Page 2 of
2 SPEAKING
FREELY North-south divide fuels Kyrgyz
mistrust By Ryskeldi
Satke
The UN report says that organized
crime groups involved in the trafficking of
narcotics operate under the control of high
ranking officials in the Kyrgyz Government.
Political disturbances in the last decade
have exacerbated the north-south divide causing a
de-facto disintegration of the country into
separate entities. The central government and
provincial authorities are now running their own
zones separately, with Osh, Jala-Abad and Batken
in the south refusing to accept the rule of the
new government in Bishkek.
The south's
refusal to obey the political establishment in
Bishkek has created negative image of the
government in the South, which
was already devastated
by the inter-ethnic strife.
The Kyrgyz
population in the southern provinces believes that
the Interim Government abandoned the south during
those three days of the mass bloodshed in June
2010, according to reports from the local
journalists. This opinion is widely shared on the
ground in Osh and Jala-Abad where the violence
peaked.
This remains as one of the
underlying factors behind the inability of the
central government to intervene into widespread
abuse of state laws in the matters associated with
the aftermath of the conflict between Kyrgyz and
Uzbeks. Particularly, a subdivisional disbalance
of the North-South factions added to the hardships
of the ethnic Uzbek community that is already hit
by the wave of persecution in disproportionate
fashion.
Russian affairs in
Kyrgyzstan The Kremlin's role in the
internal affairs of Kyrgyzstan correlates with the
shift in regional geopolitics that saw Central
Asia became a critical logistics hub serving needs
of the Western coalition troops stationed in
Afghanistan.
Moscow sees Kyrgyzstan as a
vital strategic location for power projection and
influence in the region. Russia's aggressive
actions have been observed throughout the past 10
years and have transformed Kyrgyzstan into a home
for foreign military bases.
The US Air
Force Base Manas in Bishkek plays an important
role in the refueling operations for US-NATO
military aircraft in Afghanistan. Western press
reports also state that a sizable chunk of NATO's
combat troops pass through Bishkek in and out of
Afghanistan, making clear the significance of the
Kyrgyz transit hub to Washington's planning.
Moscow, concerned with a "loose end" in
its backyard, has stepped up its efforts in
consolidating geopolitical power via maintaining
and building Russian military bases in the Kyrgyz
Republic.
The Kremlin uses a variety of
tools to dominate the Kyrgyz Republic. Russia's
intelligence services have played crucial part in
enforcing Moscow's blueprint in Kyrgyzstan, and
this was sharply exposed in the months prior to
regime change in the spring of 2010.
According to some reports, the Russia's
FSB (Federal Security) provided support and
resources (surveillance equipment, consulting and
training) to security departments of the Bakiyev
regime to use against the opposition. There was a
chain of high-profile assassinations of Kyrgyz
politicians and independent journalists in 2009.
One of them was a former chief of the Bakiyev's
administration, Sadyrkulov, who was killed along
with his two colleagues in the car on the way back
from Almaty (Kazakhstan) after meeting with the US
State Department officials. [3]
In the
second half of 2009, Moscow turned the tables on
the Bakiyev regime. Seemingly abandoned by the
Kremlin after its surprise Manas airbase agreement
with the US, the regime's relations with Russia
cooled faster than ever before. Over the course of
the autumn-winter of 2009 to early spring of 2010,
there were multiple visits by regime opponents to
the Kremlin headquarters in Moscow.
The
Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies stated
in a report that “Russia was the only country to
openly support the Interim Government - a fact
that speaks for itself. In a phone conversation
with Prime Minister Valdimir Putin, Otunbayeva was
promised material support". [4]
Russian
intelligence services routinely monitor the
internal political rivalry between factions of the
north and south, according to Kyrgyz analysts. A
similar tactic was widely used by KGB a few
decades back in Afghanistan when the politburo
collected "day to day" data on the status of the
inside Khalq-Parchami factional split in the
Communist Party of Afghanistan. [5]
The
term of "Afghanization" of Kyrgyzstan was raised
by Russia's ex-President Dmitiri Medvedev in June
2010 during a meeting with the President of
Uzbekistan, while the south Kyrgyz Republic dived
into complete chaos. Given the Kremlin's history
of switching sides in the modern politics of
Kyrgyzstan, Russia's policies of fueling
inter-regional divide is seen as counter
productive among the expert communities of the
country and neighboring states.
The
Kremlin also enjoys extremely valuable media space
in Kyrgyzstan. Moscow employs various information
delivery systems modeled for propaganda purposes
or media wars. That Russia's First channel's news
had coverage from western Kyrgyzstan where the
uprising against the Bakiyev regime took hold in
the early April 2010 confirms close interaction of
the Kremlin's intelligence with the Kyrgyz
opposition at the time when the rest of the
regional and world news organizations were caught
off guard.
Moscow's aggressive propaganda
wars have been observed in Belarus, Georgia and
Ukraine but nowhere effectively as in Kyrgyzstan.
Ironically, one of the Kyrgyz opponents of the
regime, Tekebayev was seen as a powerful
contributor to the Russian anti-Bakiyev
information campaign in March 2010 only to appear
as a target of the same Moscow-based TV channel in
October 2010 in the run up to Parliamentary
elections.
Additionally, the Russian
government allocates funds for various projects
aimed at supporting the Kremlin's interests in
Kyrgyzstan. According to sources in Bishkek, the
Embassy of Russia in Kyrgyz Republic is at the
center of the stage providing support to
pro-Kremlin NGOs, groups and individuals
reflecting on Moscow's policy in the country. .
Ryskeldi Satke is a contributing
writer with research institutions and news
organizations in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia,
Caucauses and Turkey. He can be contacted at
rsatke@gmail.com
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