The muffled sounds of heavy gunfire echoed across Almaty’s wide boulevards and carried through the empty streets toward the surrounding Alatau mountains. With the internet down, people panicked as they tried to check on friends and relatives. It was Jan. 5, and the tension in Kazakhstan’s largest city had been building for days, triggered by anger in the western part of the country at a jump in fuel prices but quickly morphing into something deeper and far harder for the government to contain: collective rage over endemic corruption, a lack of civil rights and economic inequality.
