I have struggled to try to understand what happened in Kyrgyzstan this summer, specifically the “interethnic” clashes in June. My graduate studies focus on Central Asia in the 19th century, and frankly, much has changed. I am sometimes ill-equipped to fully explain whats happening now with my knowledge of the 19th century. This upcoming semester I’ll be learning more about the Soviet period and perhaps you’ll see evidence of that here. For now, I turn to others to explain the situation in Kyrgyzstan.
I cam across a very sharp article at Radio Liberty, Madeleine Reeves’ Getting To The Roots Of Resentment In Kyrgyzstan, which looks at how structural problems of labor and migration contributed to what appears to Western eyes as ethnic problems. Uzbeks have traditionally lived in the cities while the Kyrgyz inhabited rural areas. So when Soviet-collective farms became Soviet no more, young Kyrgyz had to go elsewhere for work, while the Uzbeks were often shut out of national government work. With resentment on both sides after Bakiyev’s years of economic stagnation, a weak central government came to power on a wave of legitimized violence- and this was after the last government came to power in the same way. In Reeves’ language, “[there has been] a progressive normalization of political violence. Often, indeed, violence seems the only vehicle that will produce meaningful political results, and it has become symbolically and discursively legitimated as such after the “heroic” seizure of the White House in April.” She recommends institution-building and “hard, open discussion” to get past this. Unfortunately, the current Kyrgyz government seems both unable and unwilling to do so.