Russia and Eurasia Programme paper: 2012/02
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- 2. VIOLENCE IN OSH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 5 It is therefore crucial to delineate some of the primary features of contemporary Kyrgyz nationalism and to show their relevance to the Osh context. Central to this is the uneasy transplant of ideas about the nation as a tribal unity into the context of a modern, territorial, multi-ethnic state. Important too is the Soviet experience in mediating this transition. The paper argues that, unlike state nationalist projects in neighbouring Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan, this historical trajectory has produced a modern Kyrgyz nationalism that is fundamentally insecure and deeply fearful about the ability of the country to survive as a viable entity. This enables us to understand responses to the violence both inside and outside Kyrgyzstan. International donors and actors have generally failed to grasp the concerns and significance of Kyrgyz nationalism. As a result, elements of the international effort at reconstruction have played into the hands of populist politicians. Likewise, many of the activities and recommendations of international organizations for political reform have been badly judged, and created a backlash against the Uzbek minority. By not properly getting to grips with Kyrgyz nationalism, international responses to the Osh violence have exacerbated its more aggressive tendencies and caused a further deterioration in conditions for the city’s Uzbeks. In view of these issues, the paper recommends a series of steps that the Kyrgyz government and municipal authorities, Kyrgyz civil society, the Uzbek minority, the government of Uzbekistan, and international donors and actors, can take to help avert future violence by working to limit the negative effects of exclusionary Kyrgyz nationalism, promote inclusive nationalism, and thus further its potential to enhance the common good. Although a just peace will not be possible until there has been wholesale reform of the police and judiciary, and greater provision of economic opportunity, those alone will not guarantee a secure future for Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan. This paper is based upon research carried over five weeks in Osh (and to a lesser extent Bishkek) in October-December 2011. This consisted of interviews with senior and lower ranking Kyrgyz and Uzbek politicians, activists and NGO staff, educationalists, local and national state officials, journalists, artists, as well as representatives of international organizations working in the republic. It also comprised ethnographic study of social relations within the city, and an analysis of media coverage. 2 It builds upon ongoing research into inter-ethnic relations in Osh conducted since 1995. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 summarizes the violence of June 2010 and its aftermath. Section 3 outlines the trajectory and concerns of Kyrgyz nationalism as a project that is profoundly insecure about the country’s survival. Section 4 explains how this accounts for Kyrgyz responses to the June violence, and section 5 details how it frames Kyrgyz national and municipal policy responses. Section 6 argues that international responses have failed to grasp Kyrgyz nationalism and, misdiagnosing the problem, have proposed solutions that are unrealistic, irrelevant, and even counter-productive. Finally, section 7 presents a series of policy recommendations for preserving a viable and ultimately thriving Uzbek minority in Kyrgyzstan by getting to grips with the questions raised by Kyrgyz nationalism.
2
drawn from ethnography in southern Kyrgyzstan and textual analysis of northern Kyrgyzstani political actors and journalists, but lacks a northern Kyrgyz ethnographic dimension. Likewise my lack of Russian language skills reduces my ability to move more widely in Kyrgyz circles.
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 6
The Kyrgyzstani city of Osh, lying alongside the border with Uzbekistan at the eastern end of the Ferghana Valley, has been home to a large and mixed population of predominantly Uzbek and Kyrgyz residents for many decades. 3 Being able to draw upon a rich repertoire of shared culture and history, the city’s and country’s leaders have generally ensured that longstanding tensions between the two groups over the sharing of urban space have been managed well. On two occasions in particular has this not been the case: June 1990 4 and June 2010. In each case an unstable national context precipitated the eruption of massive inter-communal violence that left hundreds dead and injured. To be sure, factors such as Kyrgyz fears about Uzbeks seeking autonomy, recent Uzbek experiences of injustice and prejudice, economic hardship, and inept government action played a role. However it is important to remember that these are ongoing structural factors that do not inevitably or usually lead to riots in themselves: national crisis productive of a power vacuum is the common factor. Many commentators predicted that after the 1990 violence the region in general and Kyrgyzstan in particular was likely to be marked by widespread ethno-nationalist violence. These predictions were based not on empirical research but rather on uncritical invocation of ‘ethnicity’ as an independent and supremely powerful social force. Such musings left little room for politics, in particular the politics of nationalism. 5 Kyrgyzstan’s first president, Askar Akaev, tried to dampen ethnic nationalism and foster a sense of inclusive, civic nationalism that scripted the state as ‘the common home’ of all groups. He placed inter-ethnic harmony at the centre of his exposition of the ‘Seven principles of Manas.’ One of Akaev’s favourite slogans was ‘Kyrgyzstan is our common home’, illustrated on a thousand roadside billboards with a smiling president amidst a group of Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and others in national dress. He founded the Assembly of the Peoples as a talking shop for minority issues. These were not empty gestures. Akaev promoted the founding of Osh’s Kyrgyz-Uzbek University, and the creation of Osh State University’s Uzbek Humanities- Pedagogical Faculty by the merger of the Uzbek philology and pedagogy departments. 6 These
demonstrated a concrete commitment by the state to reproduce an educated Uzbek class within Kyrgyzstan, in particular to staff the numerous Uzbek-language schools in the south of the country and ensure the viability of Uzbek intellectual life in Kyrgyzstan. 7 These new institutions also produced Uzbek-language textbooks for Kyrgyzstani Uzbek schools, a vital move as those from Uzbekistan were unsuitable because of their Latin script and their thick veneer of state patriotism. 8
9 such as Mamasaidov, the influential Osh MP who was also rector of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek University. Numerous Uzbeks I spoke to in the 1990s and early 2000s praised Akaev and said their life in Kyrgyzstan was preferable to life in Uzbekistan. Politically, Akaev’s main rivals were a loose alliance of populist Kyrgyz opposition parliamentarians and their sympathetic press that had strong roots in the south and was openly suspicious of the Uzbek minority. 10 Akaev’s suppression of these populists (sometimes by undemocratic means), and his ties with Osh Uzbeks, were important reasons why violence did not recur during his watch. These populist nationalists swept to power in the anti-Akaev coup of 2005, putting a new politics of nationalism in place that eroded the position of Uzbeks (who now lacked close ties to Bishkek) and set the scene for the violence of 2010.
3
For the sake of this paper, by ‘Osh’ is meant populations both bounded within the formal administrative extent of the city, and contiguous settlements functionally part of it yet formally within the boundaries of the neighbouring district of Kora-Suu. 4
Rupesinghe, Kumar and Tishkov, Valery (eds), Ethnicity and Power in the Contemporary World. (Paris, United Nations University), pp. 116-24. 5
Asia’, International Affairs, Vol. 87, No 3. 6
Interview, anonymous Uzbek academic, Osh 2009.
7 Yodgor Jalilov, interviewed in O’sh Sadosi, 28 June 2001
8
‘Ona darsliklar xususida’ [Regarding textbooks in the mother tongue], O’sh Sadosi, 25 September 2000.
9 Fumagalli, Matteo (2007), 'Informal ethnopolitics and local authority figures in Osh, Kyrgyzstan', Ethnopolitics, 6/2, pp. 211-33.
Megoran, Nick (2004), ‘The critical geopolitics of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Ferghana Valley boundary dispute, 1999- 2000’, Political Geography, Vol. 23, No 6. Yüklə 0,74 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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