REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and
Responding to Nationalism
www.chathamhouse.org
19
But it was periodic debates about the status of the Uzbek language in Kyrgyzstan that raised most
heckles. In 2004 a Kyrgyz NGO official – who enjoyed an international reputation as a champion of
human rights, and was considered a liberal internationalist by foreign donors and had received
substantial amounts of funding from them – privately told me that he thought Osh Member of
Parliament Davron Sabirov’s aim was to make Uzbek a state language and then join Osh to
Uzbekistan. Sobirov was accused in 1999 of inciting inter-ethnic hatred in an election video, but
later acquitted by a court. A 2006 demonstration by supporters of Jalalbad MP Kadyrjon Batyrov in
support of better treatment of Uzbeks and official status for the Uzbek language likewise raised
Kyrgyz fears of an attack on the unity of the state. At a meeting in 2006 with the OSCE High
Commissioner for Ethnic Minorities, Rolf Ekeus, Kyrgyzstani State Secretary Adakhan Madumarov
said Uzbek could not be granted official status because ‘we are a unitary state’ and other minorities
might demand similar rights.
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The idea that using Uzbek in the workplace, wearing a headscarf, listening to Uzbek music or
raising the idea that Uzbek language could be granted some official recognition could be
interpreted as sinister plots to dismember Kyrgyzstan by seeking autonomy for an ethnically-
Uzbek Osh can only be understood in terms of the profound insecurity of Kyrgyz nationalism
explained in the previous section.
67
Osh, with its complicated history of urban coexistence and
conflict, became the focus for all these concerns.
The Uzbekistan comparison
In Kyrgyz narratives, as seen in section 2, it is striking how often the perceived wealth and privilege
of Osh Uzbeks are sharply contrasted to the supposedly parlous state of Kyrgyz in Uzbekistan. In
2006 the Kyrgyz newspaper Agym blasted the head of the OSCE office in Kyrgyzstan, Marcus
Müller, for a statement that was seemingly sympathetic to Kyrgyzstani Uzbeks demonstrating for
language rights. Whereas ‘the Uzbeks are occupying a large financial and economic niche in the
southern region’, the paper wrote caustically, ‘it is known that ethnic Kyrgyz people in Uzbekistan
have ten times more problems with their culture and language than the Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan.’
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Agym concluded that the only reason the likes of the OSCE could support ‘separatist and extremist’
elements of the Kyrgyzstani Uzbek population is because the Kyrgyz government is too weak to
silence them and they would not get away with that in Uzbekistan.
A senior Osh Kyrgyz policeman put it to me in 2009 that ‘here Uzbeks are free, they have every
opportunity – universities, schools, television channels, and supermarkets; but Kyrgyz in
Uzbekistan have nothing.’ Kyrgyz felt that whereas they had once dominated the Ferghana Valley,
they had been treated unfairly in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. They thus needed ever to be
vigilant against Uzbek intentions and designs on their state, and be suspicious of their foreign
supporters in Western governments and organizations like the OSCE who might use the excuse of
human rights as pretext to attack and dismember a state by supporting a separatist minority, as
they did in Kosovo in 1999.
66
Kyrgyzstan: How Real Are Uzbek Minority Concerns?’ Institute for War and Peace Reporting,
Reporting Central Asia, No
451, 7 June 2006.
67
It is worth considering why the idea of ‘autonomy’ was so alarming: after all, in many contexts autonomy is a way to
preserve the unity of the state as an alternative to separatism. Kyrgyz fears that autonomy would be a step towards the
fracture of the state are informed by post-Soviet comparisons. Many of the secessionist or irredentist wars on (post-) Soviet
space were for a change in the political status of territories that already enjoyed some degree of formal autonomy –
Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, South Ossetia, Abkhazia etc. Julie George argues that these autonomous regions provided
mobilizing infrastructures for separatism, and the lack of such structures in the Ferghana Valley meant that ‘Long-term
separatist goals and extensive nationalist mobilization have been conspicuously absent.’ George, Julie. (2009), ‘Expecting
ethnic conflict: The Soviet legacy and ethnic politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia’, in Wooden, Amanda and Stefes,
Christoph, The Politics of Transition in Central Asia and the Caucasus (London: Routledge); p.88ff
68
‘Kyrgyz paper blasts OSCE for meddling in internal affairs’,
Agym, 23 June 2006. BBC Monitoring CAU 11 July 2006.
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism
www.chathamhouse.org
20
After 2010
The policy responses of the Kyrgyz government and local authorities to the Osh events will be
considered in the next section, but at this point it is worth noting that much popular reaction and
comment followed the lines established before the violence, albeit with unprecedented (and often
unchecked) vitriol.
An extended essay by Kalen Subanov, provocatively entitled ‘Southern Kyrgyzstan: Caliphate or
Uzbek state?’ identified a three-fold Uzbek threat to Kyrgyzstan.
The first was the Islamist group
Hezb-ut-Tahrir, proscribed in
both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and whose supporters in Osh are in
the popular imagination (and probably in reality) identified primarily as being Uzbek. The second is
the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has attacked Kyrgyzstan at various times since 1999
but was largely neutralized by the US military in Afghanistan. Subanov dwelt on the third, which he
claimed was the operations of Uzbekistan’s security services to monitor and control drugs routes
and thus consolidate their position in Kyrgyzstan.
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Similarly, an article in the newspaper Alibi in
late June 2010 moved seamlessly from invective against Uzbekistan for allegedly attempting to
seize Kyrgyz border territory to invective against the Uzbek minority for not learning Kyrgyz and
loyally identifying with the state.
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The same paper claimed that the most essential factor for the
unity of the nation was language, and that the only ethnic group one would fight for was that with
which one shared a language. Therefore, ‘the only guarantee that we can preserve the Kyrgyz
state’ is to employ in state service only people who know and can speak pure Kyrgyz.
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These are familiar themes. The profound threats to the survival of Kyrgyzstan arising from disunity,
geopolitics and language are brought together in Osh’s Uzbeks (or at least their leaders), who are
disloyal, a vector for the actions of hostile Uzbekistan, and who refuse to learn the language or
identify with proper Kyrgyz culture. The violence of June 2010 is thus read as simply the latest
Uzbek attempt to dismember Kyrgyzstan; but this time, one that needs to be met with a tougher
and more concerted response. It is this understanding that frames policy responses in Kyrgyzstan,
as the next section explores.
69
Subanov, Kalen, ‘Tushtuk Kyrgyzstan: Khalifatpy je Ozbek mamleketibi?’ [Southern Kyrgyzstan: Caliphate or Uzbek
state?],
Alibi, 11 June 2010 (part I) and 15 June 2010 (part II).
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Rakhmankulov, Mashakbay, 'Otkondu tapancha menen atsan... Ozubek ketip oz kaldyk’ [If you could shoot the past with
a gun... Uzbeks left, we stayed by ourselves].
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‘Ichki integratsia kuchotulmoiuncho, mamlekettegi birimdik bekemdelbeit’ [State unity cannot be consolidated unless
internal integration is strengthened], Alibi, 21 June 2011.