Russia and Eurasia Programme paper: 2012/02
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- 1. INTRODUCTION
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 3 •
Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbek communities should aim at full Kyrgyz fluency, and should redesign the Uzbek schooling system to equip young people for life in Kyrgyzstan. •
parts of southern Kyrgyzstan should involve Uzbeks and other minorities in the project of nation-building to address concerns about national unity. •
border management issues with neighbours in order to allay fears that the country’s territorial integrity is threatened. •
Uzbekistan should work together to ensure the flourishing and protection of Uzbek and Kyrgyz minorities in their respective sections of the Ferghana Valley. •
the country as shared space. Although participation as equal citizens is impossible for Uzbeks at the moment, it is a constitutional ideal that needs upholding until conditions change so that its attainment is possible. The protection of ethnic minority citizens from the extremes of nationalism is a crucial responsibility. •
Kyrgyzstan in the above goals. REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 4
In June 2010 the Kyrgyzstani city of Osh was engulfed in four days of horrendous violence between its two main ethnic groups, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. Before the security forces re-established order, the city witnessed savage killings, torture and sexual assault, widespread destruction of residential, commercial and state property, mass lootings, and significant population displacements. Both parties suffered and committed grotesque crimes, with Kyrgyz government figures reporting that 295 Uzbeks and 123 Kyrgyz were killed. 1 The violence occurred in a power vacuum following the overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010. However in spite of more than a dozen reports and investigations, there is no broad agreement on the causes of what happened. Although the immediate triggers of the violence are contested, the subsequent aftermath is clearer. The Kyrgyz state, municipal authorities and international actors have worked hard to reconstruct the urban fabric of the city and to foster a particular version of inter-ethnic tolerance and harmony. At the same time, the Uzbek population, deprived of influential leaders, has been routinely subject to forms of violence including kidnapping, extortion, robbery, torture, questionable trials, and intimidation by state forces and criminal gangs – with near impunity. The systematic denial of justice to Uzbeks undermines the ability of Kyrgyz leaders to secure the ‘unity’ (birimdik) and ‘harmony’ (yntymak) that they have identified as being imperative to avert further violence. Similarly, many Kyrgyz residents of Osh live in fear of further violence. The failure to agree on the causes of the June 2010 violence, the ongoing injustices experienced by Osh Uzbeks and the ability of most of those responsible for crimes to escape consequences and in many cases to benefit financially from their actions, mean that further violence is distinctly possible and that, should it occur, it could potentially be more destructive than before. This paper is not another attempt to explain what happened. It is worth noting that the 2010 violence in Osh was displaced from the front pages of the British press by the publication of the Saville inquiry’s report on the 1969 ‘Bloody Sunday’ killings in Belfast. It took Lord Saville 12 years, eight volumes, and £195 million to report authoritatively on the killing of 14 people four decades earlier in a country where the legal system works comparatively well. The truth about Osh will emerge, but it may take as long or longer. Due to proximity to the events, ongoing tension and abuse, and nationalist feeling in Kyrgyzstan, the domestic political climate is no more amenable to such a process now than British society was in 1969. Rather, this paper focuses on the importance of understanding and responding to Kyrgyz nationalism for the aversion of future violence. Many observers regard Kyrgyz nationalism as an aggressive, inauthentic and atavistic force responsible for the maladies of Osh. In such accounts, Kyrgyz fears of Uzbek threats to the integrity of the state are depicted as irrational and illogical impediments to the creation of a progressive state that affords minorities full civic rights. Likewise, this perspective views Kyrgyz nationalism as a mechanism that allows Kyrgyz society to dismiss foreign criticism of its treatment of Uzbeks and to avoid taking seriously the conclusions and suggestions of foreign organizations. Such an approach is understandable but unhelpful. This paper rather regards nationalism as an inescapable and ambiguous element of a world order divided into nation-states. It is the ideology that a nation (usually defined by such features as shared language, culture and history) should have a territorial state that expresses its character and defends its interests. It is thus the ideology of the world system of nation-states into which independent Kyrgyzstan was ‘born,’ and the ideology that informs state-led nation-building in the country. As elsewhere in the world, it has the potential either to help Kyrgyzstan develop as a democratic, inclusive and just society, or to become exclusive and hostile to minorities. Nationalism is thus, for the time being, an inescapable context to politics in the country: it needs to be worked with and around, not dismissed or ignored. The paper’s key analytical question is thus ‘how can Kyrgyz nationalism/nation-building become more inclusive?’
1
Out of 442 total deaths. The report continued that of 545 prosecutions, 400 were ethnic Uzbeks and 133 Kyrgyz. Asker Sultanov, ‘Kyrgyz ethnic clashes prompted by Bakiyevs, drug criminals’, Central Asia Online, 8 June 2012. http://centralasiaonline.com/en_GB/articles/caii/newsbriefs/2012/06/08/newsbrief-03.
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