There have been numerous attempts by domestic and international commissions to find the root causes of the conflict between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, but neither has able to do so conclusively.
The findings of multiple investigations have partially implicated the government of Kyrgyzstan - several reports from international organizations indicated involvement of the Kyrgyz police and military in the ethnic strife that saw mobs rampaging through ethnic Uzbek neighborhoods in the cities of Osh and Jala-Abad.
Kyrgyz officials stick to original statements announced by the State Security Department accusing the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Union (IMU/IJU), the Taliban, and the family of ex-President Kurmanbek Saliyevich Bakiyev of fomenting the violence.
However, Kyrgyz authorities have not yet presented sufficient evidence of a IMU/IJU or Taliban role in the conflict.
Meanwhile, the family of former president Bakiyev, who was ousted in the weeks before the crisis, remains on the run and is unlikely to be apprehended in the near future.
The only close relative to the ex-president Bakiyev who was detained, his brother, managed to avoid jail by escaping from a medical clinic.
In the absence of the Bakiyevs, ethnic Uzbek politicians are emerging as convenient scapegoats. Meanwhile, human-rights groups repeatedly express concern over torture in prisons, biased courts and extortion by policemen. The aftermath of the June 2010 violence has created a massive exodus of the ethnic Uzbek population out of southern provinces to Russia and elsewhere, with 70,000-100,000 believed to fled the region.
Public opinion in the south reflects the official line, that the ethnic Uzbek community is responsible for planting hostility between Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks.
It is is no secret that opposition figures, then headed by former diplomat Roza Otunbayeva, offered high-ranking positions in the new government of the republic to leaders of the the Uzbek diaspora in exchange for support in the south, where Bakiyev's base was threatening to shake up the status of the interim government.
One of the political heavyweights in the south, Uzbek community leader Kadyrzhan Batyrov, took such an opportunity after negotiations with the interim officials including close interactions with current President Almazbek Atambayev.
After these talks violence erupted that turned thousands of Uzbek blocks and businesses into ashes and saw dead bodies in their hundreds line the streets of two southern cities. The Ferghana valley became a critical hotspot in June 2010 with the possibility of all-out regional conflict was in the air.
According to one report, co-authored and published by Norwegian Helsinki Committee, interim government appointees in the south implemented defensive measures in Osh and Jala-Abad based on information from the border with Uzbekistan.
Consequently, false reports of troops crossing from Uzbekistan into Kyrgyz territory caused a panic in Osh. [1] The scale of chaos in the hallways of the Kyrgyz authorities during the ethnic bloodshed contributed to the delay in halting horrendous attacks on Uzbek neighborhoods.
Local human-rights activists and NGO leaders saw indiscriminate killing by both sides, but the higher level of deaths among Uzbeks suggest that attacks on them by Kyrgyzs were premeditated.
Ethnic Uzbek activist Azimzhan Askarov tried to tell his ethnic group's side of the story, but he was sentenced to life in prison in Kyrgyzstan in September 2010. It is widely believed that criminal charges against Askarov were fabricated to conceal the facts he'd gathered from areas hit by clashes.
Video footage he had in his possession that showed how the conflict had escalated in the Jala-Abad area may have had a dramatic affect on the public's view of the inter-ethnic tension. The government has seized Askarov's files and still refuses to open them.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has repeatedly requested that Otunbayeva and newly elected President Atambayev to intercede in the case of the activist, both officials have failed to address the manner.
Internal politics of the north-south factions
The mountainous landscape and historic culture of the nomadic tribes of the country has for years segregated the Kyrgyz nation into regional subdivisions in the north and south.
This division is one source of the political instability that's rocked the Kyrgyz Republic for almost a decade.
A fierce power struggle among competing commercial interests lies at the heart of internal politics, with geopolitical events in the region of Central Asia complicating the situation.
The Western coalition's military operation in the AfPak region has impacted on the dynamics of domestic political struggles. A regional feud between the US and Russia has produced two coup d'etats in the Kyrgyz Republic in the past 10 years.
One of the distinct characteristics of Kyrgyz politics is the entry of the immediate family members (or regional clans associated with a head of the state) into the decision making process after power is taken. After both coups in the last decade, events caused by the north-south factional contest paved the way for a near collapse of the Kyrgyz state.
The latest parliamentary model has failed to press ruling elites to move ahead with long-awaited reforms in the republic, which remains infested with corruption and constant political infighting.
Atambayev embodies the circles of the northern ruling class that is in control of the country's national finances and resources. Meanwhile, southern Kyrgyzstan has become a major drug trafficking hub for the Afghan heroin in the region of Central Asia. UNODC's (UN Office on Drugs and Crime) recent report states that the city of Osh is a "reconnecting point of the heroin shipments from Afghanistan." [2]
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
Notes:
1. A Chronicle of Violence. The events in the South of Kyrgyzstan in June 2010.
2. UNODC OPIATE FLOWS THROUGH NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN AND CENTRAL ASIA: A THREAT ASSESSMENT
3. Russians Outfox US in Latest Great Game, Wall Street Journal, June 2009
4. Murat Laumulin April 2010 in Kyrgyzstan: as seen from Kazakhstan
5. THE KGB IN AFGHANISTAN, Vasiliy Mitrokhin
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