Registan is naturally far from the top of the information food chain when it comes to the situation in Kyrgyzstan. Reading these stories, along with our own attempts to parse meaning and motive from ethnicity and criminality, I’m struck by the lack of information available to anyone at all. Whatever the cause, the violence is approaching a state of chaos.
New fires raged Monday across Osh — the second-largest city that’s on the border with Uzbekistan, and where food and water were becoming scarce. Armed looters smashed stores, stealing anything from televisions to food.
No police could be seen on the streets, though authorities insisted some of the improvised checkpoints dotted around the city of 250,000 were theirs.
Cars stolen from ethnic Uzbeks raced around the city, most crowded with young Kyrgyz wielding sharpened sticks, axes and metal rods.
In some parts of Osh, Kyrgyz residents protected homes housing both Kyrgyz and Uzbek.
In another city beset by violence, Jalal-Abad, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) away, armed Kyrgyz amassed at the central square. Their stated goal was to travel to the nearby Uzbek settlement of Suzak in search of an Uzbek community leader they blame for starting the trouble.
The Uzbek border is just 3 miles (5 kilometers) from Osh. Uzbek refugees were mostly elderly people, women and children, with younger men staying behind to defend their property. Some were fired on as they fled.
Internet news stories seem to have the news only as it gets edited and regurgitated from the forum and twitter feeds, and who knows how reliable any of those is? Without people on the ground or a government in power, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to describe the situation, let alone hope for a quick and merciful end to the violence.
The military presence is clearly not enough, as a military patrol in Jalalabad was almost hi-jacked by gangs of Kyrgyz men. Even though the military has been given permission (or shall I say ordered?) to fire on sight any and all violent looters, there are allegations that the military refuses to fire on fellow Kyrgyz men. It doesn’t take much more than this to make people start using the G-word.
But there may yet be a reckoning for some of those responsible, as “The commandant of Jalalabad Kubatbek Baibolov said that the authorities managed to apprehend one of the suspects alleged to have organized and carried out the mass ethnic riots in Osh.” (another link to that story, also Russian and one more from the BBC in Russian) The suspect will be charged also with attempting to overthrow the government, suggesting some connection with the government’s accusations that Bakiev & Co. are behind the riots. Perhaps even a Bakiev brother?
“You could say that it is well-known political figure.”
This post was written by...
Michael Hancock-Parmer – author of 159 posts on Registan.net.
Michael earned an MA in Central Eurasian Studies in 2011 and remains a student at Indiana University pursuing a dual PhD in Russian History and Central Eurasian Studies. He served 6 months in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan in 2005. After the events in Andijan and the subsequent closure of the program, he served 2 years in southern Kazakhstan, returning to the Midwest in 2007. His general area of interest is on post-Timur Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, centered on the Syr Darya river valley.
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{ 3 comments }
Michael,
Thank you very much for the updates. It is understood, that it is impossible to get the correct information from there, and we will probably never know what is going on in reality. There will be rumors and exaggerations or, on in the contrary understatements, that will be hard to separate from the truth.
For instance, there is an article on a Kyrgyz site stating a rumor that a Kazakh “spetsnaz” unit was secretly deployed in Osh, and that they helped to calm down the city overnight. The Kazakhs troops caught Kyrgyz military supporting pogroms and engaged in fight with them.
http://www.paruskg.info/2010/06/14/26544#more-26544
^^^
This is one of the least credible sources of information on Krygyzstan I know.
What’s going on is sad because innocent people are dying. Kyrgyz news instead of condemning killings, try to show the conflict from a Kyrgyz perspective. News reports show only Kyrgyz people who were wounded, (most, while attacking Uzbek parts of the city). They are being treated in Bishkek and shown as a proof that Kyrgyz people too have suffered. Such partiality can looked over in times of international conflict, as a part of the information war. What’s going on Osh and Jalalabad is an internal conflict and Kyrgyz news agencies’ treatment of Uzbeks as if they seized to be Kyrgyzstan’s citizens is simply wrong.
The longer Kyrgyz society refuses to take responsibility for what’s going on the harder it would be to heal the wounds after the conflict. Just blaming Bakiev for what has happened won’t bring Uzbek lives back. At the end of the day, even if he is responsible, he himself and people who followed him were Kyrgyz and that’s what will remain in Uzbek collective psychic for a long time.