Starting Points: Kurmanbek Bakiyev

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May 10, 2010

Kyrgyzstan's Islamist Blowback

Image by krisdecurtis via Flickr

David Trilling | April 21, 2010

Bishkek

When he was arrested again two years ago, Ravshan Gapirov was not surprised. A popular defense lawyer for Muslims charged with extremism, Gapirov had long angered authorities in Kyrgyzstan who see Islam as one of the greatest dangers to the country's stability. He spent most of 2008 in prison, accused of supporting a banned pan-Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, and collaborating with his extremist clients.

Gapirov, director of the Justice and Truth Human Rights Advocacy Center in the southern town of Osh, struggles against a confounding system: because of Central Asia's strategic proximity to Afghanistan, the United States and Russia have supported dictatorships that, by banning even peaceful expressions of Islam, have pushed ordinary disaffected Muslims into the arms of radicals, some based in Afghanistan.

On April 7, after his security forces fired into a mob, leaving more than eighty dead, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev fled the capital, Bishkek. For the five years of his increasingly corrupt reign, he had attacked Islam as both a security and political threat. But he also hosted a US air base at the Manas airport outside Bishkek, established shortly after 9/11, and thus had an unflinching ally in his campaign, one that was willing to put aside its democratic ideals for a short-term strategic gain.

In Bakiyev's sudden and unexpected absence, former opposition leaders from disparate parties announced an interim government and slowly took control. But many of those leaders are tainted with scandal, having previously served with Bakiyev before leaving to form their own personality-driven opposition parties. The acting chair, Roza Otunbayeva, is loved in the West for her grandmotherly demeanor and fluent English, but she is suspected at home of being ineffectual. Other interim ministers are split on where their allegiances lie: with Russia, the former colonial master and driver of Central Asian economies, angry over the presence of American troops in its "near abroad"; or the United States, which most Kyrgyz see as primarily interested in keeping its air base.

Washington was quiet as Bakiyev murdered opponents, shut down media outlets, rigged elections and drove even moderate Muslims, afraid they would be targeted as terrorists, to practice their religion in secret. In private conversations, US officials acknowledged Bakiyev's appalling human rights record, but publicly they offered only tepid criticism and continued training his elite military units. Like other Central Asian despots, Bakiyev received lucrative American rewards for highlighting, or even exaggerating, the threat of terrorism.

US Ambassador Tatiana Gfoeller underscored this support in October, at the opening of a Kyrgyz special forces complex in Tokmok, where she said, "Brand-new, modern military equipment--trucks, tactical gear, ambulances, night sights, body armor and much more--are arriving in Kyrgyzstan daily and being distributed to Kyrgyzstan's armed forces."

Central Asia is a region of varied religious traditions. Islam took root late among the Kyrgyz nomads and fused with local animist and mystic beliefs. But devotion to conservative forms is growing in the Ferghana Valley, a fertile basin of twisting, arbitrary and contested borders and overlapping ethnic groups: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan wrap around one another in puzzle pieces fashioned by Joseph Stalin in the 1920s. The Kyrgyz portion of the valley is home to a large, alienated Uzbek minority. In the 1990s hundreds died in ethnic conflicts. Tensions endure.

Judging by the crowded mosques on Fridays and the number of women wearing hijabs on the streets, the valley is more observant than elsewhere in Central Asia. But locals here, like elsewhere, are still more likely to enjoy their vodka than their prayer, or see no problem indulging in both. Nevertheless, Central Asian governments are paranoid, full of atheist apparatchiks trained in the Communist Soviet Union. Only the Islam espoused by a network of state-appointed mullahs is tolerated.

From Bakiyev's perspective, "all Muslims are extremists," said Kara-Suu Imam Rashad Kamalov, whose father was gunned down in 2006 in an attack human rights observers attribute to the state security services. Because of the oppression, "more Kyrgyz are devoted to the religion and practice Islam," he told me. But tyranny will not work forever, he added. "After someone has experienced fear once, the fear disappears."

Already there is a precedent for radicalism and violence in the Ferghana Valley: the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, bent on destroying the corrupt, despotic regime of Uzbek President Islam Karimov. Karimov's fierce crackdown in the 1990s drove the militant group, which grew out of a political movement, to Afghanistan and an alliance with Al Qaeda. IMU members fought alongside militants during the US invasion in 2001. The IMU's core membership is thought to be hiding in the tribal areas of Pakistan, waiting and plotting a return to Central Asia and their traditional base in the Uzbek portion of the Ferghana Valley. Some are probably hiding in Kyrgyzstan.

Pointing to the IMU, Bakiyev repeatedly said Kyrgyzstan faces a growing threat from international terror. With insecurity spreading into the previously quiet northern Afghan provinces, attacks throughout the Ferghana Valley have been on the rise, such as an assault in May 2009 on a police station in Khanabad, Uzbekistan, on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz frontier, and an alleged suicide bombing in nearby Andijan the following day.

Heightening the fear, the compliant Kyrgyz press eagerly reports the arrest of alleged activists, often those associated with Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), a transnational group that seeks to establish a caliphate. While the movement forswears violence and has never been implicated in any violence, it is banned not only in Kyrgyzstan but throughout Central Asia, forcing members to practice underground. Observers such as Osh native Alisher Khamidov, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins, fear that, hidden from view, Hizb ut-Tahrir could prepare people to join violent groups if it is unable to offer a political solution. There are no accurate figures on membership, but informed estimates say it is 8,000 in Kyrgyzstan alone.

"If the state repression of religion continues at this pace and there are not political channels for representing Muslim grievances, we are likely to witness radicalization," Khamidov said, adding, "the Kyrgyz government is definitely exaggerating the threat of radical Islam."

The town of Kara-Suu is a natural hub for Hizb ut-Tahrir. Home to one of Central Asia's largest bazaars, it is divided by the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. Crossing it is difficult, even for ethnic Uzbek families separated by the border, and business is hurting. Moreover, little political opposition remains to offer ideological variety.

"They mention Hizb ut-Tahrir on television every day," a Hizb ut-Tahrir recruiter told me a few weeks before Bakiyev's overthrow. "One of our tasks is promotion, and this is a natural advertisement for us." He was hiding in the back of a station wagon with tinted windows, sandwiched between stacks of shipping containers in the Kara-Suu bazaar. "Our ideology is spreading, and people are becoming more energetic because Bakiyev has moved away from the principles of democracy. It's a victory for us; we benefit from this."

While Hizb ut-Tahrir does not have an anti-Western agenda, he said, Western support for repressive governments in the region is boosting anti-Americanism and providing fertile ground for recruitment.

"They say they are building a democratic country, but at the same time they are violating the principles of democracy: freedom of belief, freedom of the press," said a Hizb ut-Tahrir member in Osh in March. "If they find a book they don't like in your house, they take you to jail. What kind of freedom is this?"

"We don't have machine guns; we have only ideas," said the Kara-Suu recruiter, explaining the group's methods and comparing Central Asia to czarist Russia in the years before the Bolsheviks seized power. "Who is in prison? Those who have been prosecuted and arrested by the government. And of course these people support us. Many revolutions started in prisons."

In October 2008 residents of Nookat organized the Eid al-Fitr festival marking the end of Ramadan, a holiday widely celebrated throughout Kyrgyzstan with the slaughter of sheep--and often a lot of vodka. Villagers say the mayor's office gave permission to celebrate in the town's stadium. Instead, town officials prohibited the celebration and dispersed the crowd. A protest followed in which villagers allegedly threw rocks, breaking windows in a government office. Thirty-two were convicted of inciting unrest and fomenting religious enmity. Sentences ranged up to twenty years.

"The authorities interfered in the process of investigation and in the courts. There was no evidence against the convicted. Witnesses were mostly people from law enforcement bodies. It was obvious that they were ordered" to testify, said an Osh-based lawyer who has represented defendants in extremism trials, including the one in Nookat.

Several unexplained killings in Uzgen and Jalalabad last summer further rattled Muslim communities and tested the state's credibility. Authorities say they liquidated terrorists infiltrating from Uzbekistan--perpetrators of a suicide bombing by an IMU splinter group in Andijan--yet provided little proof. Human rights activists allege the security services tortured and killed innocent farmers in a botched raid and elaborate cover-up. That several foreign human rights activists investigating the events in Nookat were expelled from Kyrgyzstan in 2009 further undermined faith in the authorities' version of events.

Yet while these abuses continued, the United States maintained its support for Bakiyev, calling him a partner in the "war on terror." Earlier this year Washington announced it would build a $5.5 million anti-terrorism training center in the Ferghana Valley. Activists saw a connection between the US aid and Bakiyev's mounting crackdown. "The authorities don't care about their citizens' rights, about absolutely innocent people," said the Nookat defense lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The crackdown is "to show that we have a problem with religious extremism and terrorism, because a lot of money is being allocated for that.... The money is being given to the Kyrgyz government by the United States and by the Russians."

Moscow and Washington, both concerned about Islamic terrorism, look the other way while repression continues apace in Central Asia. Moscow is also vying to build an anti-terror training center in the Ferghana Valley, and in this competition for strategic influence, the two are willing to overlook odious behavior. For the United States, that could be a mistake, warns a March report by the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. It argues that the Central Asian governments' overreaction is promoting radicalization, because "ongoing state-sponsored violence has almost certainly claimed more lives, and surely maimed more fates, than the sporadic actions of a handful of terrorists." The report cautions that US interests in the region, such as the base at Manas and overland transportation networks used to supply American troops in Afghanistan, make tempting targets.

Since the violent uprising of April 7, that message has gone unheeded. Washington appears most concerned about keeping the base open, worriedly courting Kyrgyzstan's interim government of bickering former officials and apparatchiks. Many of these figures led the so-called Tulip Revolution of 2005. Now they are struggling to define their legitimacy. Some are angry with the United States for not speaking out against Bakiyev's human rights abuses and have openly said Manas must be closed. It's too early to tell how they will approach human rights, but already power struggles are apparent, and friends have told me they fear the recent upheaval just delivered more of the same, as the new leaders are all recycled from past governments.

Bloodshed is on many people's minds these days--not just the kind Bakiyev left on the streets of Bishkek as he fled. "The authorities don't know what they want to achieve. But in my opinion, it will lead to a very bloody revolution if it goes on like this. I am convinced that such a revolution is inevitable," Gapirov, the human rights lawyer, told me a few weeks before Bakiyev's downfall. When it comes to human rights and Islam, in a country known for its spontaneous uprisings, the new government and its foreign backers would be wise to listen.

Fueling the Afghan War

Image by kahunapulej via Flickr

Aram Roston | April 21, 2010

Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

In Napoleon Bonaparte's day an army may have marched on its belly, as the French emperor famously quipped, but the modern-day American military campaign in Afghanistan needs not just food but also fuel. Diesel for the MRAPs and Humvees, aviation fuel for the planes and helicopters--that's the fodder for the military surge under way in Afghanistan. Fuel is precious there--they call it liquid gold--and the effort to keep it flowing has created an array of bizarre monopolies, strange alliances and allegations of corruption entangling the US government.

This is the story of two interlinked and secretive offshore companies run by a former Army intelligence officer. The firms run a specialized monopoly of massive proportions. Their niche: supplying aviation fuel for US military operations in Afghanistan--enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools each and every day of the year.

The companies' names are Red Star Enterprises and Mina Corp. In Afghanistan, Red Star Enterprises has a sole source contract worth more than $1 billion, won without competition, to deliver fuel to Bagram Air Base, that central hub of the war effort. The Nation has obtained an unusual "memorandum of agreement [1]" between Red Star and the US military authorities, giving the firm exclusive ownership of a fuel pipeline that feeds directly into the base.

Similarly, in nearby Kyrgyzstan, a staging ground for the Afghan war, Mina has another sole source contract, awarded without any announcement, to provide fuel to a huge and controversial base. The contract has been at the center of corruption and kickback allegations, and the companies have been accused of enriching the families of two successive heads of state, both of whom presided over kleptocratic and repressive regimes--an arrangement that fostered great resentment in the country. Violence exploded on the streets in early April, leaving eighty protesters dead, and President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was forced to flee. The new, provisional government sees Red Star and Mina in a very specific light. The chief of staff, Edil Baisalov, tells The Nation that the firms have served as "an indirect way for the Pentagon to bribe the ruling families of Kyrgyzstan." (These allegations are the subject of a Congressional hearing tomorrow, convened by the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.)

Baisalov's charge is a serious one but not new, nor as outlandish as it may seem, although the companies deny it. The eight-year saga of high-stakes contracts and secretive deals raises serious questions about how the Afghan campaign has been run, not only by the Bush administration but also under President Barack Obama. Sole source contracts have continued under the current administration, and if the Kyrgyz authorities are correct, the Pentagon contractors are still doing what they did under Bush. After all, the thirst for oil and fuel can only grow as President Obama's Afghan surge ramps up.

The man in charge of Red Star's and Mina's operations is a good-natured retired Army lieutenant colonel named Chuck Squires, now 56 years old. A lanky and broad-shouldered fellow with a good sense of humor, he has a graduate degree in Russian studies from Harvard. Before 9/11, he was the defense attaché at the US Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Back then, when he was still in the military, the Republic of Kyrgyzstan was just another impoverished and mountainous ex-Soviet republic, with a per capita income a little higher than that of Cambodia. It was just one pawn in the Great Game between Russia and the United States, and it was not easily accessible, bordered by Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan on the south, west and north, respectively, and by China on the east. Nor was it strategically important, although its huge inland lake did serve as a testing site for advanced Russian torpedoes.

Squires, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article, had left Bishkek by September 11, 2001. One source says he was gone from the military by then too, but his experience there would serve him well in the private sector in the future.

That is because shortly after 9/11, Kyrgyzstan agreed to host a US air base. At the time, Kyrgyzstan's president was Askar Akayev, who presented himself as an innovative reformer and economist. The United States did not pay much for the base rights, although this was a source of controversy within the country and a matter of concern for the State Department. At the time, Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon was holding sway over Colin Powell's State Department. The Defense Department insisted it was in charge of all negotiations, and the State Department's input wasn't wanted. "You stay out of it" is how a former State Department official remembers the Pentagon's tone.

The Manas base, dubbed the Ganci base, after a firefighter killed on 9/11, was like the FedEx hub through which the US military flies material and people to Afghanistan from around the world. The base hosts tankers and other planes, and operates as a transfer facility for troops.

Red Star Enterprises and Mina Corp. soon appeared on the scene like mysterious strangers. They had a rather ethereal, offshore quality and some intriguing connections. For example, Red Star had the same London address and phone number as Iraq Today, a purportedly independent and short-lived newspaper launched in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. The paper had been set up by a former journalist who worked with Mina Corp.--which, of course, was connected to Red Star.

Over the years neither Red Star nor Mina seems to have even bothered to put up a website. They both have offices in London, but they are both incorporated on the island of Gibraltar, a British territory off Spain with impenetrable secrecy laws for corporations. Various private investigators have been unable to determine who really owns them.

Though Red Star had no apparent track record, it was hired by the Pentagon to supply the base's massive fuel needs. Red Star's director of operations: the now retired Lieutenant Colonel Squires. Squires returned to Bishkek as a civilian, coordinating Red Star's contract work. The Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center hired Red Star to supply its fuel. It was a huge contract, totaling $240 million over three years.

Even if the Kyrgyz government wasn't getting paid much for the base, the Akayev family was reaping tens of millions. It was heavily involved in business at the airport, running the two companies that operated as Red Star's subcontractors. One of them was run by Akayev's son, and the other by his son-in-law, and from 2002 to 2005 Red Star, operating on its US government contract, paid the firms about $120 million.

It may have just been business, but the way Kyrgyz investigators later saw it, Red Star, the prime contractor, was the cut out for funneling funds to the Akayev family.

It was all cozy until violence hit the streets of Bishkek in 2005, foreshadowing what was to come five years later. The "Tulip Revolution" forced Akayev to flee and abdicate, and then the secrets of the Akayev regime began to tumble out, in scandal after scandal. The new government, headed by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, even asked the US government for help investigating the former regime. The FBI's Eurasian Unit churned out an extraordinary report that laid bare a "vast amount of potential criminal activities associated with the Akaev Organization." The president and his family were accused of "siphoning off at least $1 billion from the Kyrgyz state budget." It was as if the Kyrgyz government had been some kind of criminal enterprise within which the United States ran a military base.

After the revolt, people thought things might be different. The new government seemed to bring a fresh sense of integrity for a short while, before it began to stack its own skeletons in the closet. Despite his claims to be a reformer, Bakiyev appeared to go about replicating the patterns of his predecessor in a deliberate manner. "He really didn't think twice. They inherited this," says one consultant who dealt with Bakiyev shortly after the revolution. "We really in great detail uncovered the scheme. And I think the moment they figured out how it worked, they went and did it."

Peter Zalmayev of the Eurasia Democracy Initiative puts it this way: "Bakiyev came in under the premise he would clean [the government] up and make it more transparent. But he replaced the structure they had with Akayev and his son with his own family." Word quickly spread that Bakiyev's youngest son, Maksim, was in business too. The insiders said he was taking over "Manas International"--through frontmen.

Meanwhile, Bakiyev's associates were making powerful US connections. For example, one of his allies set up a bank called AsiaUniversalBank (AUB) in Bishkek. On its board were two august former US senators: former US Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, currently associated with the lobbying firm Alston & Bird, and J. Bennett Johnston, the longtime Louisiana senator, who has his own firm. Dole was paid several hundred thousand dollars for his role, which included one trip to Bishkek and a few board meetings in Washington.

Meanwhile, what mattered to the United States was the base at Manas. There, the airfield was still lined with squadrons of KC-135 Stratotankers, which needed constant filling for their missions over the skies of Afghanistan.

Red Star kept up its work, supplying fuel.

But Red Star was also busy elsewhere at the same time. Chuck Squires and Red Star were now focused not just on Kyrgyzstan but directly on Afghanistan. To do business with the US military in Afghanistan usually means operating at Bagram Air Base, the sprawling compound--a virtual military city--about an hour north of Kabul.

Col. Jonathan Ives was then the base commander at Bagram. Red Star, he says, was synonymous with aviation fuel, trucking it down from Uzbekistan along an old and treacherous route through the mountains from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul, passing at one point through the Salang Pass, a 1.5-mile tunnel through a mountain. Ives says Red Star trucked in more than 250,000 gallons of the precious stuff each day--a staggering amount. Each tanker truck can carry a maximum of 9,000 gallons, so Red Star would have had convoys of about thirty tractor-trailers per day.

In October 2007 Red Star scored a remarkable coup. Squires signed a deal with Ives that allowed Red Star to build and own a pipeline that ran from the base for all that fuel. Ives says that Red Star had purchased land near Bagram Air Base. "It was farmland, so they purchased the land and the rights." In the memorandum of agreement between Red Star and the military, obtained by The Nation, Red Star promises it "will install, at no cost to the United States Government (USG), a petroleum pipeline for transfer of TS-1 jet fuel." Significantly, the agreement says, "Red Star will retain ownership of the pipeline."

It is intriguing that the firm signed such a document rather than an ordinary contract. "It is very unusual--very unusual," said professor Charles Tiefer, an expert on contract law at the University of Baltimore School of Law who sits on the US government's eight-member Commission on Wartime Contracting. I asked him who would regulate such an agreement. "Nobody," he answered. "There is no regulation of it because it's not supposed to happen, because it is trying to create a loophole where there is none in the Competition in Contracting Act."

Whatever the legal basis for the contract, not only the fuel pipeline but the land underneath it was owned by Red Star. Indeed, trucks would be able to gain access to the pipeline only through Red Star property. Red Star, in other words, controlled all access to the pipeline that would bring fuel to the thirsty US air base. It was as if the company offered to build a door to a US base and then controlled anything that went through the door. "I think it is pretty clever, if you want to say that," says Ives. "It is shrewd business," he added, a bit ruefully. He says he thought the pipeline was a good idea because it limited fuel trucks' access to the base and made things safe. He didn't realize, he says, that the pipeline Red Star built would give it a monopoly.

But that's what it did. Within four months of that memorandum of agreement, the United States announced it planned to offer a sole source contract to Red Star for 194 million gallons of fuel over two years. There were some complaints by a potential competitor, but it had no access to the pipeline. That summer, in August 2008, Red Star was awarded the contract for $720 million. It had locked in the monopoly.

On March 4, 2009, barely six weeks in office, Barack Obama pledged to crack down on government procurement waste and fraud, and "to dramatically reform the way we do business on contracts across the entire government." Standing next to Senator John McCain, his adversary in the election but an advocate of contract reform as well, he said, "We need more competition for contracts and more oversight as they are carried out." That day he sent out a memo asking all federal agencies to work on a way to end sole source contracts.

But when it came to Red Star and Mina, things stayed very much the same. On July 29, about five months after the president's speech, the Defense Department did not bother issuing a solicitation or requesting bids for the fuel contract. Instead, it quietly issued a new, $243 million contract to Mina to keep selling fuel to the base at Manas. The government used an unusual clause in the federal rules to justify this: the "national security" exemption. Under that provision, "Full and open competition need not be provided for when the disclosure of the agency's needs would compromise the national security."

"It went from competitive to sole source," says lawyer Ronald Uscher, who represents a competitor to Red Star and Mina called IOTC. In 2007 Mina had actually won the contract through a process that ostensibly included competitive bidding--though it beat out IOTC, whose bid had been almost 3 percent lower. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Uscher tried to obtain information about Mina's bid, but the Defense Department refused to tell him how Mina and Red Star gauged their price changes. Normally these are based on worldwide fuel prices, but not in Kyrgyzstan. Here it would be kept a secret. "There is nothing secretive about the price of jet fuel in 99.9 percent of the world," says Uscher, "except at Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, apparently!" Then, in 2009, Uscher complains, "You have a sole source secret contract to supply fuel to Manas awarded to Mina with no other competitors having oversight and no citizens having oversight."

Why the secrecy? And what was the national security requirement that dictated avoiding competition? Did Mina's source for fuel have anything to do with it?

Officials in Kyrgyzstan's provisional government say it straight out: Mina Corp., the affiliate of Red Star, was paying funds to Maksim Bakiyev, the president's son. The new government's chief of staff Baisalov says that in order to keep the air base secure and supplied with fuel, the United States essentially "bribed the Kyrgyz ruling family. First it was Akayev and then it was Bakiyev. On one hand, the White House and the US State Department, they announce these noble goals, democracy, good government, and on the other hand, the military comes in and overrides everyone else." The Defense Logistics Agency, which oversees the Defense Energy Support Center, wouldn't comment specifically on that, even to deny it. "We can't speak to that," said DLA spokesman Dennis Gauci. "You'll have to speak to Mina Corp."

A representative of Mina, who asked not to be named, denied any wrongdoing. "There was no consideration given to the ownership interests of any supplier." If Maksim Bakiyev did have any ownership interest, he said, Mina didn't know about it. The company, he told me, was reaching out to the interim Kyrgyz government to try to explain it to them. (Mina emphasizes it does vital work "by providing mission-critical fuel supplies to the troops and civilians that are carrying out the mission in Afghanistan.")

With the collapse of the Bakiyev regime, a whole web of money and power has been exposed. That bank, AUB, on whose board sat ex-Senators Dole and Johnston? Its accounts have been frozen, and the new government says it was laundering money.

The provisional government in Kyrgyzstan says it will leave the base open for now. And the United States, with the Afghan surge under way, needs that base now more than ever. But the Kyrgyz government is making a new demand: it is launching a criminal investigation of the Bakiyev regime and its profits--and it wants the US government to help.

Apr 17, 2010

Kyrgyzstan: No Tulip Revolution Replay - BusinessWeek

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Despite parallels with the uprising five years ago that ousted former president Askar Akaev, the new Kyrgyz crisis is more grassroots—and more violent

By Alisher Khamidov

Some observers are drawing strong parallels with the current instability in Kyrgyzstan and the "Tulip Revolution" of March 2005. While there are definitely some similarities, there are also some substantial differences.

Similar to the Tulip Revolution, the current round of protests stems from the increased authoritarianism of the incumbent regime and regional exclusion. As was the case with the regime of former President Askar Akaev, the rule of his successor, Kurmanbek Bakiev, has sidelined important elites and their constituents. Growing corruption, nepotism, and consolidation of economic and political power in the hands of a small circle of people alienated not only powerful elites but also broader segments of Kyrgyz society.

Also similar to the Tulip Revolution, what we see now is the pervasive weakness of the state's security apparatus to restore order and restrain protesters. We see reports of police officers being beaten or changing sides. And we see reports that suggest that dual-power scenarios are emerging in some parts of the country, where crowds of protesters are appointing governors and regional administrators.

One difference between the 7 April protests and the Tulip Revolution is the level of violence. This week's events were the bloodiest in Kyrgyz history. In confronting protesters, the police relied on live bullets while protesters used stones and Molotov cocktails. Official reports put the number of people killed at more than 60 and those wounded at more than 500.

Another difference was of regional character. While the Tulip Revolution was sparked by protests and government building seizures in the southern regions (Jalal-Abad, Osh), this time the protests erupted mainly in the poor and remote northern regions such as Talas and Naryn, where residents have long complained of exclusion.

There are other remarkable differences between the current protests and those of five years ago.

Triggers for the protests differed. Unlike the Tulip Revolution, when the spark for mass mobilization was the Akaev regime's efforts to block a number of wealthy opposition elites from gaining seats in parliament, the current protests were triggered by simmering anger at the grassroots level.

In particular, three factors served to turn mass dissatisfaction into protests. They were the arrest of several opposition leaders by the Bakiev regime in relation to mass disorder in the town of Talas, where protesters occupied a government building; a steep hike in utility prices, which hit the population in the remote northern regions the hardest; the exclusion of a number of important northern elites in the Kurultai, or informal gathering of all Kyrgyz, by the Bakiev administration in March; and economic sanctions by Moscow such as the introduction of higher prices for gasoline.

That move was seen as Moscow's way of punishing the government for reneging on a 2009 agreement under which Kyrgyzstan would receive close to $2 billion in loans and aid in exchange for evicting U.S. forces from the air base in Manas. Bakiev got some of the Russian money, but then extended the lease for the base under a different status. The Russians were livid. As a result, the Russian media offered negative coverage of the Bakiev regime, a contributing factor to his sagging reputation.

Yet another notable difference between April 2010 and March 2005 were the "engines" behind the change. During the March 2005 protests, demonstrations were organized by wealthy elites who felt that their bids to gain seats in the parliament were threatened by the incumbent Akaev regime. Such elites then mobilized their supporters in their towns and villages, relying on local networks and offers of cash. The protests we saw on 7 April were sporadic and chaotic. In many ways, they appeared to be more an uncoordinated grass-roots revolt by a disenchanted population than an elite-driven and planned campaign.

As a result, the speed with which the protests erupted and spread was surprising, not only to international observers, but also to many locals. The administration and some opposition leaders seem to have not appreciated the extent of popular anger and were themselves taken aback. In other words, because there was no credible information about the distribution of power before the protests, there was little room for opposition factions and the incumbent regime to come to a negotiated settlement.

Neither the government nor opposition factions are in full control of the crowds. Already, there are reports of destruction of property and marauding in Bishkek and the regions that have seen protests. This is a bad sign for opposition factions because it discredits them.

What are the likely scenarios of events?

The most dramatic is that the Bakiev government will fall in the next several hours or days, as it appears to be doing. Because opposition leaders are not in full control of protesters, the country could plunge into anarchy and chaos that would last for a few days if not weeks.

Because Bakiev still retains a large political following in the southern regions, especially in Jalal-Abad, his birthplace, counter-protests may erupt in the south calling for his reinstatement. That would increase the risk of regional confrontation and possibility of civil war. Bakiev, now in the south, has not aired his intentions and this is contributing to tension.

A less dramatic scenario is that the Bakiev administration, while seriously weakened by the protests, could come to a negotiated settlement with opposition factions, and both groups would work to calm protesters. Russia and some neighbors such as Kazakhstan may provide good offices and assistance (not military, largely diplomatic) in this regard. Russia has already recognized the provisional government set up by opposition factions in Bishkek. Bakiev could resign as part of the negotiated deal. This would provide the provisional government some legitimacy as it faces a number of daunting challenges such as restoring order and state institutions and responding to economic and social problems that Bakiev left unaddressed.

Whatever the outcome of the protests, it is clear that Kyrgyzstan has plunged into deep chaos. It will take months, if not years to recover from this. The concern is that instability in Kyrgyzstan is already spilling over to its neighbors. Kazakhstan has closed borders as scores of Kyrgyz are trying to cross the border and find refuge in Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan is most likely to follow suit.

Alisher Khamidov is a consultant and analyst in Washington, D.C., specializing in Central Asian affairs. He can be reached at akhamido@hotmail.com

Apr 8, 2010

Kyrgyz Opposition Group Says It Will Rule for 6 Months - NYTimes.com

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By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — A transitional government in Kyrgyzstan declared that it was in charge on Thursday, a day after deadly protests forced the president to flee the capital. But the president himself insisted that he would not step down, issuing veiled threats from an unknown location that suggested that the country, the site of a vital American military base, could face renewed instability.

The day’s events were dominated by two compelling and contrary figures in Kyrgyz politics: the interim leader, Roza Otunbayeva, a bespectacled former diplomat who once taught Marxist-Leninist theory before becoming embracing Western mores; and Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the gruff, street-wise president, who boasted in an interview last year that he feared “absolutely nothing.”

Ms. Otunbayeva took the stage first, calling a news conference with her opposition colleagues to issue a series of directives that she said would calm the country after Wednesday’s violence, which left 68 people dead and more than 400 wounded.

“You can call this revolution. You can call this a people’s revolt,” she said. “Either way, it is our way of saying that we want justice and democracy.”

Like her colleagues at the new conference, Ms. Otunbayeva — who once backed Mr. Bakiyev before breaking with him early in his tenure — called for the president to acknowledge that he was through and resign.

But a few hours later, Mr. Bakiyev, 60, emerged from obscurity to make clear that he had no intention of stepping down.

Mr. Bakiyev had quit the capital, Bishkek, on Wednesday after thousands of opposition protesters, infuriated by rising utility costs and a government they saw as repressive and corrupt, seized control of important government buildings, including the television stations.

On Thursday, he issued a statement saying that the opposition was solely responsible for the violence the day before. Then he gave an interview to a radio station in Moscow in which he maintained that he had widespread support among the Kyrgyz people, though he acknowledged that he no longer commanded the government.

“In a few days it will become evident that those who imagined themselves the leaders — they are unable to lead,” he said. “They have pushed the country into such an abyss, into such a mess, that they will have to answer for it.”

All the while, Mr. Bakiyev offered no hint as to his whereabouts. Opposition leaders speculated that he had retreated to the south of Kyrgyzstan, where he has longstanding family ties. They said they were worried that he would try to gather supporters and try to retake the capital,– though that seemed unlikely for now — the armed forces, the security services and the police appear to have pledged loyalty to the interim government.

Mr. Bakiyev’s proclamations seemed to fall on deaf ears in Bishkek, where Ms. Otunbayeva announced that the interim government would administer the affairs of state for six months before presidential elections.

Ms. Otunbayeva said the status of the American military base in Bishkek, which plays an important role in supplying the war effort in Afghanistan, would not immediately change, though she warned that the issue was still being debated in the interim government.

In interviews Thursday, opposition politicians said that Ms. Otunbayeva, a former foreign minister and ambassador to the United States and Britain, was chosen as interim leader because she is considered to be a compromiser who is not politically ambitious and does not have a strong base of domestic support, having spent so many years abroad. The politicians, who would speak only anonymously because the situation was in such flux, said they believed she would be unable to amass power, leaving the field open for the presidential election.

Aleksandr Knyazev, a prominent political expert in Bishkek and a former student of Ms. Otunbayeva, said he thought of her as highly conscientious and honest. He said she seemed more European than Central Asian, and that she speaks better Russian and English than Kyrgyz.

“She does not understand the Kyrgyz mentality, and lacks clan support,” Mr. Knyazev said. “I doubt that she will run for president. Judging by her skills, she would make a good parliament speaker.”

While Kyrgyz politicians struggled for control, the United States and Russia on Thursday also seemed to be maneuvering for advantage in Kyrgyzstan, which is the only country in the world that has both American and Russian military bases. The Kremlin has long been bothered by the presence of the Americans in a region it calls part of its zone of influence.

Mr. Bakiyev had repeatedly sought to pit the United States and Russia against each other in order to extract more financial aid from both. Last year he upset the Kremlin when he agreed to evict the American base, then changed his mind after the Obama administration agreed to a steep increase in the rent and other favors.

In recent months, Mr. Bakiyev’s relations with Russia had collapsed, and the Russian government had increased the cost of energy that it provided to Kyrgyzstan. Russia’s state-controlled news media, which is widely followed in Kyrgyzstan, had also been conducting an intense campaign against Mr. Bakiyev, portraying him as a corrupt dictator.

On Thursday, Russia reached out to the opposition, effectively recognizing it as the government. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin spoke with Ms. Otunbayeva, and a senior Russian lawmaker, Sergei M. Mironov, called another prominent Kyrgyz interim leader, Omurbek Tekebayev.

It did not appear that the United States took similar steps, though the State Department said diplomats from the United States Embassy in Bishkek were meeting with opposition leaders.

At her news conference, Ms. Otunbayeva said the interim government was examining the agreements governing the American base.

“We still have some questions about it,” she said. “Give us time and we will listen to all the sides and solve everything.”

Mr. Tekebayev said in a telephone interview that any decisions on the base would be made collectively by the opposition. He said he had a positive attitude toward the United States, but acknowledged that the opposition had lingering resentments over what he said was the willingness of American diplomats to overlook Mr. Bakiyev’s human rights record in order to protect the base.

“The U.S. government does not and did not criticize Bakiyev, or express any negative opinions about him,” Mr. Tekebayev said. “The embassy here was warned several days ago that this would happen. They knew it, and they didn’t do anything about it.”

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker from Prague, Nikolai Khalip from Moscow, Alan Cowell from Paris, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington.

Apr 7, 2010

Emergency in Kyrgyzstan as Police Fire on Protesters - NYTimes.com

Image by zsoolt via Flickr

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — The authorities in Kyrgyzstan declared a national state of emergency on Wednesday after large-scale antigovernment protests broke out around the country and riot police officers fired on crowds in the capital, killing at least 17 people.

The country’s president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was said to have fled the capital, Bishkek, on the presidential plane, and it increasingly seemed that the opposition was gaining the upper hand.

The police used bullets, tear gas and stun grenades against a crowd of thousands massing in front of the presidential office in Bishkek, according to witness accounts. At least 17 people were killed and others were wounded, officials.

Opposition leaders said the toll was as high as 100 people, but that figure could not be confirmed.

The upheaval threatened an American ally, since Kyrgyzstan is home to an important American air base that operates in support of the NATO mission in nearby Afghanistan. American officials said that as of Wednesday evening the base was functioning normally.

The Obama administration has sought to cultivate ties with Mr. Bakiyev after he vowed to close the American base on the outskirts of Bishkek last year, then reversed his decision after the American side agreed to concessions, including higher rent.

Tensions have been growing in Kyrgyzstan over what human rights groups contend are the increasingly repressive policies of President Bakiyev.

Mr. Bakiyev made no public comment on Wednesday, and an official at the airport in Bishkek said in a telephone interview that Mr. Bakiyev took off from the airport on the presidential plane in the early evening. The airport official said Mr. Bakiyev was flying to Osh, a major city in the southern part of the country, but that could not be confirmed.

On Wednesday afternoon, fighting continued in the streets of Bishkek and other provincial centers. Video shot by protesters and uploaded to the Internet showed scenes of people clashing with and in some cases pushing back heavily armed riot police.

Reports from Bishkek said crowds of opposition members tried to enter the presidential offices as well as those of the national television channels.

Dmitri Kabak, director of a local human rights group in Bishkek, said in a telephone interview that he was monitoring the protest on the central square when riot police officers started shooting. He said he had the sense that the officers had panicked and were not being supervised.

“When people started marching toward the presidential office, snipers on the roof of the office started to open fire, with live bullets,” Mr. Kabak said. “I saw several people who were killed right there on the square.”

The United States Embassy in Bishkek issued a statement saying that it was “deeply concerned about reports of civil disturbances.”

By late evening in Bishkek, it appeared that the opposition had succeeded in taking over the national television channels. In a speech to the nation, an opposition leader, Omurbek Tekebaev, a former speaker of Parliament, demanded the Mr. Bakiyev and the rest of his government resign.

Mr. Tekebaev was arrested earlier in the day along with some other opposition leaders, but later released.

Kyrgyzstan, with five million people in the mountains of Central Asia, is one of the poorest countries of the former Soviet Union, and has long been troubled by political conflict and corruption.

The opposition has complained about what is asserts are Mr. Bakiyev’s autocratic policies, but it appears that the immediate catalyst for the violence was anger over a sharp increase in prices for utilities.

On Wednesday, the Kyrgyz government accused the opposition of provoking violence. “Their goal is to create instability and confrontation in society,” the Kyrgyz Parliament said in a statement.

The government said it would deal severely with the protesters, but they did not appear to be deterred. The first unrest occurred on Tuesday in the provincial center of Talas, when opposition members stormed government offices.

Russia, which also has military facilities in Kyrgyzstan and a close relationship with the government, appealed for calm.

“We believe that it is important that under the circumstances, all current issues should be resolved in a lawful manner,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Mr. Bakiyev easily won another term as president as president last year over Mr. Atambaev in an election that independent monitors said was tainted by massive fraud.

Mr. Bakiyev first took office in 2005 after the Tulip Revolution, the third in what was seen at the time as a series of so-called color revolutions that offered hope of more democratic governments in former Soviet republics.

But since then, he has consolidated power, cracking down on the opposition and independent news outlets.