Alisher is determined to stay. "Osh is my home, I
was born here," says the 43-year-old Uzbek. "What would I do in Uzbekistan?"
Alisher does not want his real name published. He is one of around 120,000
ethnic Uzbeks living in Osh with a Kyrgyz passport. Some 54 percent of the
entire population of the southern Kyrgyz town are Uzbeks, and 15 percent in the
country as a whole. They make up the largest ethnic minority group in the
Central Asian nation.
Alisher has seen
dozens of dead bodies on the streets of Osh, including that of his
brother-in-law. He was shot by someone in a passing car, just as he was leaving
the Mosque after Friday prayers. Alisher says official figures of around 170
dead are totally unrealistic: "It must be several hundred!" he says. "More than
80 Uzbeks were killed here in the neighbouring town of Machallah alone. I've
seen the charred corpses of babies." -- Edda
Schlager
By Edda
Schlager
Unrest in southern Kyrgyzstan is
thought to have so far claimed the lives of 170 people – and displaced hundreds
of thousands more. But who and what has caused this situation, which is
reminiscent of a civil war and which has devastated the entire southern region
of the country for days now? Edda Schlager reports from the Fergana
Valley
Many Uzbeks are seeking refuge
from the unrest in Uzbekistan. It is estimated that some 275,000 people have
been displaced by the violence at present.
Southern Kyrgyzstan remains
unstable, but how probable is it that the situation could descend into a "second
Afghanistan", in accordance with predictions? The Fergana Valley is indeed an
ethnic tinderbox in Central Asia. But a civil war needs more than just a handful
of provocateurs.
Alisher is determined to stay.
"Osh is my home, I was born here," says the 43-year-old Uzbek. "What would I do
in Uzbekistan?" Alisher does not want his real name published. He is one of
around 120,000 ethnic Uzbeks living in Osh with a Kyrgyz passport. Some 54
percent of the entire population of the southern Kyrgyz town are Uzbeks, and 15
percent in the country as a whole. They make up the largest ethnic minority
group in the Central Asian nation.
Alisher has seen dozens of dead
bodies on the streets of Osh, including that of his brother-in-law. He was shot
by someone in a passing car, just as he was leaving the Mosque after Friday
prayers. Alisher says official figures of around 170 dead are totally
unrealistic: "It must be several hundred!" he says. "More than 80 Uzbeks were
killed here in the neighbouring town of Machallah alone. I've seen the charred
corpses of babies."
The ethnic dimensions of the
conflict in southern Kyrgyzstan: Apart from the murder of men, women and
children, Uzbek houses were also repeatedly pillaged
The ethnic clashes of the past
few days, the murder of women and children, and the pillage of Uzbek homes have
left the residents of Osh in a state of shock. "It was like the Jewish pogroms
in Germany; Uzbek-owned houses and shops were marked out for attack," says
Lodgevar Sarifbekova, 38 years old and herself a Tajik.
She has been living in Osh for
years and is horrified at the aggression of the armed and masked bands. "They
were clearly Kyrgyz. They shouted orders in Kyrgyz and drove people out of their
houses."
The work of an ousted
ex-president?
The towns of Osh and Jalalabad,
as well as the entire south of Kyrgyzstan, have been devastated by these events,
which are reminiscent of a civil war and which have officially claimed more than
170 lives on both the Uzbek and Kyrgyz sides. Ex-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev,
ousted from office in April following uprisings in Bishkek, vehemently denies
any role in stoking the conflict.
It may only be a supposition,
but it cannot be entirely dismissed. Bakiyev himself comes from Jalalabad. When
he rose to power in 2005 on the back of the Tulip Revolution, he was the first
president from south of Kyrgyzstan. At the time, many hoped he would be able to
iron out the discrepancies between the North and South, two very different parts
of the country.
The North is more pro-Russia,
and is home to most of the country's Russian minority. The South, on the other
hand, is strongly Muslim in character, and ethnic Uzbeks outnumber Kyrgyz
nationals in the area around the two largest towns of Osh and
Jalalabad.
It is possible that former
president Kurmanbek Bakiyev is responsible for fomenting the unrest, says Edda
Schlager in her analysis
Bakiyev still has many
supporters in Kyrgyzstan – and therefore the necessary influence to foment
discord and discredit the interim government of Roza Otunbayeva. The basis for
this is the extensive family clan of the ex-president – a sphere of influence
that each of the Central Asian rulers can rely on and without which none of them
would have been able to ascend to power and defend their own
sinecures.
In Kyrgyzstan, just as in
Uzbekistan and other neighbouring countries, strong informal structures have
existed within society for decades. They penetrate politics and economic life
and link both sectors as closely as possible to one another. Attempts to
establish far-reaching democratic structures in Central Asia have thus far
failed, largely due to a very broad understanding of the concept of kinship and
an obligatory responsibility for one's own family.
But it is not only Bakiyev who
might have an interest in destabilising Kyrgyzstan and exploiting long-festering
ethnic conflicts in the fertile but densely populated Fergana Valley. Observers
also view the drug mafia, which organises the trafficking of heroin from
Afghanistan and Tajikistan towards Russia and Europe, and other criminal groups
that compete with each other for land ownership and economic influence, as
possible initiators of the current violence.
The role of Islamic
extremists
Islamic extremists could also
ultimately profit from the current chaos. The Islamic Liberation Party "Hizb
ut-Tahrir" enjoys widespread support among Uzbeks in the Fergana Valley. And it
has long criticised what it terms the "oppression" of Islam by the secular
governmental systems of Central Asian nations, systems that impose a strict
separation of religion and state.
Uzbekistan fears the violence
may spill over onto its territory and promptly closed its borders to the
conflict region
Islam is tightly controlled by
the state in both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Primarily in Uzbekistan, critics of
the system are repeatedly accused of Islamic extremism, to silence them, often
without solid proof.
What is now for many people an
apparently hopeless situation – observers say some 275,000 people have been
displaced by the crisis – could push more people into the arms of Islam.
Religious zealots could also find fertile ground here to further their
cause.
Ethnic tensions, political
strife
It is difficult to foresee just
how unstable the "Fergana Valley powder keg" really is. In the tri-border area
of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, members of all three ethnic groups
live in close proximity. At the bazaars of Osh, Andijan and Khujand, people
usually speak a vibrant blend of all three languages. Land and water are in
short supply.
In economically testing times,
conflict over property and ownership repeatedly oscillates into ethnic strife,
such as in 1990, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when
several hundred people died. Only the army of the Kyrgyz Soviet Republic, acting
on orders from Moscow, was able to nip the fighting in the bud at the
time.
The country with surely the
least interest in a flare-up of civil strife is Tajikistan, the poorhouse of
Central Asia, a place still recovering from its own civil war, which did not end
until 1997. The Tajik government is battling against a permanent economic crisis
and even without ethnic conflicts is constantly teetering on the edge of "failed
state" status.
Uzbekistan is pursuing an
increasingly isolationist and confrontational policy, a stance not just aimed at
Kyrgyzstan, but also against Tajikistan. And as the Uzbek President Islam
Karimov has already shown back in 2005, he is not afraid to utilize armed force
to safeguard his power. At the time, he ordered troops to fire ruthlessly on
demonstrators in Andijan in the Fergana Valley, leaving several hundred people
dead.
External
intervention
The Kyrgyz interim government
obviously lacks the authority and functioning power structures to react
effectively to armed conflict. For this reason therefore, intervention by
external auxiliary forces appears all the more probable.
Kazakhstan could mediate in the
conflict as a strong regional power, and official sources have even said that
the country is willing to take in refugees and provide humanitarian aid. But
military support is not to be expected from Kyrgyzstan's neighbour to the north.
On the one hand it lacks military might, on the other Kazakhstan is not about to
ally itself with either Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan, as it enjoys homogenous
relations with both its neighbours.
The overstretched Kyrgyz interim
government is placing its hopes in Russia. But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
immediately ruled out any bilateral military intervention in
Kyrgyzstan
Most of the hopes of the Kyrgyz
interim government currently rest with Russia and its reaction to a request for
military support. This request for help is opportune for Russia, in as far as
its renewed responsibility for the region is being directly
sought.
In his last few months in
office, Bakiyev increasingly distanced himself from Moscow and turned openly to
the Americans, who despite threatening to close it down a year ago, still
operate their military base at Manas near Bishkek to this day. Immediately after
taking office, Otunbayeva hurried to close up this distance to Russia again,
requesting economic support.
But Russia is demonstrating
extreme restraint, with President Dimitry Medvedev immediately ruling out
bilateral military intervention in Kyrgyzstan. Moscow is much more interested in
a concerted conflict solution with the help of the CSTO, the Collective Security
Treaty Organisation, founded in 2002 by Russia together with six other ex-Soviet
republics. But the CSTO, which was also founded to protect its member states, is
barely equipped for military operations.
Joint mission by former arch
enemies?
Something that up to now was
virtually unthinkable, but that is now becoming a distinct possibility, is a
joint peace mission by Russia and the US. Russia is interested in maintaining
stability in its hinterlands, while the US needs a dependable base from which it
can operate its Afghanistan mission.
Neither superpower wants to see
another sprawling ethnic conflict in Central Asia, and the two could now join
forces over this latest escalation of violence in Kyrgyzstan.
For Alisher and Lodgevar in Osh,
such considerations are far removed from reality. The armed gangs are still at
large, says Alisher. "All we've got to counter the Kalashnikovs are sticks and
iron bars." Lodgevar Sarifbekova is also nervous, and says: "We don't know who
we can trust."
An official instruction from the
Kyrgyz interim government was sent by text message: No one should be out on the
streets after six o'clock in the evening. Security forces will shoot at anyone
contravening this curfew, regardless of nationality, and without
warning.
Source: Qantara.de
Translated from the German by
Nina Coon
9:52 PM
Sultan Shahin
0 comments:
Post a Comment