After Nazarbayev: The dictator, his daughter, and a dynasty at war

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 singing mezzo soprano, 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 the 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 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 Mr 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 late in February. "The head of this criminal group... is currently Rakhat Aliyev," the spokesman said. "He has been put on the international wanted list."

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 on Saturday.

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," said Saule Mukhametrakhimova, a central Asia analyst with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. "He had become a liability," Ms Mukhametrakhimova added. "Nazarbayev realised that his son-in-law had become uncontrollable."

Mr Aliyev has 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.

Mr Sarsenbaiuly, 43, was the second opposition leader to be found dead in suspicious circumstances in three months and his death, as well as his driver and bodyguard, prompted accusations that the government was operating death squads. His body was discovered in a ravine on the outskirts of Almaty. Friends asked to identify the bodies claim all three had been shot in the back and in the back of their heads and that the hands of the driver and bodyguard were bound with plastic ties.

Another former government minister and opposition figure, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, was found dead three months earlier. The official version of his death is that he committed suicide - but there were two bullet wounds to his chest and one to his head.

Mr 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 they control the press and media outlets. But her party has now merged with the ruling party in a sign that the President wants to retain control. On 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 shut down for three months. The 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 ... 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."

The former Kazakhstan diplomat and Oxford-educated lawyer Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov now lives in exile after failing to register his political party, which he wanted to defend the interests of the emerging middle class. Mr Dosmukhamedov was an official of the Atameken National Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers of Kazakhstan and an advisor to Timur Kulibayev, a son-in-law of President Nazarbayev marriedto the head of state's middle daughter, Dinara. Mr Kulibayev is an executive in the state energy company.

He first fell foul of the authorities after exposing corruption at the Kazakh embassy in Germany, where he was deputy ambassador. But when he returned home in 2002 and tried to publicise his political movement in October last year, he ran into a brick wall. When he was due to appear on Serious Talk, the Kazakhstan version of CNN's Larry King, the programme was not aired. He describes Kazakhstan as a "bureaucratic police state" where "even the President is a hostage to bureaucracy".

"It is very difficult to be an independent politician in Kazakhstan," says Mr Dosmukhamedov, pointing to the use of trumped-up criminal charges, such as drugs accusations, that can be laid against political enemies of the regime.

Noting that the booming business climate has been unaffected, Mr Dosmukhamedov said: "The West has been blinded by oil." 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 company, whose president is the London-based businessman and friend of Tony Blair, Lakshmi Mittal.

Mr Nazarbayev has been received at the White House and in Downing Street. The Bush administration kept a very low profile during proceedings ahead of a corruption trial in the US in which an American merchant banker and a consultant to the Kazakh government was accused of channelling more than $78m in bribes to Nazarbayev and the head of the country's oil ministry while brokering oil deals. The case was known as "Kazakhgate".

Bush administration officials have acknowledged that the Kazakh government falls short in its efforts to build democracy. But Mr Dosmukhamedov and some foreign policy specialists point out that the US is more interested in having Kazakhstan as an ally in the "war on terror" and wants to keep the central Asian on board as a potential alternative to Gulf oil supplies.

The country's contestant at the Miss Universe beauty contest, Gauhkar Rakhmetalieva, said on Monday that the government would soon release its own film to portray the positive sides of the land of the steppe, beluga caviar and the national dish, beshbarmak (boiled horsemeat and noodles). "The advantage is that now our country is world famous. As people are looking toward us, we have the opportunity to show how we really are: a modern country with infrastructure and a very developed culture," she said.

Why did Mr 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 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 are members of the pan-European body.

The US and UK have shown no support for Kazakhstan's ambitions, although Germany is on the side of Mr Nazarbayev's bid. The other burning question is the state of Mr 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."