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
The insecurity of Kyrgyz nationalism
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
Quoted by Sovetbek Baygaziev, ‘“Traybalizm” - kolomtogo komylgon mina’ [Tribalism – the landmine concealed in the
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
Interview, Osh, 29 October 2011.
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
But it is Uzbekistan that has evoked most alarm about the insecurity of the country. Relative to
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.
40
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), Instit
utional 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
and Elite-Led Protests in Central Asia. (London: Cornell University Press).
42
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
Reeves, Madeleine (2009). ‘Materialising State Space: “Creeping Migration” and Territorial Integrity in Southern
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
Megoran, ‘The critical geopolitics of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Ferghana Valley boundary dispute, 1999-2000’.