|
|
|
|
THE ROVING EYE
What kind of
revolution is this?
By Pepe
Escobar
Was
it people power? Was it a coup?
Or was it just the toppling of a clan? With the
same lightning speed with which it materialized, the
March 24 revolutionary object called the Tulip
Revolution has disappeared like a comet in the
geopolitical cosmos.
For four
days, Kyrgyzstan had two parliaments. Then last
Monday the new Kyrgyz parliament appointed
Kurmanbek Bakiyev as premier and interim
president. Actually, this was happening for the second
time, because Bakiyev had already been confirmed by
the previous parliament, elected in 2000
and controlled by now-ousted president Askar Akayev.
The agreement was nothing less than extraordinary,
considering that the Kyrgyz parliamentary
elections were rejected as a total fraud by the
opposition and the few thousand Tulip
revolutionaries who took a few buses, crossed the
snowy passes of this Switzerland of Central Asia
northward, and forced Akayev to flee to Russia.
It gets curiouser. Bakiyev reneged
on all he had said before - when he
was forcefully calling for an annulment of
the parliamentary elections. Instead, all the key
opposition leaders - Bakiyev, the "people's" general,
Felix Kulov, and former foreign minister Roza Otunbaeva
- duly supported the new, theoretically
fraudulent parliament. Parliamentary fraud will be - also
theoretically - eradicated by a new election, but
only "in a dozen electoral districts", according
to the new premier.
Bakiyev - a former
prime minister - got his job back. Kulov - former
head of the local KGB - was put in charge of
security, the police and the army - he resigned in
the middle of the week, saying "the situation was
stabilized". And Otunbaeva is also back heading
the Foreign Ministry. They are all former Akayev
proteges. And they are all familiar faces in
Washington.
This was not exactly a classic
revolution in the making - one order has fallen
but a new one has not yet been born; it was rather
"meet the new boss, same as the old boss". From
Russia, Akayev blasted the new government as
"illegitimate" on Radio Echo Moscow, and blamed
everything on Islamic radicals, while also saying
he would consider negotiating his resignation -
but only with the Speaker of the new parliament,
Omurbek Tekebayev. No wonder: Akayev's son Aidar,
his daughter Bermet and his key adviser are among
the new parliamentarians.
Observers of the
Bush doctrine and its correlated gospel of
spreading "freedom and democracy" immediately
noticed this was not color-coordinated with the
Georgian velvet and Ukrainian orange revolutions.
The romantic whiff of a rebellion of the
disfranchised masses against widespread
corruption by the elite quickly vanished. No old
nomenclature swept away. Not a single opposition
leader blaming Akayev for stealing their
elections.
Instead, the atmosphere reeked
of backroom deals between Moscow and Bishkek.
Mikhail Margelov, head of the Russian Federation
Council's International Affairs Committee, got
closer to the truth when he said that Moscow
"welcomes revolutions of any color in Kyrgyzstan,
except a green [Islamic radical] one". This means
that the "new" Kyrgyzstan won't even be able to go
hiking in the Tian Shan Mountains without the
Kremlin's approval.
The US State
Department for its part did not lose any sleep over
the legitimacy of the new government: "We're
dealing with reality on the ground [in Kyrgyzstan]
with the understanding that what happens should
happen consistent with the rule of law, consistent
with the will of the Kyrgyz people and supported
by the international community." But the
international community could not support anything
because no one knew what was going on.
The best is yet to come
Russian analysts seem to have nailed the contrast
between Georgia and Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Mikhail Saakashvili in Tbilisi and Viktor Yushchenko
in Kiev were keen to integrate their countries
into US and European economic and security
spheres. And there was a strong anti-Kremlin
element to their revolutions as well - although
both leaders know they can't afford to alienate
the Kremlin. None of these elements were visible
in the Tulip Revolution.
Boris
Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute for
Globalization Studies in Moscow, offers a more
nuanced explanation: "As soon as Washington
realizes that popular dissent is rising in a
country and that regime change is imminent, it
immediately begins to seek out new partners among
the opposition. The success of this policy owes in
part to the widespread belief that you're better
off enlisting shady characters' support than
crossing swords with them. The money invested in
the opposition by various [non-governmental
organizations] is a sort of insurance policy,
ensuring that regime change will not result in a
change of course, and that if change is
inevitable, it will not be radical."
For
Kagarlitsky, Washington "works to maintain the
status quo"; the Americans "understand that sometimes
leaders have to change for policy to remain the
same". Paradoxically, he adds, "Moscow is trying
to achieve the very same thing. It fears serious
changes in the former Soviet republics more than
anything in the world."
If the Tulip
Revolution is a case of leaders changing and
policy remaining the same, the new leaders may be
up for a rude awakening quite soon. The Russian
daily Nezavissimaia Gazeta has stressed "a
backward step of 20 years" in Kyrgyzstan, abysmal
economic degradation, and thus the possibility of
"a new wave of instability and disorder. Without
solving the old problems, the new leaders already
have many enemies among the disenfranchised."
Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbaev,
Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, Turkmenistan's
Saparmurat Niyazov and Tajikistan's Emomalai
Rakhmonov will certainly need a lot of sedatives
nowadays to get some sleep. Bush doctrine
evangelists - whatever the outcome of the Tulip
Revolution - are desperate for more regime change
in Central Asia. Talking about revolution, we
ain't seen nothing yet. The real deal could happen
in Uzbekistan. Karimov - the Central Asian Saddam
Hussein - better start preparing that escape route
rolled up inside a Bukhara carpet.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
