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Fergana's ghosts haunt Central
Asia
By M K Bhadrakumar
At a joint press conference in Paris last
Friday, after the summit meeting of Russia and
its "authoritative European partners" - France,
Germany and Spain - President Vladimir Putin posed
a meaningful question about "color" revolutions.
In the presence of French President Jacques Chirac
and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Putin
pointedly asked, "The West actively supported
President [Eduard] Shevardnadze [in Georgia] over
a period of many years. Why was it necessary to
topple him through revolution? And if it was
necessary to topple him through revolution, then
we can't help but ask [whom] the West was supporting
and why."
Putin went on to add, "All these
issues should be resolved on the basis of norms of
law and according to the prevalent constitution,
and then this question of a split in the country
would not arise so seriously."
Georgia
indeed is tiptoeing, almost unnoticed, back to its
old Caucasian ways - authoritarianism, cronyism
and corruption. The "velvet" revolution already
seems a distant dream.
But Putin could as well have
had Kyrgyzstan in mind. According to the latest
reports, crowds have seized control of government
establishments
in the center of two southern Kyrgyz cities in the
Fergana Valley region - Osh and Jalalabad. The
crowds number in their thousands. They have been
mostly brought in from outlying villages. They
have raised local grievances against regional
officials - grievances born out of poverty,
injustice and corruption.
The
government has so far responded with restraint,
allowing the disturbances to run their course,
even when they became violent or provocative.
President Askar Akayev has been quoted as saying,
"Some people do not agree with the outcome of the
poll  [parliamentary
elections of February 27 and March 13] and use it
to [pressure] the authorities. It has already led
to illegal actions, mass protests and attacks on
law-enforcing officials." Akayev offered to look
into any specific grievances of election
irregularities, but insisted that the election
mandate must be respected. Tension began to mount as the
demonstrators proceeded to take over local
administration in Osh and Jalalabad. The agitators
have installed parallel "governments". Osh and
Jalalabad have been sealed off from the capital
Bishkek.
What ought to have been a
joyful "color" revolution signifying "people's
power" is fast assuming the contours of a
potentially devastating fratricidal strife. Akayev
opened the first session of the new parliament in
Bishkek by saying the election results were valid.
He said he would neither heed the demonstrators'
demands that he annul the polls and resign, nor a
call by lawmakers that he announce a state of
emergency.
Akaev did, though, fire the interior minister
and prosecutor-general. The president's spokesman, Abdil
Seghizbaev, said that Interior Minister Bakirdin Subanbekov and Prosecutor-General
Myktybek Abdyldaev were "dismissed at their own request". But
the spokesman added that the dismissals were
linked to demonstrations in the southern part of the country
and their "poor work on preventing those events".
Now several factors are coming into play -
some internal and others regional and
international.
First and foremost, ghosts
from a controversial past that Josef Stalin had
arbitrarily (and forcefully) laid to rest in the
1920s, are stirring. The north-south divide is
surfacing in Kyrgyzstan. And, with that, a
troubling question arises: where are the
boundaries of the Kyrgyz nation?
The
disturbances had been unfolding in the south with
a cascading effect. Yet the northern provinces
were celebrating the ancient Persian festivities
of Nauroz, heralding the advent of spring. The
profound mutual alienation of the two regions
could not be more graphic.
This apart,
the agitators in Osh and Jalalabad comprise
ethnic Kyrgyz from the outlying villages, whereas
ethnic Uzbeks traditionally dominate the two
cities, especially the city administration. The
city dwellers, as anywhere, view the intruding
villagers with disdain. And in this case, the
urbanized ethnic Uzbeks and the migrant, rural
Kyrgyz communities also happen to be at vastly
different levels of social formation.
Roughly 20% of the 6 million population in
Kyrgyzstan consists of ethnic Uzbeks. Stalin could
as well have left the entire Fergana Valley
(originally consisting of six oblasts )
as part of Uzbekistan, but he chose to pry away
Osh and Jalalabad and make them part of Kyrgyzstan
- "compensating" Uzbekistan instead with the
great Tajik cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and
Khiva. Soviet power had just recently smashed the
"Basmachi" revolt in Central Asia. And Stalin was
a past master on the nationality question.
On
the whole, the southern region in Kyrgyzstan
also harbors a sense of injustice, being
economically less developed than the north and
with a keen sense of deprivation over being dominated
politically over the years by the northern
clans ensconced in the power structure in Bishkek
(formerly Frunze).
The Kyrgyz predicament
is in a way like Iraq's - a cartographic
expression yearning for nationhood. Akayev has
been striving sincerely all through his years in
power to project a composite Kyrgyz culture and
personality. He dipped deep into the ancient myths
of the Kyrgyz people to evolve a national
identity. He glorified the ancient epic of "Manas"
with deliberation as a matter of state policy. He
knew the journey was long and went about it
diligently. But, sadly, with the concerted
US attack on his standing as a national
figure in the recent period, the glue with which
he was cementing the Kyrgyz divides is threatened.
What directions can the events take in the
coming weeks? Two "happy" outcomes are possible.
First, the disturbances may begin to spread to
the north of Kyrgyzstan, especially Bishkek, in
the days ahead and a "color" revolution could
indeed take place in Kyrgyzstan. On the positive
side, that will unify the country. Or,
alternatively, the poor people venting their
pent-up passions in the city centers of Osh and
Jalalabad could incrementally become worn out and
trudge their way back from active politics to the
drudgery of their day-to-day struggle for
survival.
Unfortunately, neither of these
agreeable outcomes seems certain. From all
indications, the northern regions of Kyrgyzstan do
not have shared interests at this point with the
agitators in Osh and Jalalabad. They seem to be
backing Akayev. They see no reason to upset the
apple cart for the sake of the handful of
disgruntled politicians in the Osh and Jalalabad
regions who lost out in the recent elections. By
the same token, the self-seeking politicians in
Osh and Jalalabad who have mobilized "people's
power" cannot be in a mood to compromise, unless
Akayev somehow or the other accommodates them.
But can Akayev "undo" the election
results? From all accounts, he did not manipulate
the election outcome. The two political parties
that openly backed him - Alga Kyrgyzstan and
Adilet - together secured only 24 seats in the
75-member parliament. The "opposition" parties won
seven seats. The rest are mostly businessmen who
contested as independents and whose freewheeling
loyalties are uncertain.
Again, even if
Akayev were to somehow accommodate half a dozen
disgruntled local figures from Osh and Jalalabad,
would that pacify the Bishkek-based high-flying
leaders of the "opposition"? Unlikely, since the
latter stand to gain nothing out of such a deal.
Actually, at the moment, the "opposition" cannot
quite agree whether to talk to Akayev, let alone
what to talk about.
In any search of a
negotiated settlement of the present crisis,
Akayev's main problem would be that the opposition
comprises personalities each of whom would have
his own agenda. They are erstwhile elements of the
Kyrgyz establishment with no reformist agenda as
such. Vaulting political ambitions drive them.
The parallels with Georgia and Ukraine
were self-evident. Somehow usurp power and then
proceed swiftly to legitimize the power grab in a
blaze of revolutionary idiom - the US
approach to Kyrgyzstan remained substantially the
same. The major difference was that unlike in
Tibilisi and Kiev, the Americans could not
catapult any single personality as the charioteer
of the revolution.
Take the case of
former foreign minister and opposition leader
Roza Otunbaeva, for instance. She is the darling of
the Americans. When she was foreign minister, she
even kept US nationals as her "aides" - a strange
practice in diplomacy by any reckoning. She is
arguably in the mold of Georgia's Mikhael
Saakashvili. But she is not eligible to contest
the elections as per the country's electoral laws
because she was domiciled abroad during the past
five years. Naturally, at the present juncture,
she altogether rejects any discourse with Akayev.
Nothing short of Akayev's removal and a change of
the country's electoral laws would suit her
purpose.
In comparison, a
local figure from the south, Kurmanbek Bakiev (who
lost the March 13 election), would settle for a
formula that could somehow facilitate his
membership in parliament. Bakiev is understandably
calling for "dialogue" with Akayev.
A decisive factor in the outcome of this
crisis would be the attitude of outside powers.
All indications are that the Central Asian
leaderships are backing Akayev. They have correctly
estimated the grave implications for regional stability
if the US agenda of permanent revolutions were
to gain traction in Central Asia. They surely
realize the potency of the nationality question in
Central Asia. Moreover, despite the countless
intra-regional squabbles, at the end of the day,
they lay primacy on stability and the bounds of
the law and constitution.
China,
traditionally, would remain aloof from happenings
in a neighboring country, though it would watch
the turn of events closely. China has high stakes
in Kyrgyzstan's stability.
The
million-dollar question will be the US approach.
The midwife should know by now that the revolution
was struggling to be born - and that it could
be a stillborn baby. Would the Americans have
bargained for this much to happen in Fergana in
such a short time frame? One can never quite
tell.
Certainly, the nationality question
holds the potential to trigger a maelstrom and
overthrow the established state power all over
Central Asia - liberating the region in one sweep
into a brave new "post-Soviet" world. Certainly,
any such cataclysms or regime changes in the
region will pose existential dilemmas to both the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Equally so,
China's Xinjiang may become volatile. A sizable
Uighur community with a track record of militancy
is known to be living in Kyrgyzstan. Akayev kept
it under surveillance.
It is
extremely significant that the European powers
have conspicuously distanced themselves from
the US drive to engineer revolutions in Central
Asia.
As for Russia, it has
an obligation to intervene in Kyrgyzstan under the
provisions of the CSTO, if push comes to a shove.
But that remains a far-fetched scenario. On the
other hand, Moscow has considerable all-around
influence within the Kyrgyz political spectrum and,
unlike in Ukraine, it took abundant
precautions in Kyrgyzstan against being labeled the "antithesis"
of democracy. Russia also finds itself occupying
the moral high ground. The Kyrgyz developments
vindicate what Putin stated in Paris last Friday
about the "velvet" revolution. Thus the
developing crisis in Kyrgyzstan poses for Moscow a
challenge and an opportunity.
M K
Bhadrakumar is a former Indian career diplomat
who has served in Islamabad, Kabul, Tashkent and
Moscow.
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