Days ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first visit to Kyrgyzstan, authorities say they have thwarted a terrorist-nationalist-separatist plot.
At a November 29 press conference, Interior Minister Zarylbek Rysaliyev said nine people had been arrested late last week for attempting to destabilize the government with over 10 kilos of TNT. The group of ethnic Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and one Russian were reportedly arrested in Bishkek and Osh.
Authorities may not have nabbed them all, however. Within hours of Rysaliyev’s press conference, special forces got into a shootout with members of a criminal gang and/or terrorist group in Osh, with authorities killing at least four and detaining three. One apparently blew himself up. Some reports linked the group to the arrested nine. Reuters cited a police spokesman connecting the violence to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a banned Islamist group.
Controversial Osh Mayor Melisbek Myrzakmatov has stressed the conflict was not based on ethnic rivalries. (After this summer’s deadly clashes in his city, Myrzakmatov was accused of systemic favoritism toward ethnic Kyrgyz at the expense of Uzbeks -- allegations he’s denied.)
Even beyond Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s law-enforcement forces haven’t won many kudos for goodinvestigative work in the past half-year, when hundreds of civilians died in mass unrest in the capital and in the south. Do the recent arrests and firefights signal an improvement? Or a smokescreen crackdown to come?
Destabilizing the government with 10 kilos of TNT? Who was behind this plot--Guykan Fawkesiev?
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