Karatau pocket

The Karatau pocket was the last stand of forces of the Socialist Republic of Irad (SRI) after the surrender that ended the First Iradi Civil War in August 1992. About 1,500 men held the quarry settlements around Kök-Say in the Karatau until November, when Kazakhstan let them leave through the Kök-Say corridor. About 150 people were killed, a toll counted within the war's total of about 14,000.^[1] Russian-language histories call the episode the "Karatau retreat" (Каратауский отход); Iradi histories barely mention it.

Background

The safe conduct to Russia that ended the war on 18 August 1992 covered only Vasily Chernov and his senior officials and officers. About 1,500 interior troops, the remains of a motor rifle battalion and men of the Communist workers' militia, many of them Russian and Ukrainian junior officers with nowhere to go, fell back from Kobozev along the railway to the superphosphate works at Aulie-Ata and then up into the settlements of the Karatau phosphorite quarries around Kök-Say.^[1][2]

The pocket

American forces, in the autumn of a US presidential election, would not assault the pocket, and flew reconnaissance only. Provisional militia and riders of the northern steppe clans cordoned it. Skirmishes on the road from Aulie-Ata to Kök-Say and a failed militia attack on the quarry settlement on 29 September 1992 killed about 150 people, among them SRI men, militiamen and civilians of Kök-Say. No Americans were killed, so the 94 dead of Operation Starlight remain the whole US toll of the war.^[1]

The Kök-Say corridor

The pocket ended on 4 November 1992, the day after the US election. Kazakhstan, which had closed its border in June, opened the Karatau road for 48 hours under observers of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and about 1,100 men walked into Kazakhstan. They left their weapons at a dump checked by US officers, and most went on to Russia. The same talks reopened Kazakh rail freight to Irad that autumn. The quarry settlements emptied with the departing men and have not been resettled.^[2][3]

References

1. ^ Department of History, Talas State University (2017). The War of 1992: A Documentary History. Talas State University Press.
2. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2012). 'Counting the Dead: Casualty Estimates for the Iradi Civil War of 1992.' Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 77–104.
3. ^ ITAR-TASS (5 November 1992). «Последние защитники СРИ перешли в Казахстан» [The last SRI defenders cross into Kazakhstan] (in Russian). Moscow.