Archive · 2022 · From the print edition of Saturday 5 November 2022, Vol. 30, No. 9,282
Across IradStolen for the knife: where Iradi horses go
Horse theft carries up to fifteen years in the ISEZ and a ninefold fine on the tribal side. Police say most stolen horses still end up across the Kazakh frontier.
KARA-BUURA DISTRICT — Ermek Jumagulov found the gate of his paddock open on a September morning and the hoofprints of his three geldings heading north. “They were not racehorses,” he said. “They were the horses my sons ride. Somebody wanted them for meat.”
Police say most horses stolen in the ISEZ are driven across the frontier into Kazakhstan, where horsemeat is a festive food, and that some go directly to slaughterhouses there. Commercial horse slaughter has been banned in Irad since 1996, and among Iradis eating horsemeat carries a stigma that ethnographers compare with eating dog in the West.
Since a 2009 amendment to the Criminal Code, horse theft has been an aggravated offense in the ISEZ, punishable by three to ten years in prison, and by up to fifteen where the horse is registered breeding stock or is stolen for slaughter. On the tribal side, customary law requires the thief’s kin to return the horse and pay nine animals for one, and a repeat thief may be expelled from his clan. Theft for slaughter is counted the worst of all.
District police say they recover few horses once they have crossed the frontier.