Does anyone know what is going on in Kyrgyzstan? I simply haven’t been following it at all, but I see references in the foreign press more frequently, so I’m assuming things are heating up. It is a region I know simply nothing about.
Any background or anyone with knowledge care to discuss?
Mike Kay (Team America)
the usual spring break rioting.
Adam
Professor Horton writes a great deal about it, as well as what’s going on in several of the other Stans. If you go to his website and search about you’ll find some good stuff:
http://harpers.org/subjects/NoComment
Chad S
Ethnic minority(Uzbeks) generally protected by strong central government getting attacking by ethnic majority(Kyrgyzs) taking advantage of a recent coup d’etat to settle imagined scores when the government is looking to solidify their rule. Apparently this has happened whenever there’s any wobble in the central leadership since the Soviets pulled out(which is why the Uzbeks are asking for Russian troops).
This is extremely relevant for us since the biggest air base which supports our troops in Afghanistan is in Kyrgyzstan.
The Dangerman
Have no idea, but John McCain just released a statement saying we are all Kyrgyzstanis now.
rnoble
@The Dangerman: Whatever happened, the one thing we know is that it wasn’t Georgia’s fault.
srv
Uhm, I assume you’re the only blogger who hasn’t seen the video of the Uzbeks being burned alive?
Comrade Luke
OT:
Howie interviews Michael Hastings about his Rolling Stone piece, and proves he (Kurtz) has no clue.
These guys are just oblivious wrt what their role it. DC is just a big high school cafeteria.
Ann A.
Is this thread about me?
Kered (formerly Derek)
@srv:
…lol!
Mike Kay (Team America)
@rnoble: I wonder how many americans know that there is a foreign country named Georgia.
matoko_chan
Here’s brother thabet’s archives. he’s pretty thorough for a brit.
TalkIslam-kyrgyzstan tags
cat48
Another ethnic war, plus you should be happy to know they asked the US to send troops & got a flat NO.
OriGuy
Kyrgyzstan is Russian for Rwanda. By that I mean that the Russian Empire colonized Central Asia centuries ago, just as the Western European powers colonized Africa. The borders they drew had little relationship to the people who lived there, but as long as the colonial powers were in control, it didn’t matter too much.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
plus you should be happy to know they asked the US to send troops & got a flat NO.
No oil there, huh?
SRW1
@Chad S:
Slight correction: Formally, the Manas base is no longer a US air base, but a ‘transit center’, which indeed is critically important for channeling US troops in and out of Afghanistan and for supplying them. The change in status probably didn’t receive all that much attention at the time, but it appears to have been a ‘compromise’ by the then Kyrgyz government, the US and Russia after the Russians had flexed their muscle and allegedly had offered the Kyrgyz $2 billion in financial aid if they closed the base. Sort of a reminder by Moscow to the US at the time that they were still relevant.
SRW1
@cat48:
Actually, they also asked the Russians to send troops and seem to have gotten a flat No there as well, although that position may have softened a bit in recent days.
David
Aside from the unfortunate ethnic violence, they are holding a referendum on a new constitution today.
This election is being held only several months after the violent overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Bakiyev came to power himself through a coup several years ago. He promised democratic reforms but failed to follow through. The interim government has decided to go through with the elections despite the ongoing violence. The Kyrgyzstan government has asked for help from both the United States and Russia in restoring order, but both have declined.
meepmeep09
@matoko_chan: That looks like a really good news aggregator site. Craig Murray’s site linked there is also a good specific read for the area in general – he was UK’s ambassador to Kyrgyzstan’s neighbor Uzbekistan in 2002-4, but refused to quietly play ball in light of the especially nasty government abuses of its citizens there, so he is long departed from the UK Foreign Service.
A few other sites (likely to also show up on the site linked by matoko_chan) – all links going to Kyrgyzstan-tagged post listings (I’m more familiar with the first two):
registan.net
neweurasia.net
eurasianet.org
I got interested in this area after reading Ted Rall’s book The Silk Road to Ruin, an account of Rall’s several trips to the Central Asian (aka ‘Turkestan’) area. It’s a fascinating but tragic part of the world, still churning and staggering after being cut loose from the old USSR.
kdaug
Boy, this great game is fun isn’t it? Which -stan are we toying with now? Kyrgyzstan?
Isn’t that where they boil people alive? No? That’s Kazakhstan? Oh, well, there’s lots of other -stans to play with.
Who’s next? Uzbekistan? Turkmenistan? Tajikistan? Fun stuff!
Playing Empire is the BEST!
red plaid
I would start by reading Sean Paul Kelley’s background analysis (and the comments) on The Agonist. He has more recent posts about the current situation too.
I highly recommend reading The Agonist, especially anything Numerian posts. His comments on the financial markets have been very informative.
Nick
What the hell is a Kyrgyzstan?
Nick
@Chad S:
Which probably explains the violence. Wherever we go, a coup is sure to follow.
Laura
Craig Murray is very knowledgeable.
monkeyboy
@kdaug: “Oh, well, there’s lots of other -stans to play with.”
An interesting thing is that “-stan” is a Persian ending and most of these places were part of Greater Iran before being swallowed by the Russian Empire.
If Iran had their shit together they would probably be a major power factor in the region.
Laura
Also, Registan (their motto: All Central Asia, All The Time).
Amaliada
Since we are able to watch a combination of RT, Al Jazeera English, and the BBC we were able to see that the election was held yesterday (Sunday) and a lot of people voted.
The Kyrgyzstan government also sent out mobile polling stations to go door to door to allow those Uzbeks who were afraid to leave their houses go and vote.
At last report, it seemed that turnout was 65%.
Your earlier commentators have covered the earlier events of this spring.
Viva BrisVegas
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Only the Beatles fans.
Anyway, the real worry are the ones who don’t realise that New York is named after a foreign place.
New Yorker
The usual fucked-up stuff that our species has been doing to one another for thousands of years.
I generally feel that the best argument against intelligent design is the human race itself. No intelligent creator would create us with a brain capable of harnessing nuclear energy, yet at the same time give us the urge to use said nuclear energy to incinerate people we’ve never met because they looked/talked/ate differently than us.
srv
@Kered (formerly Derek): Wasn’t trying to make a funny.
Calouste
@Viva BrisVegas:
New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and then we’re not even down to the county/city level yet.
fucen tarmal
kim broke up with reggie bush, and is dating miles austin miles or something like that. khloe’s husband just won a ring so the rumor is that the family’s poon is the new breakfast of champions, but kourtney’s boyfriend called the neighbor fat and cops were called…
this has been keeping up with the Kyrgyzstan’s
kdaug
@fucen tarmal: Wait… you’re being funny, aren’t you?
Hee, I get it. You are funny!
I just LOVE playing Empire! Can we do it forever???
Sirkowski
There’s the possibility that the former president has hired the Talibans to destabilize the new government.
josephdietrich
There’s a vowel shortage there, which is causing ethnic strife. Plus, there are murderous pricks everywhere.
Here is a list of all the NYT reporting on Kyrgyzstan.
Batocchio
Adam beat me to it. Check out Scott Horton at No Comment for one source. Here’s two of his posts on the subject, that lead to other segments:
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/06/hbc-90007254
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/06/hbc-90007224
bob h
I look at this sort of thing and wonder whether we will not vulnerable to the same some day, given the way our politics are deteriorating.
frankdawg
@monkeyboy:
Underdog
– After Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan is probably the most stable ‘stan’ in Central Asia.
– I think all of the nations in Central Asia are Sunni Muslim.
– The language in Central Asia is a Turkic language, except for Tajikistan, which speaks a Persian variant.
– The Soviets purposely drew up the most of the ‘stans’ to create constant conflict and turmoil. For example, there are many Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan (the problem today). Tajiks live in many countries, such as Uzbekistan, and Afganistan, in addition to Tajikistan. Etc, etc, etc.
NameRequired
@Calouste:
Virginia is not named after a foreign place, but a foreign person Elizabeth “The virgin Queen” 1 of England.
Byfuglien (pronounced Bufflin)
@Laura: This.
fucen tarmal
@kdaug:
and your reply might sting, if i knew what “empire” was.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (iwpr.net), Internation Crisis Group (http://www.crisisgroup.org/), or the Christian Science Monitor (csmonitor.com).
The International Crisis Group does particularly good analysis. If you want to know what fucked-up shit in the world is going to be on the news 3-5 years from now, go visit their site.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Not specific to this situation, but I remember when I was travelling Uzbekistan in 1991 a month after the Soviet Union disintergrated that there were riots between Tajiks and either Uzbeks or Turkmen in Samarkand, which meant I had to avoid going there.
Sad, ‘cos I really wanted to see Uleg-Bek’s Observatory.
Anyway, just indicative that there have been ethnic tensions there for a while – either a result of Soviet “let’s move these people like chess pawns” ethnic movements or from the X number of invasions/empires that have been and gone there.
flagpole
fairly simple, really: the whole area has been a clusterfuck since time immemorial. that it was divided along administrative lines by the USSR, with some thought of divide and conquer, is true. but there were no real boundaries anyhow, on a macro scale: the political divisions were essentially city states, where there were any at all: Bukhara, Khiva, Samarkhand, yadda. I lived in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) for a year while I was getting a useless MA, and was struck by the fact that a) those on one side of the river (I think it was the Amu Darya) were supposed to hate those on the other, regardless of ethnicity; b) there were no significant isoglosses among the Turkic speakers, i.e. the language morphed very gradually from recognizable Uzbek in the south of town to recognizable Kazakh in the north, without any real jump-changes; c) the population is incredibly diverse from a physiological point of view, include folks who looked almost Chinese to the “pink” Uzbeks, who could have hailed from Ohio, complete with red hair and fair complexions.
fact is, all of “Turkestan” remains effectively tribal, so politics get messy. in all likelihood, had the former Soviet Central Asian republics not been effectively absorbed by Russia, it probably would have been more of a Greater Afghanistan than a Greater Persia.
Kyrghyzstan has generally been fairly quiet since the SU fell apart, in large part because nobody wanted it for anything in particular: it’s probably hip-deep in resources, but it’s back of beyond relative to anybody who might be able to use them. I’d bet that the current troubles are in large part a scuffle over the gravy train provided by the US transit facilities. the folks who pulled off this latest coup were theoretically idealists, and that may be true, but the folks they pushed out will probably do pretty much anything it takes to get their paws back on the goodies.
with respect to the “ethnic” component, again, it’s largely a matter of perception, with minimal basis in either linguistic or cultural differences, as a rule. therefore it’s pretty easily manipulated. That’s a large part of what’s going on now.
acallidryas
@origuy
Actually, the borders the Russians’ drew had a very strong relationship to the people who lived there. They specifically tried to draw the borders in such a way that they would intersect different communities, and that resources would be split up, in order to keep any one ethnic group from having too much power and being able to split away. The Ferghana Valley, where much of this violence has been occurring, is one such area. It’s a very fertile area, with water, and one of the most populous areas in Central Asia. It’s also been divided up between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and the ethnic groups don’t divide themselves along those borders. There’s been a recent explosion of violence, but there have been ethnic tensions in the region barely below the surface forever. They’ve been really set off this time based on the belief that Uzbeks are supporting the former president. He had come into power after a coup, promised to restore democracy, and immediately set about dismantling what democracy had existed before. As generally seems to happen after a coup.
Kyrgyzstan was actually one of the more stable and democratic areas before all this happened. But they have had occassional rioting and outbreaks of violence. I think many of the commenters have pointed you towards lots and lots of background reporting. I’d also add International Crisis Group which has, hands down, some of the best briefs to catch you up on conflicts from around the world.
And kdaug-Uzbekistan is where they boil people.
Just Some Fuckhead
The revolution in Iran is spreading.
Origuy
@acallidryas:
Thanks, I didn’t know the Russians had done it deliberately. It makes me wonder how much the English, French, etc. had done the same thing in Africa. It’s not an area of history that I’ve studied much. Too depressing.
Brachiator
The current issue of BBC History Magazine has a useful short background piece on the region, Chaos in Central Asia. A few tidbits.
In medieval times, Central Asia was a region of vast cities, larger than those in Europe. There was a total urban collapse by the mid-18th century. Shifts in Mughal India and the rise of the Russian empire helped accelerate the collapse.
Later Russian domination was magnified as Russia tried to prevent British influence from spreading in the region, in the 19th century.
A truly odd unforeseen consequence. In the mid 19th century, “Russia needed the region’s cotton-growing potential to replace supplies abruptly cut off by the American Civil War.
The establishment of “countries” in the region was a byproduct of Soviet domination and Marxist theory, “which stated that before an ethnic group could progress to socialism, it must develop a national consciousness.”
Stalin murdered most of the region’s intelligentsia in the 1930s.
BBC News has a useful background to the recent outbreak of ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan (Q&A: Kyrgyzstan’s ethnic violence). According to the UN, “some 400,000 people have been displaced, with thousands of Uzbeks fleeing across the border to Uzbekistan.”
I remember that when Rall briefly had a talk show on a local Southern California radio station, he took a group to all the ‘stans and later presented an audio documentary of the trip. Tremendously fascinating stuff, and you got a sense of how difficult it was in some of the ‘stans.
Brachiator
A post is in moderation limbo again. Here is a version that hopefully does not offend the InterTube deities.
The current issue of BBC History Magazine has a useful short background piece on the region, Chaos in Central Asia. A few tidbits.
In medieval times, Central Asia was a region of vast cities, larger than those in Europe. There was a total urban collapse by the mid-18th century. Shifts in the economic stability of Mughal India and the rise of the Russian empire helped accelerate the collapse.
Later Russian domination was magnified as Russia tried to prevent British influence from spreading in the region, in the 19th century.
A truly odd unforeseen consequence. In the mid 19th century, “Russia needed the region’s cotton-growing potential to replace supplies abruptly cut off by the American Civil War.
The establishment of “countries” in the region was a byproduct of Soviet domination and Marxist theory, “which stated that before an ethnic group could progress to socialism, it must develop a national consciousness.”
Stalin murdered most of the region’s intelligentsia in the 1930s.
The BBC news site has a useful report on the recent rise of ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan. The UN says some 400,000 people have been displaced, with thousands of Uzbeks fleeing across the border to Uzbekistan.
The situation appears to be very messy. A lowlight: