Revolution in Kyrgyzstan

Dr. Ariel Cohen of The Heritage Foundation notes that, following the fall of the U.S.S.R, Kyrgyzstan unfortunately did not completely and successfully make its transition to a free and independent nation the same way many countries in Eastern Europe did:

Quote:

Kyrgyzstan today is a quintessence of everything that is wrong with post-communist Central Asian regimes. It did not have a "velvet revolution." Instead Mr. Akayev took over when the Soviet Union collapsed, but the elite remained Soviet in essence. Even the opposition leaders come from this elite, instead of being dissident figures like Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel.

Dr. Cohen explains the regional politics at play:

Quote:

The leaders of neighboring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are nervously watching these developments. As in Kyrgyzstan, both countries’ ruling regimes are prone to cut down opposition, mostly secular, as quickly as it appears. But a greater menace may be lurking in the wings: Islamic radicals who are amassing power and, for now, have been holding back from the political square. By cutting the secular opposition out of the picture, the region’s leaders may be pursuing a counterproductive—and ultimately destructive—strategy.

Thus, Cohen notes, the lemon revolution may or may not end up as lemonade. There is good reason to be cautious in declaring victory for freedom, given the geopolitical stakes. But there is also significant reason for hope.

http://www.heritage.org//Press/Commentary/ed032305b.cfm

Aargh - I SO hope that the new leadership can move fast for a new election - I guess this is a chaotic, dangerous stage, though.

I guess it helps that they have had a stable government - only more recently moving towards autocracy and abuse of opposition leaders.

Seems like both Russia and America are acting calmly - and America seems to be quietly busy in supporting a non-violent transition.

I gather that north and south are somewhat divided, though.

The country is divided by a high range of mountains. Because of this natural border, the two parts of the country developed completely different clan structures -- clans that are now confronting one another. The original opposition movement may well have originated with democratic forces who were only demanding that the presidential elections be annulled. But over time, the initially peaceful protests were infiltrated by violent forces opposed to democracy. The entire movement has developed a dangerous momentum of its own.

The thread from which i quote you has been locked, for dog knows what reason, but i wanted to tell you this:

Me wrote:

dlowan wrote:

The notion of moderate Islamic states there is fascinating - I was aware that fundamentalist Islam in Chechnya was apparently a response to Russian brutality there - not intrinsically Chechen.

When, in the early 18th century (1721?), Petr Alexeevitch conducted his last military campaign on the shores of the Caspian Sea, he sent a column to impress the Chechens and the Ingush with the military might of his new empire. They were not impressed. They slaughtered about 3,000 Russians. They had been primitive, blood-thirsty tribesmen when the Seljuk Turks had impressed them, in the tenth century. They became Muslim more or less in emulation of their erstwhile masters. When Tamara became the Queen of Georgia, they had been cozened into joining the forces of Georgian nobility who opposed her. She repressed those tribesmen brutally. They saw it more as a case of a demonstration of the inherent evil of Orthodox christians, than as a religious war. After the Mongols and their client army, the Tatars, swept through the region, and ended the Georgian kingdom, the Caucusus tribesmen remained aloof, and later allied themselves to the Tatars on more or less the same basis as they had with the Turks. When Peter the Great's troops showed up, it was, to them, just another case of Orthodoxy attempting to crush them--although, again, with the caveat that they did not necessarily see it as a religious war.

Peter's mad daughter, Elizabeth, sybarite and all around ill-tempered autocrat, married her son to Sophie of Anhalt-Dessau, partly at the instigation of Frederick the Great. Sophie eventually deep-sixed her husband, and using Ekaterin, the Orthodox name she had taken, she became the Empress Catherine II, Catherine the Great. As an old, old woman, she took her grandson, Nicholas, into her household to raise. She imbued him with her prejudice against the Russian nobility, although he did not understand that she despised them because she was German and they were not. He only imbibed the attitude of the autocrat. Raised to be profoundly orthodox, after the assassination of his father (a Russian diplomat once commented to the English minister at St. Petersburg: "Assassinations, that is our constitution."), he was chosen by the higest aristocratic families, as his elder brother was considered feeble-minded. Dissentient nobles attempted a coup using his brother, and failed, and deeply reinforced Nicholas' suspicion of them, and determination to rule in a completely autocratic manner. He published a slogan: "On Mother Russian, one Church, one Tsar." He meant it, too. As long as one was willing to surrender their native language for Russian, practice the Orthodox religion and swear (upon pain of instant death for betrayal) eternal fealty to the Tsar, they could be his buddy.

At the time of the Russo-Turkish war which became known as the Crimean war, ethnic groups in remote areas tried rebellion, but most caved in pretty quickly. The Chechens and Ingush, however, proceeded in the manner to which they had become accustomed, and slaughtered all the Orthodox people who could not escape. In 1855, at the height of the debacle at Sebastapol, Nicholas dispatched a large army to the Caucasus. For the next 23 years, the Russians hunted down all the tribesmen who would not accept Orthodox baptism (i.e., most of them), and slaughtered anyone in their path. It was a bloody campaign in which far more Russians lost their lives than in the late war.

There were petty uprisings thereafter, quickly crushed. In the First World War, the Chechens were brigaded together, and a Chechen division was used by Kolchak in his attempt to put the Petrograd revolutionaries out of business. Thereafter, the Chechens allied themselves with the White Russians, and enjoyed a tenuous autonomy for a generation. Then they were subjugated by the Red Army. In the Second World War, they allied themselves to the Germans, in yet another attempt to get out from under the Russian thumb, and to avenge themselves. In 1944, Stalin, as Nicholas had done before him, took significant military forces and diverted them from the main campaign, sending them into the mountains to crush the Chechens and Ingush. The Chechens who survived were rounded up and deported to central Asia, more than a thousand miles distant. They were not repatriated until a generation later, long after Stalin's death.

The bloodshed between Chechen and Russian has religion as a veneer, but the motivation is a deep tribal hatred and blood lust on both sides. An independent and viable Chechen state would be moderate Islam, because Islam has laid lightly on their culture, as was the case with the Balkan Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But the Russians will likely never allow it, and the slaughter will likely never end.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kyrgyz opposition, which seized power in a coup, will allow U.S. and Russian military bases to remain in the Central Asian state, the acting president was quoted as saying on Friday.

"Kyrgyzstan is not going to review its obligations concerning the military bases of anti-terrorist coalition on its territory," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Kurmanbek Bakiev as saying.

During the military operation in Afghanistan in 2001, Kyrgyzstan gave the United States part of a civilian airport Manas outside the capital Bishkek to set up an airbase, which is now home to 1,500 servicemen, and military aircraft.

In 2003 Russia was granted permission to set up its own airbase at Kant, 20 miles from Manas. About 500 Russian servicemen, and military aircraft, are stationed there.

The bases are a major source of income for the state coffers of the impoverished ex-Soviet republic. Some commentators say their leases give Kyrgyzstan up to 10 percent of its national budget.

Revolution that came too soon starts to fall apart in chaotic Kyrgyzstan

Mary Dejevsky reports from the capital on violent ethnic rivalry and a growing sense that no one is in control

27 March 2005


The success of Central Asia's first post-Soviet revolution was starting to look distinctly shaky last night, as Kyrgyzstan's self-appointed coalition struggled to form an interim government and assert the power it had won so precipitately earlier in the week. Reports from the capital, Bishkek, said that bands of youths, some armed, roamed the streets and sporadic looting continued. Local observers spoke of a growing sense that no one was in charge.

The ousted Kyrgyz president, Askar Akayev, meanwhile, was reported to be in Moscow, having flown there from his first point of refuge in neighbouring Kazakhstan. A defiant statement issued in his name and distributed by email yesterday said that he left the country "for humane reasons, so as to avoid bloodshed and prevent casualties". But his tone soon turned threatening. He remained president, he said, and "any attempt to deprive me of my presidential powers by unconstitutional means will be a state crime". He had been overthrown by "adventurers and conspirators".

While Mr Akayev's sudden re-emergence yesterday - and so far it remains "virtual" rather than physical - served to remind many about why he had been overthrown, it may also have sowed doubt in some quarters about the legitimacy, and the permanence, of the regime that has replaced him.

Under Kyrgyzstan's constitution - passed in 1993 after the republic had independence thrust upon it by the collapse of the Soviet Union - an absent or incapacitated President is replaced by the Prime Minister. In this case, however, the Prime Minister resigned shortly after Mr Akayev fled the country. Other senior ministers had just been dismissed by the President as punishment for the unrest that followed the parliamentary elections, as had the chief of police.

The temporary solution was an emergency meeting of the outgoing parliament late last Thursday, which appointed one of its members to be the new speaker - Ishenbay Kadyrbekov, a leading opposition figure who was a former minister for construction. Another opposition leader, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was named as acting prime minister and entrusted with forming an interim cabinet. He was quickly declared acting president as well.

Such sweeping changes, however, appear already to be running into trouble. Their legitimacy would seem to be questionable, at the very least, and is already inspiring opposition. The prospect of waiting until June for new elections, whether for a new president or a new parliament, will require a measure of patience that Kyrgyz voters - who forced their President out of office within a matter of days - may be disinclined to show. Those aspiring to power may well want to entrench themselves in office rather sooner.

Among the more ominous signs from Bishkek yesterday were reports of ad hoc militias being set up by individual ethnic groups, including Russians, intent on defending the lives and property of their own communities. Ethnic tension has long been high in the south of the country, where it borders on Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and it was violence in Osh in the south, Kyrgyzstan's second city, immediately after the second round of the parliamentary elections which arguably helped to fuel the unrest further north.

And, warning of a risk of civil war, the ousted interior minister said yesterday he was leading thousands of demonstrators towards the capital to protest against "the coup" that overthrew Mr Akayev. The new leadership said the action had fizzled out but later switched the venue of a news conference on word of a possible plot to kill the acting president, Mr Bakiyev.

The biggest difficulty for an interim administration, however, is that there is no central figure around whom the political opposition can rally. Although the precedents of Georgia and Ukraine have been repeatedly cited as models for the Kyrgyz "revolution", both these countries had strong opposition figures who commanded loyalty and provided a focus for political protest. And when they called on their supporters to show discipline, they were listened to. There is no such figure in Kyrgyzstan. Arguably, the revolution came too soon. The main figures named to the interim administration represent quite different groups and interests. They already appear to be jockeying among themselves for the presidency. This does not bode well for a united interim government - let alone one that will last until late June. There is not even consensus on how to describe the "revolution" - "tulip" or "daffodil".

The ignominious flight of the president as protesting crowds invaded the presidential compound and government buildings in Bishkek would not have been how Askar Akayev would have wanted to be remembered in Kyrgyzstan. When he came to power in 1990, it was as a mild-mannered nuclear physicist, with a doctorate from Leningrad (now St Petersburg) University, who was chosen from the ranks of the Communist Party in the wake of serious ethnic violence in the southern border areas of the republic. He was chosen precisely because he did not have the profile of a party hack, but that of a liberal and progressive politician rather in the mould of Mikhail Gorbachev, who would be able to keep the country together through turbulent times. This profile endeared him to the West, as did his decision a few months before the break-up of the Soviet Union to abandon Mr Gorbachev and throw in his lot with the Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin.

When I interviewed him in September 1991, he was eloquent in his hopes for his homeland - and confident that he could preside over the modernisation of Kyrgyzstan as a state and an economy. Even then, however, the contrast between his own education and outlook and that of the majority of his fellow-countrymen was sharp. I was sped in a convoy of government limousines for four hours from Bishkek to the presidential summer compound on the shore of the spectacular and legendary inland lake, Issyk-kul. The whole road had been cleared of traffic; only a few herdsmen on horseback were to be seen along the whole route. There was dinner, Russian-style, with the Akayev family and aides - and eventually the following day, postponed from one hour to the next, rather in the way of early oriental potentates, a formal interview.

In many ways, he also seemed personally caught between traditions. Thoroughly at home in a Russian milieu, he felt the weight of his responsibility as an educated Kyrgyz. Increasingly, he came to see himself as indispensable to his country's future. From 1996 he presided over constitutional changes that allowed him to remain in power. His now grown-up children were widely perceived to have benefited inordinately from patronage. The economic promises he had repeatedly made were felt to be empty.

More and more aware of how the rest of the world - and their Central Asian neighbours lived - and protested - increasing numbers of Kyrgyz seethed with resentment.

The test of the "tulip" - or is it the "daffodil"? - revolution will be whether Kyrgyz voters are content with the change they have forced. Or will they, in a few months' time, be wishing they had their old president back?