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June 17, 2010Also see: Kyrgyzstan: Another colour revolution bites the dust(April 12 2010) by Eric Wallenberg
Kyrgyzstan: Eurasian geopolitics 101
The war in Afghanistan is officially spreading to the Central Asian republics.
For the moment, the Pentagon is breathing a sigh of relief. Vital US fuel supply flights from its Manas base to Afghanistan resumed last week even as Kyrgyzstan slid into chaos. At least 171 and possibly as many as 500 have died in rioting in southern Kyrgyzstan this week, almost all ethnic Uzbeks, with thousands injured. More than 80,000 fled to neighbouring Uzbekistan, forcing it to close its borders as it cannot cope with more. On Monday, China began evacuating the majority of its 1000 nationals.
Armed Kyrgyz in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second largest city, Jalalabad and some villages targeted Uzbek neighbourhoods, burning and killing indiscriminately.
The Red Cross said 100 bodies were seen buried in just one cemetery. The chaos spread to the capital Bishkek but was brought under control when riot police fired tear gas and flash grenades.
Kyrgyzstan’s acting President Roza Otunbayeva declared a state of emergency in the south, ordered the mobilisation of military reservists, and issued a shoot to kill order after Russia refused her request Saturday to send in troops to quell the rioters. Defending her moves, said Sergei Abashin, senior researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow, “Local police would easily surrender their weapons to young Kyrgyz rioters as they have common relatives and friends in this clan, and they would never shoot at their own.”
After consulting on Monday with other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO, which also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), Russia decided to send helicopters, trucks and fuel in addition to humanitarian aid, though it ruled out sending troops. “Russia is unlikely to intervene unless it felt that the situation was going to make the region unstable or ethnic Russians were in danger,” analyst Asher Pirt told Deutsche Welle.
The unrest has been simmering since the interim government came to power on 7 April, when 81 protesters were killed by police and president Kurmanbek Bakiyev fled the capital to his home in the south. The new government quickly established control over the capital and the north of the country, but not in Bakiyev’s south, part of the Ferghana Valley where Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tajiks have been living side-by-side for centuries. Stalin divvied the valley up between ethnic republics in the 1920s, creating the basis for the current problems. Ethnicity, however, is really a cover for the underlying settler/ nomad distinction, the Uzbeks being more business-oriented and, in the current pro-market environment, richer, the Kyrgyz more pastoral. The People’s Friendship University was razed because it was funded by a wealthy Uzbek businessman.
Washington’s discrete silence except to condemn the violence suggests it realises it would only make matters worse by speaking up. As long as its base is allowed to function, it will stay in the background. The US base is highly unpopular with locals, and the resentment and instability it encourages prompted Otunbayeva initially to call for it to be closed for “security reasons”, though under intense US pressure, the contract for the base was renewed for another year. Kyrgyz authorities blocked the operations of the fuel sub-contractor Mina Corp, which is linked to Maksim Bakiyev, son of the disgraced president, accused of embezzling millions in “rent” and other service charges on the US base, but operations resumed even as the country unravelled... [In Full]
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