Russia and Eurasia Programme paper: 2012/02
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- The insecurity of Kyrgyz nationalism
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 13 leaders, ‘yrys aldy – yntymak’, meaning ‘prosperity follows concordance.’ Thus Manas, the warrior leader celebrated in the eponymous poem that is the crowning glory of Kyrgyz oral culture, is the quintessential leader because he united disparate Kyrgyz tribes against a common enemy, the Kalmak. On the basis of his pioneering research on the Manas epic, the 19th-century Russian scholar Vasily Radlov wrote that ‘the Kyrgyz are especially remarkable for their strong and lasting feeling of the people’s unity, which is so clearly manifested in their epic poetry.’ 35 According to this reading of the past, in contrast to the time of Manas, for example, the Kyrgyz’s succumbing to imperial Russia is blamed upon rival tribal factions trying to play the Russians off against each other. The disunity that precipitated this ‘betrayal of national honour’ is viewed by academics such as Amanbek Mambetov as the greatest threat to modern Kyrgyzstan, making the formation of a state ideology to unite the Kyrgyz of the utmost contemporary importance. 36 This historical imagination explains why Kyrgyz politicians and thinkers place so high a premium on birimdik and yntymak. The role of Manas as a successful unifier of the disparate Kyrgyz tribes has made him a compelling icon for intellectuals and politicians of independence. President Akaev derived ‘seven principles’ from the epic, even claiming that that ‘just as the Muslims hold their five duties sacred, so we too ought to observe [the seven principles].’ 37 Unsurprisingly, the first of the seven principles is preserving the unity of the nation; the second is yntymak between the ethnic groups of Kyrgyzstan. 38
Modern senses of Kyrgyz national identity, therefore, use a vocabulary that needs to be understood with reference to political concepts that predate the territorial nation-state system in Central Asia. Their frequent contemporary invocation as remedies for the trials of independent statehood reveals a sense that Kyrgyzstan is in crisis. In 2011 musician Jolboldu Alybaev, one of the greatest cultural figures in contemporary Kyrgyzstan, said to me in an interview: We don’t have a good identity, we are not developing, we need one. Manas united the people, he fought against the Kalmaks. The Kyrgyz had been dispersed, but he united them and brought them here. They were almost extinguished, but he rescued them. Today, we need him to unite us. We have enough of the resources that we need – land, people, etc; but we have poor leaders, no ideology, and we need it, to unite the people. The challenges of disunity are many: North and South, uruuchuluk (tribalism), other ethnic groups. Our leaders are only pursuing their own interests, making us capitalist; they are not thinking about the people, so it is vital that we unite. 39
This quote reveals a Kyrgyz nationalism that, far from being a confident exultation in post-colonial liberty, is essentially insecure. This insecurity is particularly evident within three national debates: about ‘tribalism’, geopolitics and language. Indicated in Alybaev’s statement, the first major element of insecurity in modern Kyrgyz nationalism is the internal division of uruuchuluk, commonly translated as ‘tribalism.’ The voluminous academic literature is divided on what term to use, different scholars advocating terms including clans, tribes,
of power on the steppe’, in David Sneath (ed.), Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth-Twentieth Centuries. (Bellingham: Centre for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University). 35
Radlov, Vasily (1995 [1885]). ‘Preface’, in Irina Kondrateva (ed.), Encyclopaedical Phenomenon of Epos ‘Manas’: Articles Collection. (Bishkek: Kyrgyz Encyclopaedia), p. 258. 36
Mambetov, Amanbek ‘Satylgan uluttuk ar-namystyn jana adashkan ideologiyanyn maseleleri’ [The issues of betrayed national honour and deviant ideology], Res Publica, 7-13 September 1999. 37
hearth], Kyrgyz Tuusu, 13-15 April 1999, pp. 57-58. 38
This is by no means to claim that clan structures have remained unchanged over time or that their role can be disentangled from numerous other social forces; rather, it is to recognize that the idea of a polity whose survival is predicated upon the ability of a leader to unite clans provides a historical political imagination and vocabulary that remain powerful today. 39
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 14 strategic groups, factions and regionally-based kinship networks. 40 But it is agreed that informal loyalties based on a range of ties are crucial for understanding how society works in Kyrgyzstan. These ties may be bonds based on genealogies, native locality (from village to region), neighbourhood of residence and peer relationships developed at different stages of career in youth organizations, universities, military service, workplaces, the Haj pilgrimage, etc. These networks are not static and unchanging, but are flexible and dynamic. They are not the only basis of social organization – money, talent, ideals and ideology are also significant. But they are nonetheless highly important as a basis of patronage networks, very useful in everyday life for helping gain access to a range of goods such as university entrance, jobs and promotion, work contracts, the signing off of forms and certificates, release without charge from police custody, tax avoidance, favourable court rulings, etc. In the realm of politics, they are considered vital for acquiring office, mitigating conflict, mobilizing protests, and effecting change. 41 Because these practices are regarded as deeply embroiled in corruption and bad governance, they are considered by commentators as inimical to proper Kyrgyz ideals of good politics, and emblematic that the Kyrgyz nation is divided and thus in crisis. The second source of profound insecurity in Kyrgyz nationalism is geopolitical. 42 Cartoonists in the Kyrgyz nationalistic press often depict helpless little Kyrgyzstan squeezed between its powerful Chinese, Kazakh and Uzbek neighbours (Figure 1), or tucked into the back pockets of powers further afield such as Russia and the United States (Figure 2). Kyrgyz intellectuals fret over whether the country, with little wealth and a divided, Russified elite out of touch with Kyrgyz traditions, is even viable as a state, and whether it should not rather seek to merge itself with Russia or Kazakhstan. 43 Among educated Kyrgyz, the lament that Kyrgyzstan lacks an ideology is a recurrent theme. Many Kyrgyz fear that their state might be dismembered by the ‘creeping migration’ of Tajiks drifting into depopulated land along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border. 44 Thus the issue of ceding territory to China as part of a bilateral boundary delimitation agreement in 2002 caused so much popular anger that it precipitated the fall of the government. 45
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan is a militarily strong and politically assertive neighbour. It has frequently been alleged by Kyrgyz politicians and journalists that Uzbekistan has consistently violated the country’s sovereignty by snatching criminal suspects from Kyrgyz soil, abusing and killing villagers at illegally erected border checkpoints, holding the country to ransom by withholding gas supplies, disrupting transport networks by closing roads, and even laying unmarked mine-fields along the boundary. 46 By unilaterally erecting boundary fences and checkpoints, Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov was depicted by one cartoonist as freely snipping away at the undefended territory of Kyrgyzstan (Figure 3). But it is not only the Uzbek state that many Kyrgyz fear. In 1999, Kyrgyzstan’s weak army struggled to repel the so-called Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as it invaded Kyrgyzstan from its Tajikistani mountain hideouts. Geopolitically, there is a thick vein of thought in Kyrgyz society that thinks of the country as existentially threatened.
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For a good overview of these debates, see Gullette, David, (2007). ‘Theories on Central Asian factionalism: the debate in political science and its wider implications’. Central Asian Survey, Vol. 26, No 3. 41
See for example Jones Luong, Pauline, (2002), Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Collins, Kathleen (2002), ‘Clans, pacts and politics in Central Asia’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No 3; Radnitz, Scott (2005), ‘Networks, localism and mobilization in Aksy, Kyrgyzstan’. Central Asian Survey, Vol. 24, No 4; Radnitz, Scott (2010), Weapons of the Wealthy: Predatory Regimes
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Marlène Laruelle identifies the same phenomenon as ‘feelings of imperilled sovereignty.’ Laruelle, Marlène (2012), ‘The paradigm of nationalism in Kyrgyzstan. Evolving narrative, the sovereignty issue, and political agenda’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 45, No 1, p. 39. 43
Megoran, Nick (2000), ‘Chinggis Aitmatov and the geopolitics of Kyrgyzstan,’ Eurasia Insight, 14 February 2000 (New York: OSI). 44
Kyrgyzstan’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 61, No 7. 45
Megoran, Nick (2012), ‘Rethinking the study of international boundaries: a biography of the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan boundary’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 102, No 2. 46
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