Kyrgyzstan: Instability in the Wake of 'Revolution'
April 11, 2005 20 18 GMT
Summary
The Kyrgyz Parliament accepted Askar Akayev's resignation April 11, but
the chaos that began when he was chased from the country March 24 has
not abated -- it has only changed. Power struggles now abound in the
country, and the level of disorder is on the rise again.
Analysis
With Kyrgyzstan's parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh, formally accepting
ousted President Askar Akayev's resignation April 11, the country has
closed the first chapter of its post-Soviet history. Removing the
Soviet-era leader who maintained control over the country for 15 years,
however, has only served to release the domestic demons that Communism
managed to keep relatively under wraps. In Kyrgyzstan, the biggest
demons are clan and geographic competition, and now that Akayev is gone
they are on the loose.
On April 10, a prominent opposition figure was shot in the head and
killed in his home in Bishkek. Usen Kudaibergenov -- along with one of
the top opposition leaders, Felix Kulov -- had run the defense of the
presidential administration building, the White House, after Akayev
fled the country March 24. He then organized volunteer units that
guarded important government and corporate buildings in the city and
fought off looters March 25 and 26. He is the first prominent political
casualty in Kyrgyzstan's new power struggles, and his assassination
reveals just how tense and volatile the situation in the country is.
In the days immediately before his death, Kudaibergenov called for and
began to organize groups to eject squatters who began appearing in the
thousands in the outskirts of Bishkek to claim land during the previous
week. Land distribution is a long-standing problem in Kyrgyzstan,
stemming primarily from the country's southwestern regions, where most
of Kyrgyzstan's population lives. There, a large concentration of
Uzbeks controls the majority of the best available land -- a
circumstance that arose after Russia's 19th-century colonization of
Central Asia and promotion of agriculture in the region. The
agriculturally inclined Uzbeks moved into the foothills of what is now
southwestern Kyrgyzstan, where Kyrgyz herdsmen were accustomed to
spending their winters to escape the mountains surrounding the Ferghana
Valley. While the Uzbeks established themselves as the economic elite
in the south, the increasingly dissatisfied local Kyrgyz began seizing
land.
Squatting by Kyrgyz tired of waiting for apartments in the outskirts of
Osh provided the spark for ethnic violence between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz
that broke out there in 1990 at the cost of hundreds of lives. Land
seizures in Osh were followed in the early 1990s by land seizures in
Bishkek, and many of the squatters in Bishkek now are from southern
regions.
Since the squatters Kudaibergenov wanted to eject appeared in various
regions of the city's outskirts simultaneously, it is likely that this
is an organized campaign at least encouraged if not initiated by
southern political leaders. That the country is now being run by
Interim President and Prime Minister Kurmanbek Bakiyev -- a southerner
-- and that the Bishkek authorities have done nothing to impede or
remove the squatters indicates at least tacit support from the central
government. This could be an effort to increase southern influence in
the capital by encouraging individuals from the south to populate the
city. This could explain why Kudaibergenov, a northerner, was gaining
the support of his fellow Bishkek residents to begin removing the
squatters. It also could explain his murder.
Prominent northern politicians who quickly left the government after
initially agreeing to join Bakiyev's attempt to stabilize the country
have said Bakiyev's governing program consists of nothing more than
stacking the government with his own people to the exclusion of others.
Many Kyrgyz ministries reportedly have become bastions of nepotism and
corruption during Bakiyev's brief tenure. Northern and southern clans
alternated rule during the Soviet period to avoid conflict, but Akayev
ended that practice and entrenched the northern elites in governing
structures. Bakiyev's filling government posts with allies and
relatives is likely an effort to wrest control of the capital from
northern elites and establish his own support base.
Though there are now six declared candidates for the upcoming
presidential elections, the strongest challenger Bakiyev faces is Kulov
-- a northerner, one of Akayev's former lieutenants and one of
Kudaibergenov's good friends. In recent days, Kulov has been
increasingly critical of the new government, publicly questioning
Bakiyev's apparent lack of a governing agenda and stating that some
individuals in the government want to stage a counterrevolution and
re-establish autocratic rule. He has implied that these are political
and criminal elements linked to the south. Kudaibergenov's murder gives
credence to the idea that north-south divisions are beginning to
manifest themselves in Bishkek.
Divisions in Kyrgyzstan go beyond the north-south distinction, however.
Within each of these regions elites compete for power, as exemplified
in the southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad, where elites are pitted
against one another for control. When protesters first took over these
cities and regional administration buildings in mid-March, they set up
their own governments to displace Bishkek's rule. These leaderships
remained in place until Bakiyev began installing his own hand-picked
candidates to assume control of the south. The popular governments set
up in mid-March are proving reluctant to surrender power.
The clearest illustration of the disorder in the country occurred April
11, when 200 supporters of Jusup Imanaliev -- a pro-Akayev northern
candidate for Parliament who was declared a loser in his district in
the Supreme Court's review of the results -- demonstrated outside the
White House, penetrated security and occupied all the building's
entrances and exits. It is highly unlikely that 200 unarmed civilians
could take over the presidential compound without at least passive
support from within the security services, which have strong ties to
northern politicians.
Such instability at the heart of the country's political power speaks
volumes about conditions in the country as a whole. Opposition leaders'
publicly declared surprise at the events of March 24 attests to this.
Things have not gone as they had planned in Kyrgyzstan for several
weeks now, and with the competition for power well under way, it is
difficult to know how the situation will evolve. If the country can
make it to presidential elections slated for July 10, the situation
could stabilize. Until then, however, rising instability means anything
is possible.
.
|
