trotting down the main street on a horse, children lugging milk home in pails. Their neighbours in Masanchi, a ten-minute walk away, were contemplating a scene of devastation. A distraught villager whose shop had been torched in a mob attack over the weekend gestured at two intact businesses among the charred ruins lining the main street. “Look at that shop, and that one,” he said. “Their owners are Kazakh. They didn’t touch them. Only the Dungans’ shops.”