Panel Suggests Media, Representation, Corruption all Obstacles to Peace & Democracy in Kyrgyzstan

by Ryan Weber

On the evening of December 6, the Elliott School at George Washington University in Washington, DC hosted a panel discussion titled, "Post-election Developments in Kyrgyzstan: The Tension Between Democracy Promotion and Conflict Mitigation."

The event was moderated by Dr. Sean Roberts, director of the International Development Studies Program at George Washington University, and author of the Roberts Report on Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Panelists included Alisha Khamidov, lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University; Jeff Goldstein, senior policy analyst of Eurasia at the Open Society Institute; and Sam Patten, senior program manager of Eurasia at Freedom House.

The event drew a respectable crowd of students and DC-based Eurasia analysts, and focused on the relationship between democracy promotion and (ethnic) conflict resolution in post-Bakiev Kyrgyzstan. Especially at issue was the tension between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks in the country's Southern regions and how certain political factions used nationalist rhetoric to exploit and encourage this tension for their own gain leading up to the October 10 parliamentary election.

Each offered their perspective on the nature of the widespread June violence that shook Osh and lead to the death of hundreds and the flight of tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks to the nearby border with Uzbekistan. Each speaker had been to Kyrgyzstan within the past 6 months, during the Osh violence, October elections, or both.

Jeff Goldstein begun by addressing the crux of the argument - that increased democratic freedom allows for the type of negative nationalism which can slow, or even inhibit, conflict mitigation. His response to this line of reasoning is that it is inconclusive. Rather than proving that democracy as ethnic cooperation are mutually exclusive in the current Kyrgyz case, this only shows that for the moment, the democracy that does exist in Kyrgyzstan is not robust enough to prevent its own manipulation for factional gains.

Goldstein identified 4 issues preventing, or limiting the success of Kyrgyz democracy.

1. Absence of Rule of Law - police extortion, partial judges, and other flagrant extra-legal maneuvers continue to discredit the government. The inability of government to control its own operatives, dramatically demonstrated during the June events, only exacerbates this problem.
2. Lack of Diverse Free Press - Government is trying to turn "State TV into Public TV," but has already used it to manipulate press coverage of the June violence. The closing of all Uzbek-language TV news stations also leaves many Kyrgyz citizens with no reliable news source, and the resulting rumor mill plays to the extreme.
3. Lack of Local Self-Governance - All gov. officials appointed from Bishkek. While Uzbeks only make up 14.5% of total national population, they are much higher, even a majority, in some areas, but still have no voice in choosing local government leaders.
4. High levels of Corruption/ Criminality - Not only among gov. officials, but huge power held by local mafia/clan leaders. The June violence may not have been 'ethnic' in target at all, but rather a case of competing economic gang warfare.

One sign of hope Goldstein pointed out was the Oversight Councils, in which NGOs and local business leaders, not employed by the government, are given oversight power to review and report on local government policies and actions.

Sam Patten, who holds the same position at Freedom House previously occupied by Goldstein, focused more on the political dimension. He referred to Russian President Dmitri Medveyedev prediction that a parliamentary democracy in Kyrgyzstan was 'doomed,' and allowed that, "all of our hopes for a strong parliamentary system in Kyrgyzstan are very fragile."

In particular, after conducting focus groups across Kyrgyzstan in September 2010, he finds "the role of nationalism is tearing apart the early hopes of democracy in Kyrgyzstan," adding, "it's really ugly."

And apparently, one-sided. According to Patten, the vast majority of Uzebks he spoke to in the course of the groups indicated that they felt targeted and abused, but were willing to "be patient" and move forward without the need for retribution. That sentiment was echoed by many Kyrgyz in the North and West as well. But in the South, many of the Kyrgyz felt angry. Digging into the cause of this anger, Patten said it mostly stemmed from fear - fear of Uzbek reprisal, and the need to 'act first.' This is what Patten contends remains a divisive element in nationalist rhetoric, and what accounts for the presence of "proto-fascist" slogans in the campaign season.

The three steps necessary for Kyrgyz democracy to move past the ethnic tension exhibited in June are:

1. Seriously address responsibility for June's ethnic violence - so far, little has been done, and what passes for justice remains highly suspect, and mostly anti-Uzbek. The government's role in trying to cover up the violence, as well as the alleged participation of government security forces, both need to be answered for.
2. Incorporate Uzbeks into political governance - historically, as in the 1990s, ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan has followed periods in which the Uzbek minority made demands for what should have been reasonable rights. The outcry against such equality by the majority Kyrgyz population exploded, but such behavior is anathema to democratic systems.
3. Find ways to break the cycle of corruption - same basic comments as Goldstein.

Patten concluded by citing the importance of the North-South regional/ "clan" division over ethnic issues for most Kyrgyz citizens, the difficulty of adopting new ways of operating when the same names continue to dominate Kyrgyz politics, and the generally positive sign the elections represent.


The final speaker was Alisher Khamidov, a scholar and ethnic Uzbek who was 27 km west of Osh when the violence erupted in June. Like those he was visiting, he fled to the Uzbek border, only to be denied entry. He commented, briefly, on the personal connundrum of finding himself caught up in a situation:

"I was unwanted by my country of citizenship, and [abandoned] by my ethnic homeland."

Khamidov quickly got down to business. He pointed out that in both the case of democratization and peacebuilding, the US and its allies had spent hundreds of millions of dollars since the 1990s ($850 million was the figure he used for Democracy promotion alone) and still had not made much progress. The reasons for this, he believed, were two-fold. First, the programs were not always well-conceived to effect the change necessary to achieve their objectives. Peace building, which is based almost solely on ethnicity, focused on rural populations in Osh, Jalal-Abad and Batken provinces. It did not deal with urban centers, like Osh city where the June violence erupted, nor did it introduce ideas of inter-ethnic peace to regions that were exclusively Kyrgyz. The result was that anti-Uzbek sentiment fomented in these areas, and was later brought to the mixed regions.

Khamidov's second point, and certainly his strongest, was a systemic flaw in the ability of international aid to influence Kyrgyzstan as intended. Patronage networks, based on familial links, clan allegiance, or business partnerships, remain a prominent aspect of the Kyrgyz economy, much as they are in other post-Soviet nations.

Unlike Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and others, Kyrgyzstan has no major domestic industry or natural resource to provide the financial inputs to make patronage networks operate. If there's nothing to gain from being part of a patronage network, they tend to disintegrate. And this is where International Aid (unforunately) comes into play. By infusing large amounts of money - whether in the 'bags of cash' alluded to in Afghanistan, or simply through contracts like the Manas fuel issue - international aid inadvertently fuels, sustains, and strengthens these patronage networks.

Or, in Khamidov's words, "Kyrgyzstan does not rely on international aid; it is addicted to it."

This is essentially an application of the 'Resource Curse' argument applied to foreign aid, which, like major oil deposits, etc. tend to be funneled by the state to a select few large-scale elites. Lincoln Mitchell, of Columbia University, has several times made the same argument regarding Georgia.

Khamidov's solution is to reduce the amount of international aid sent to Kyrgyzstan, and to direct it as much as possible through NGOs. He admits this may lead to a period of 'withdrawal' but that it is necessary to the long-term health (or even existence) of Kyrgyz political and economic prosperity.


Their remarks were followed by questions from the audience, which produced a few notable ad hoc moments.

For example, the Manas Transit Center, which went surprisingly unmentioned until then, was downplayed as a major issue for the future of Kyrgyzstan by Sam Patten. He pointed to US President Obama's planned reduction of combat troops in Afghanistan by 2012 as a sign that US military presence would no longer require a Manas base within the next 3 years, and with that, US interest in Kyrgyzstan would quickly dry up.

Jeff Goldstein wasn't willing to go that far. He expects the US presence at Manas to remain for many years, but blames the uni-polar focus on the small airbase as a distraction and distortion of US policy toward the Central Asian region as a whole.

Sean Roberts, stepping out of his role as moderator to field a question on the relationship of international aid and political stability, pointed to the earlier comments of his panelists regarding patronage networks and the "2 humps" of increased US funding to Kyrgyzstan in 2002-2003 (when Manas opened) and 2008-2009 (when US military planner realized Pakistan was an unreliable supply route and began forming the Northern Distribution Network -NDN- with increased reliance on Manas). In both cases, large influxes of US money were followed within 2 years by mass protests and political turnover. While he did not suggest it as a singular causal issue, he does see a good argument for elite bickering over patronage gains and public disaffection with overt corruption resulting from such large aid packages as a viable contributor to Kyrgyz political instability.

Final comments were made on the nature of the Russian and Chinese relationships with Kyrgyzstan. It was generally agreed by the panel that China wants to see a stable Central Asia, and is willing to overlook any domestic concerns so long as the economy provides it with markets. Russia, on the other hand, "doesn't mind a little tension [among Central Asian states]" according to Patten, as it allows Russia to play one off the other for its own gains.