How the restoration of capitalism has destroyed Kyrgyzstan
The troubles in Kyrgyzstan came to the attention of the world on 6 April in Talas, which is in the north of
the country close to the Kazakh border.
Recent events
An anti-government demonstration turned violent,
and sparked off a series of further anti-government demonstrations, despite the
authorities imposing a state of emergency on 7 April. The government responded
by arresting many opposition leaders, and the opposition in turn retaliated by
occupying the internal security headquarters and a state TV channel in the
capital, Bishkek (formerly Frunze).
During the course of the unrest, guards without
warning opened fire on the unarmed crowds, causing 84 deaths and hundreds of
people to be injured.
With the government unable to take control of the
situation, the then president of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who originally
came to power in 2005 in a US-fomented ‘Tulip revolution’, was on 15 April
forced to flee the capital as thousands of people, angered by the rising prices
of utilities imposed by companies privatised by Bakiyev (and in which his
family members have acquired major interests), stormed the presidential palace.
An opposition – consisting of many politicians who
also supported the US-financed Tulip revolution that brought Bakiyev to power –
promptly declared that it had taken charge of the reins of state, with a former
foreign minister, Roza Otunbayeva, acting as head of state (she is believed to
be a compromise candidate with virtually no power base in the country).
No sooner had Bakiyev left the country than his
supporters started hitting back. On 18 April, Bakiyev supporters seized a
regional government office in Jalalabad, as well as the interior affairs
headquarters, and appointed a governor and head of provincial affairs.
Throughout towns in the south of the country, local
ethnic Kyrgyz people demonstrated against appointments of officials made by the
Otunbaeva government, while in Osh, the protests of law-enforcement workers
against the appointment as interior minister of Bolot Sherniazov (leader of the
anti-Bakiyev protests in Talas) forced the new government to replace him with
Bakyt Alymbekov, who had once been a deputy minister under Bakiyev.
In Kysyl-Kya demonstrators prevented the
newly-appointed mayor, Elmira Arapova from accessing her office.
Besides problems in the south, there was also
trouble in the north. On 19 April, upwards of 1,000 people, again believed to
be mainly ethnic Kyrgyz, tried forcibly to occupy land belonging to ethnic
Russians and Meskhetian Turks in and around Bishkek (the capital), and in the
nearby village of Mayevka. Once again, these events provoked bloodshed, with at
least five people killed and upwards of 30 injured.
On 13 May, further bloody confrontations took place
as numerous government buildings were stormed by Bakiyev supporters in
Jalalabad, Batken and Osh, forcing the interim governor of Jalalabad to flee.
On this occasion, there were reportedly nine deaths and 64 injured.
Communal dimension to the struggle in the south of the country
However, although it was ethnic Kyrgyz who were
doing everything they could to frustrate the attempts by central government to
establish control over the southern region of the country, in fact the area has
a large ethnic Uzbek minority population.
When government forces were involved in trying to
suppress the Kyrgyz protests by force, resentment turned against the ethnic
Uzbek, who by and large supported the new government since they had long been
discriminated against by preceding governments. This was a reprise of the
ethnic tension that had flared up in 1991 at the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Subsequently, in mid-June this year, there were
four days of severe race riots in the country’s southern cities, in particular Osh and Jalalabad. Eye-witness accounts say that local army and police units assisted the
Kyrgyz in attacking Uzbeks, driving them out of their homes and reducing Uzbek
areas to rubble.
It was clearly an orchestrated campaign to cause
ethnic conflict between peoples living in the region, reminiscent of the
campaigns to provoke communities against each other in the former Yugoslavia, where people had been living happily and peacefully together for decades.
Some 400,000 Uzbeks fled their homes, 100,000 or so
of whom were admitted into Uzbekistan until the latter closed its borders to
all other than the injured. Thousands are said to have been killed and many
more injured, mainly with bullet wounds. Kyrgyzstan’s provisional government is
blaming Bakiyev, who denies all involvement.
However, he is the one who would most obviously
benefit if the government that has replaced his is destabilised by the ethnic
violence. The Uzbeks, it would seem, have now turned against the provisional
government as it proved powerless to protect them.
Nevertheless, in the constitutional referendum held
on 30 June to confirm Otunbayeva as president and to facilitate the country
moving towards a parliamentary democracy, those in favour secured an
overwhelming victory.
During the unrest, Otunbayeva did call on Russia to send troops to quell it, but Russia delayed in doing so, no doubt wanting to avoid getting
embroiled in a conflict that is essentially domestic. It has been suggested
that the Russians were holding out on sending troops in order to put pressure
on Otunbayeva to have the US military base at Manas removed from the country,
but in fact Otunbayeva did offer that option, yet still the Russians were
reluctant to intervene, presumably since it was far from clear that such
intervention might not make matters worse rather than better.
Causes of the conflict
What is it that could have led to the restoration
in southern Kyrgyzstan of pogroms unknown since the days of the blackest
Tsarist reaction?
The answer lies chiefly in the dire poverty into
which the people of Kyrgyzstan have been plunged since the break-up of the
Soviet Union, combined with the desperation of those who see no solution
whatever to their grim situation since the restoration of communism is ruled
out of order.
In the absence of a strong communist movement that
can unite all the downtrodden to fight and overthrow their exploiters and
oppressors, workers are easily mobilised by reactionary forces to fight each
other in times of crisis – and this is what is happening in Kyrgyzstan.
The problems faced by the masses in Kyrgyzstan since the break-up of the Soviet Union are terrible. Whereas in its last Soviet days, per
capita GDP was in the region of $1,550, by 1993 it had dropped to $850 and by
1997 to $440. Although it has recovered to some $940, nevertheless there has
been a huge decline. For a start, it is estimated that in 1991 at least 12
percent of Kyrgyz GDP came from transfers from the Union budget. That support
vanished overnight when the USSR collapsed.
Both agriculture and industry were decimated in the
years immediately following Kyrgyzstan’s independence. IMF figures reported
agricultural output of Kyrgyzstan falling 9 percent in 1991, 19 percent in
1992, 10 percent in 1993 and 15 percent in 1994.
In the period between 1992
and 1995 industrial production fell by two thirds, with the privatisation of
state-owned businesses leading to asset-stripping and many a closure, with the
losses of thousands of jobs that had previously been absolutely secure.
And all this was accompanied by massive inflation.
Unemployment affects at least 20 percent of the population, while 40 percent of
the population now live below the poverty line. In the context of Kyrgyzstan, where there is no welfare provision, this means that people are going hungry.
The food subsidies that protected the poor were phased out by 1994.
There is a shortage of land and, incredibly enough
for a country whose water was an export commodity during Soviet times, there is
in many places a shortage of water. As was pointed out by Daniel Passon and
Azamat Termirkulov in a 2004 report, water is a source of conflict in the
Batken region, and presumably throughout the south, because “The collapse of
the Soviet Union has triggered major changes in the economic sector. People who
were previously working in collective farms … or state farms … or
industrial enterprises are now mostly working on small farms, which all need
access to irrigation water. The existing infrastructure of the canals was not
planned in such extensive dimensions, and is not able to deliver water
everywhere it is needed. The constrained financial resources of the state and
water users have led to the collapse of whole sections of the system.” (Analysis
of Peace and Conflict Potential in Batken Oblast, Kyrgyzstan, Analysis
Research Consulting, April 2004)
Moreover, in Soviet days, the infrastructure for supplying
water was maintained by the state at no cost to the recipients. Today, the
recipients resent having to pay for water and, furthermore, not even the
minimum necessary maintenance work is done to maintain the infrastructure,
which is rapidly crumbling and unable to cope with increased demand.
There are also high
levels of unemployment – unknown in Soviet times. As Passon and Termirkulov
explain:
“In the years following
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people of Batken Oblast and in the
neighbouring areas across the border lost their once safe jobs in state farms,
plants, mines and other enterprises. These were completely unprofitable after
subsidies from Moscow dried up. Few new jobs have been created in recent years.
As a consequence, the majority of people are using their only possibility of
earning an income in the region by subsistence farming on … distributed land.
As the plots they received are very small [an average of one acre per
family of five!], communities must try to extend their land, which leads to
competition for the resource …”
This has led to land hunger and periodic riots
throughout Kyrgyzstan. In the south, it became a cause of communal antagonism.
Why attack Uzbeks?
During Soviet times, when there was full employment
and a rising standard of living, differences between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic
Uzbeks were not antagonistic. Prior to the Russian revolution, the Kyrgyz had
been largely nomadic people living off herding animals, while the Uzbeks were
more settled, in agriculture in the countryside, and in trade in the towns.
After the revolution, while nomadism declined, the
Kyrgyz continued to dominate the trade in animal products, and they prospered.
Following the restoration of capitalism, there was a disastrous fall in the number
of livestock, as is shown by the table below:
Inevitably, this meant that, while the vast
majority of the population of Kyrgyzstan was suffering severely, the situation
of ethnic Kyrgyz, whose lives were tied to the breeding of animals, was the
most seriously affected of all.
In addition, the free health and education services
of Soviet times, and even the free water supplies, vanished.
Faced with this situation, it was not difficult to
turn the grievances of ethnic Kyrgyz against those whom circumstances had made
marginally better-off than themselves. The Uzbeks were traditionally more
settled in towns, where poverty was not as dire as in the countryside (rural
poverty today stands at something like 70 percent).
Communal problems had already begun to be inflamed
during the market socialism period in the Soviet Union, in the period when
Turdakan Usubaliyev was first secretary of the Kyrgyz Communist Party, between
1961 and 1986. He was responsible for increasing the size of the administrative
apparatus in the country, ie, creating thousands of government jobs. However,
most of these were allocated to ethnic Kyrgyz, even in the south of the country
where Uzbeks formed a substantial part of the population.
This was quite possibly
because even under market-socialist reforms, the ethnic Kyrgyz were more likely
to have lost their jobs than others. Nevertheless, the result was that the
Uzbeks began to feel that the government had ceased to represent them. In their
turn, the Kyrgyz resented the fact that Uzbeks appeared to be taking all the
best jobs in the retail and consumer sectors – which would not have been
surprising, given their longer traditional association with the town.
In 1989-90, two events took place that inflamed
that resentment. In 1989, a decision of the Supreme Soviet made Kyrgyz the
state language and Russian the language for “inter-ethnic communication”,
leaving no status at all for Uzbek. Since fluency in the Kyrgyz language was a
primary requirement of all government jobs, this created an advantage for those
whose first language was Kyrgyz at the expense of Kyrgyzstan’s other
communities. Along with the policy of pro-Kyrgyz discrimination in the
allocation of government jobs, this policy led to there being in the mid 1990s
only 4.7 percent Uzbeks in key posts in the Osh regional administration (whose
population is 25 percent Uzbek), while only two Uzbeks held positions in
Jalalabad (whose population is 40 percent Uzbek).
Then, in 1990, under pressure from Kyrgyz youth
activists threatening land seizures if the authorities failed to allocate land
holdings to Kyrgyz families, the local government responded by making them a
small grant of land from an Uzbek collective farm just outside Osh. This gave
rise to the first outburst of communal rioting, in which some 200 people were
killed before it was contained by the Soviet army and interior ministry troops.
In addition, contradictions between Kyrgyzstan, on the one hand, and its neighbour Uzbekistan, on the other hand, also tend to rebound
on Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbek minority. These contradictions have become antagonistic
under conditions of capitalism, as each tries to exact the highest possible
price for its exports while paying the lowest possible price for its imports.
In Soviet times, Kyrgyzstan exported water to Uzbekistan and received oil in return. “The flow of resources, notably water from Kyrgyzstan and energy from Uzbekistan, was controlled by planners in Moscow. Today the borders are a
source of considerable tension and the flow of resources is a potential source
of conflict.” (‘Disturbing connections, aid and conflict in Kyrgyzstan’ by Tony Vaux and Jonathan Goodhand, Conflict Assessments 3 for the
Conflict, Security and Development Group)
This is not the only source of tension between the
two countries. Uzbekistan resented Kyrgyzstan joining the World Trade
Organisation, and Uzbekistan’s Islamic Movement has conducted violent forays
into southern Kyrgyzstan, simultaneously angering the Kyrgyz government as well
as the Uzbek government, which blames its Kyrgyz counterpart for not doing
enough to assist it in suppressing the fundamentalists.
Hence it is understandable how the land hungry
Kyrgyz could so readily be led by a disreputable puppet of imperialism such as
Bakiyev into pogroms aimed at driving ethnic Uzbeks into exile and stealing
their land. This is, however, no solution to their problems, since the Uzbeks
they have driven out were hardly any better off than they are. Redistributions
of privately-owned land, whether peaceful or violent, cannot change the
disastrous state of the underlying economy.
The way ahead
It is clear as daylight that what has caused the
present suffering of the masses of Kyrgyzstan is the overthrow of communism,
and that only its restoration can pave the way for the recovery of a civilised
and secure existence.
However, the name of communism has been sullied by
its association with market socialism under which the fortunes of the masses of
Kyrgyzstan began their decline. The need for a communist party to provide
leadership to the masses in their struggle to assert their rights and to
restore their power has also been obscured by the fact that many of today’s
leading bourgeois politicians, who embraced not only market socialism in its
day but also the full-scale transition to capitalism that has been nothing less
than a disaster for ordinary people, were leading members of the local
Communist Party before the Soviet Union collapsed.
The contempt in which these traitors are quite
rightly held, must not be allowed to spill over into rejection of the need of
communist leadership of the working class so that the masses can reassert their
dictatorship over the disgraceful and corrupt elements who are today profiting
from their misery.
Reduction in head
of cattle and birds, in thousands
Year
Large
cattle
Including
cows
Pigs
Sheep
& goats
Horses
Birds
1993
1,122
515
247
8,741
313
10,420
1994
1,062
511
169
7,322
322
6,916
1995
920
481
118
5,076
299
2,208
1996
869
471
114
4,275
308
2,031
1997
848
460
88
3,716
314
2,122
(Taken
from Kyrgyzstan v Tsifrah, 1996, National Statistical Committee of the
Kyrgyz Republic, Bishkek, 1997, p194)