Kyrgyzstan, officially
the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous,
it borders Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan
to the southwest and the People's Republic of China to the southeast. Kyrgyzstan
means the "Land of Forty Tribes". According to July 2005 estimates, the
population was 5,264,000, the large majority (76.1 percent) being Muslims.
Kyrgyzstan's Revolution :
a New Definition of "Partytime"? by Angelique van Engelen
Kyrgyzstan's swift and sudden
revolution happened almost before one could have managed to pronounce this
obscure country's name. The chaos in the country where activists chased
away their ruling leaders show a country coming to terms with a colonial
past and on a quest to find a new identity. Despite the looting and the
- tempered- violence, the initial reading of this revolution is that the
catharsis might preclude a positive outcome. Not so much only for this
tiny country, but more importantly perhaps in the wider context of the
rise of democracy in the ex Soviet countries. Even the Russian leader Vladimir
Putin has shown a new attitude to regime change in a former Soviet state
- vouching support for the new regime and also promising to treat its old
leader kindly. Kyrgyzstan's revolution likely will have opened the doors
to a more pragmatic government that nevertheless will still be leaning
on Russia. As such, it will be the third of the ex-Soviet countries that
has seen a grassroots revolution within the last 18 months that Russia
has had to swallow. Opposition activists took matters into their own hands
to ensure -what else- improved living conditions for a people that have
become seriously impoverished at the hands of a not so corrupt but still
corrupt bunch of leaders.
| Kyrgyz nationals followed
in the footsteps of Georgian and Ukrainian opposition forces. In Georgia,
the opposition - backed by the US government- overthrew their Russian puppet
cabinet in 2003. More recently, Ukraine last December held another round
of Presidential elections after the pro -Moscow outcome of the first round
was contested - putting in place the pro Western Viktor Yuschenko. Russia's
reaction to the events, which one overseas based Kyrgyz diplomat branded
'a coup', can be seen as uncharacteristic. Perhaps issuing a blue print
of a new party line - one of utter pragmatism- President Vladimir Putin
did not waste many words over the issue. Moscow is 'ready to work with
the Kyrgyz opposition', he said. He also offered refuge to Akayev. Russia
has never been very much interested in this poorest of the five Central
Asian states. |
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Regional organizations aside
from Russia that might be called onto for mediation are not immediately
considered capable of inventing an adequate solution, observers say.
Most of the five central Asian countries have internal problems and have
had difficulties in coping with fledgling economies since well before the
fall of the Soviet Union. After 1991, the region has failed to develop
any robust political and economic institutions with clout and this is believed
to have an impact on the economic development of the countries, most particularly
that of Kyrgyzstan. There is also a lot of personal competition between
the region's -mostly elderly- leaders and this attitude, which harks back
to Soviet days. This highlights why a distinct cooperative atmosphere in
Central Asia is simply non-existent.
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Russian imperialist ambitions
never really very strongly connected to Kyrgyzstan, although Russia has
some troops on the ground. US troops are also stationed outside the airport
in the capital Bishkek in accommodation that recently started to take a
more permanent form than the tents the soldiers set up when they first
arrived some two years ago, say people who've visited the country. The
base camp was meant to be a "staging ground" for US troops before the fall
of the Taleban in Afghanistan. All central Asian countries have long been
cited to be particularly vulnerable to outside interference from greater
powers, yet it's unlikely that the events we've seen this week in Kyrgyzstan
were the result of outside meddling. The last years, the country has shown
an ambivalence toward anything that reaks of hegemony. |
On the one hand there has
been fear that Russia would step up its influence and at the same time
people have wondered what would happen to them if Russian troops would
leave. Kyrgyzstan is the only country in the Central Asian region to have
very limited oil reserves -it pumps out 2,000 bpd- and as such it has escaped
every foreign power with an interest in the region. Just after the fall
of the Soviet Union, an enormous discovery of oil reserves under the Caspian
Sea was made, which it was believed would put the region on a par with
the Middle East in terms of oil reserves and would make it the number one
spot for natural gas in the world. Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazachstan, Uzbekistan
and Turkmenistan mutually agreed to carve up the rights to the undersea
reserves. The estimates however were somewhat exaggerated and the region's
oil interests are of distinct yet not vital importance. The events in Kyrgyzstan
did surprise the leading parties as much as the rest of the world. The
irony in this is that the leaders apparently think they have eternal rule
so long as they manage to create the circumstances that keep this situation
the status quo. By foregoing their duties to create truly collaborative
institutions with their neighboring countries and by failing to instigate
domestic democratic support, they relied on mechanisms similar to those
their predecessors before them had relied on without considering that their
home base was expecting change. Not creating the systems necessary to effect
better democracies and market economies, the leaders slowly developed a
blind spot for the possibility that a transfer of power might occur. Over
time, dramatic catharses tend to be the result as Kyrgyzstan has shown.
Observers say that now it's likely dawned on everyone that Russia is not
going to be able to increase its role in the country and that the US will
only lend its support to democratic movements.
It's all up to the people
themselves to create a new structure out of what they so joyously went
to town on during their short revolution.
| The only other source that
could manifest an ambition toward becoming a regional hegemony wishing
to exert influence is Uzbekistan, which is better equipped on a unilateral
level and also happens to be the region's largest natural gas developer.
The country has indicated its wish to improve intimate ties with its neighbours
and has on occasion started to officially delineate its borders, an old
Soviet way of showing who's boss. However, after the events in Kyrgyzstan,
the country quickly pinpointed on its map where the border had been and
closed it off without further deliberation. Kyrgyzstan's largely impoverished
market economy has hardly got a chance of picking up rapidly and international
worries that its largely Muslim dominated population might turn to religion
as an alternative to economic prosperity are still downplayed. |
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Even though the initial
disappointment over the benefits of independence 15 years ago led to a
renewed focus on Russia, if the country's civil society turns out not to
be adequately responsive in soaking up new disappointment and resultant
negative sentiment, it's unlikely that people will turn to their religion.
Kyrgyzstan has never really been prone to fundamentalism. By comparison,
Uzbekistan poses a way greater Islamic fundamentalist threat, and its leader
Islam Karimov is held up as an example of how to manage these sentiments.
Should anyone feel the need to create insurgencies, they'd likely team
up with the Chinese Western region Xinjiang separatists, who've got plenty
of experience in this field. The country's ethnic differences were also
highlighted in its revolution, but are not believed to have been a major
factor in the events. People also cited chisms in the Ukrainian population
along ethnic lines, yet the recent elections proved the opposite there.
It is likely that as soon as people belonging to an opposition find they
have a legitimate basis and can go about their business freely, ethnic
issues tend to become associated with the old regime. Ethnic Russians living
in Kyrgyzstan -what's a characteristically peaceful country- also are way
less overtly Russian still than their peers in Ukraine. They are near assimilated
and cross cultural marriages are common.
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