Russia and Eurasia Programme paper: 2012/02
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- 4. KYRGYZ NATIONALISM AND THE ISSUE OF OSH
- Before 2010
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 17
In his book account of the June 2010 inter-ethnic violence in Osh, the city’s populist mayor, Melis Myrzakmatov, claims that Uzbekistan’s armed forces massed at the border in preparation for an invasion of Kyrgyzstan in support of the ‘Uzbek separatists.’ 55 According to this understanding, the harm done to Uzbeks in the June fighting was not ‘crimes against humanity,’ but legitimate self- defence against a well-armed and well-funded plot to destroy the state. This plot was hatched not by ordinary Uzbeks, who want to live in peace, but by politicians such as Kadyrjon Batyrov and Davron Sabirov. Because little, if any, credible, objective evidence has been presented to support this claim, it is routinely dismissed by foreign observers. External research on the issue found no evidence of demands for autonomy among Uzbek elites in Osh. 56 On the contrary, from the late 1990s until the Bakiev period, many Uzbeks in Osh considered that the relative economic and religious freedom of Kyrgyzstan made it a more conducive place to be than Uzbekistan’s secular(ist) authoritarianism. However, the belief that Osh’s Uzbeks want to break up the Kyrgyz state, although not universally subscribed to, is widely held among all strata of Kyrgyz society. Why? It is not sufficient to simply dismiss this view as a cynical move by some populist politicians to bolster their own positions, a defence mechanism that evades responsibility by blaming the victims, or simple prejudice. These may or may not be factors. Rather, as the previous section argued, it reflects a Kyrgyz nationalism that is profoundly insecure about issues of internal unity, geopolitics and language. As this section shows, it is this insecurity that explains longstanding fears about the Uzbek minority in Osh, and provides the context for the 2010 violence and the subsequent mistreatment of Uzbeks. Before 2010 The urban history of Osh and the relations between its Uzbek and Kyrgyz inhabitants can be scripted in different ways, as stories of coexistence or conflict. Much of Osh’s recent history can be retold as one of cooperation. It was in the markets of Osh that the historically sedentary Uzbeks and nomadic Kyrgyz met to trade. Stories of co-existence draw on ideas of the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks as sharing religion, language and culture. In a 2006 state visit to Uzbekistan, former Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev delighted his hosts by declaring, in Uzbek, during a press conference that ‘Our air is one, our water is one, our God is one, our language is one. Therefore, the Uzbeks and the Kyrgyz will never be separated.’ 57
But this relationship can also be narrated in terms of competition for urban space. Uzbek narratives relate a story of how they traditionally lived in the city and worked as artisans, cooks, traders and technicians, but the Kyrgyz gradually displaced them, taking land, jobs and wealth. 58 Kyrgyz narratives invert these accounts and have Osh’s land traditionally controlled by Kyrgyz tribes. The growth of the newly minted Uzbek ethnicity in the late Russian and early Soviet periods threatened rightful Kyrgyz control, and in the 1924-27 process of national delimitation the leadership of the nascent Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic even made a move to conjoin Osh to its territory or seek autonomy within the Kyrgyz state. 59
For many Kyrgyz, the subsequent story of Osh can be narrated as the attempts of privileged Osh Uzbeks to hinder Kyrgyz from taking their rightful place in the city. Kyrgyz increasingly moved to
55
Myrzakmatov, Melisbek (2011), Men Izdegen Chyndyk [The Truth That I Sought]. (Bishkek), pp.66-72. 56
Fumagalli, Matteo. (2007), ‘Informal ethnopolitics and local authority figures in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’, Ethnopolitics, Vol. 6, No 2, p.220.
57
Uzbek Television First Channel (2006), ‘Uzbek leader urges fighting Islamic group (translation from Uzbek)’ BBC Monitoring CAU 041006 nu/atd. 58
to Osh: stories of conflict and coexistence’, Open Democracy: Russia. http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/nick- megoran/background-to-osh-stories-of-conflict-and-coexistence Some of the material in this section about Kyrgyz narratives is drawn from that same article. 59
On delimitation, see Koichiev, Arslan (2003), ‘Ethno-territorial claims in the Ferghana Valley during the process of national delimitation, 1924-7’, in Everett-Heath, Tom (ed.), Central Asia: Aspects of Transition, (London: RoutledgeCurzon); Haughen, Arne (2003), The Establishment of National Republics in Soviet Central Asia, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 18 Osh to take up roles in the modern urban life of their country, but the Soviets failed to develop quality Kyrgyz educational provision. For example, there was only one Kyrgyz-language school (Gagarin) in Osh at independence, and Kyrgyz children were thus usually obliged to study in Uzbek- or Russian-language schools. This left Kyrgyz disadvantaged, and they often felt looked down on by urban Uzbeks and Russians. All but the most privileged of new rural migrants were squeezed into often cramped apartment blocks vacated by Russians, or rented rooms from Uzbeks. To incoming Kyrgyz it seemed as if the often better-educated and privileged Uzbeks, who dominated the mosques and skilled sectors of the economy, had the best land, the wealthiest businesses and the best houses in the best locations – that the Kyrgyz were second-class citizens in their own state. Upon achieving independence in 1991, Kyrgyz effectively formed a minority in the two main urban centres of their country, Bishkek and Osh. The psychological significance of this is immense: Osh Uzbeks appeared a hindrance to the realization of authentic Kyrgyz statehood. In Kyrgyz narratives of Osh as a contested space, Uzbeks played the role not only of impeding the development of Kyrgyz statehood, but also of fundamentally threatening the very territorial integrity of the state. Some of these concerns were grounded on explicit challenges to the state. For example, the inter-communal violence between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in Osh in June 1990 had many causes but one exacerbating factor was a formal appeal in March 1990 to the Supreme Soviet’s Council of Nationalities by a minority of Osh Uzbeks for the creation of an ‘Osh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic’ within the framework of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic. 60 In 1999 the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan invaded Kyrgyzstan, and in 2006 Kyrgyz police killed five suspected IMU militants who they alleged were planning an attack on the security forces in Jalalabad. They claimed that although three of the dead men were Uzbekistani citizens, two were Kyrgyzstanis: treacherous citizens of Kyrgyzstan willing to join co-ethnics from Uzbekistan in murderous attacks on Kyrgyzstan. 61
However, most of the evidence that Kyrgyz adduce for the claim that their Uzbek compatriots threaten the territorial integrity of the state is inference based on interpretations of everyday cultural practices being essentially nefarious refusals to accept the state’s Kyrgyzness. For example, in 2004 Osh oblast’s governor, Naken Kasiev, signed a resolution mandating that companies, administrations and educational institutions conduct their affairs in Kyrgyz, and that all signs and advertisements be written in Kyrgyz. 62 However, five years later, an article in a nationalist-leaning Osh newspaper marking the 20th anniversary of the passing of the 1989 language law lamented the failure of language laws in the republic, claiming that even some local government administrations in Osh oblast still regularly used Uzbek for official business. 63 More dramatically, one Kyrgyz news agency interpreted the issue of girls wearing hijabs in three Uzbek-language schools in Southern Kyrgyzstan as suggesting that ‘these three Uzbek schools want to establish a caliphate in Kyrgyzstan.’ 64 In April 2010, Alibi newspaper published an open letter from the ‘March People’s Revolution Public Foundation’ to the interim government warning that young people in the south were turning to Uzbek for film, music and culture as Uzbek-language media was dominant in the south. 65 As seen in the previous section, the belief that Uzbekistan presented a particular threat to Kyrgyzstan was widespread in the public domain. Therefore tuning in to culture from Tashkent, in the minds of many Kyrgyz, demonstrated fealty towards Uzbekistan. It was interpreted as evidence that a weak state was threatened by an alliance between a strong neighbour and a powerful yet disloyal ‘fifth column’ minority.
60
Shozimov, Pulat, Beshimov, Bakytbek and Yunusova, Khurshida (2011), ‘The Ferghana Valley during Perestroika, 1985- 1991’, in Starr, S. Frederick, Shozimov, Pulat, Beshimov, Bakytbek, and Yunusova, Khurshida (eds), Ferghana Valley: The Heart of Central Asia (London: M.E. Sharpe), pp. 194-96.
61 ‘Kyrgyz Police Kill Five Suspected Militants In Jalalabad’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Newsline Vol. 10, No 128, Part I, 17 July 2006.
62 ‘Osh Governor Issues Language Resolution’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Newsline Vol. 8, No 88, Part I, 11 May 2004.
‘Kyrgyz tiline kyr korsotkon torolor’ [The bigwigs who threaten the Kyrgyz language], Osh Shamy, Vol. 30, No. 946, 5 September 2009, p. 2
64 ‘Kyrgyz region debates hijab-wearing in schools.’ Excerpt from report by Kyrgyz news agency Belyy Parokhod website, Bishkek, in Russian. BBC Monitoring CAU, 5 July 2006.
65 Alibi, 30 April 2010 (no title).
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