Ironically, the sign in the bottom right says "Peace to the World."
Statistics:
Various sources confirm the following statistics:
-more than half of Osh residents have left the city
-over 400,000 refugees (300,000 internally displaced; 100,000 fled to Uzbekistan)
-over 200 people killed
-over 2,000 injured
Many accounts of rape, homes being set on fire (often with people inside burning to death), hands being cut off, looting, beating, killing, etc.
E (a pastor from Bishkek) shared that a believer from the South had participated in transporting Uzbeks to safety, and at a road blockade Kyrgyz rebels discovered in his car lists of Uzbeks whom had helped or planned to help. They beat him, and at one point forced him to stretch out his hand and waved an axe over it. Something stopped them from chopping off his hand, but it was God’s grace, as there have been many, many reports of chopped off hands.
Causes:
To summarize—it is unclear exactly how it started. It appears to be an inter-ethnic dispute, but it’s unclear who started it, and some even say it is politically motivated.
Radio Free Europe correspondent:
“Like I said, the Uzbeks have their version of the story and the Kyrgyz have their version of the story. And the level of violence appears to have been equal on both sides, and the tactics used on both sides also appear to be equal.
While you can get a little bit clearer picture of the chronology of events -- when it started, where it spread to -- it’s difficult to exactly [say] who provoked the conflict. The Uzbeks will say the Kyrgyz came into their neighborhood, and the Kyrgyz say the Uzbeks showed up in their neighborhood.
So it's hard to believe everything everyone says -- it's hard to believe entirely because on both sides there has been a lot of suffering and a lot of death. But it's very difficult to say -- I guess the truth lies somewhere in between what they are saying right now.
I think fear sparked a lot of this stuff.”
An overview of the beginning of the current conflict, which says it started with a dispute over access to pastures in May:.
Opinion: this is not just random, spontaneous ethnic violence, but appears to have been carefully planned and politically motivated
History:
Osh and Jalalabad, the two cities where the violence took place, are located in the Ferghana Valley, the densely-populated multi-ethnic “bread basket of Central Asia.” The valley was divided up rather arbitrarily by the Soviets, and the Uzbeks see the Kyrgyz in these cities as encroaching on their ancestral territory. Similar violent inter-ethnic conflict broke out in the region almost exactly 20 years ago, in June 1990.
Long overview of the history of the Ferghana Valley
Brief overview of Ferghana Valley:
"So, when the Soviet mapmakers came along between 1917 and the mid-1930s and redrew all the maps, they really had no meaning. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, those lines they drew on maps 80 years ago have suddenly taken on great significance. And people really do recognize that there is a border of a Kyrgyzstan, of an Uzbekistan, whereas until 1991 or '92 that had almost no meaning at all. And traditionally the people -- and by traditionally I mean hundreds and thousands of years -- would have just wandered freely from one place to another without recognizing any borders or without there having ever been any borders there."
the 1990 dispute and how it was resolved:
"The interethnic violence in 1990 was started over a water dispute. A group of Uzbeks settled on a patch of land that had water running through it -- the Ferghana Valley is also the breadbasket of Central Asia, it's the agricultural area that really feeds almost the whole population of greater Central Asia. That situation erupted. Some Kyrgyz felt that the land that was given to the Uzbeks wasn't fairly given to them.
This land dispute developed into a much wider conflict that pitted Kyrgyz and Uzbeks against each other, similar to what we are seeing today. To give you an idea of what it would take to stop this current unrest -- at the time both those countries were part of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Army had to pour thousands of troops in. Remember, many Soviet soldiers were based right in that area at the time. But it took thousands of troops a week to get the unrest under control and to restore any sense of stability. Of course, there aren't that many troops in the area any more."
Referendum: There is also a referendum planned for June 27th on switching from a presidential to a parliamentary system. R (another believer from Kyrgyzstan) suggested that perhaps the conflict was motivated by a desire to demonstrate problems with a parliamentary system, which would leave the country without a strong, authoritative figure, capable of taking swift measures to put an end to conflicts such as this. Kyrgyzstan is currently ruled by a provisional government, instituted after an April revolution, which has proven itself unable to deal with such a challenge (despite provisional president Rosa Otunbaeva being, according to R, “a good woman”), and the fear is that a parliamentary system would prove just as ineffective in a crisis situation. The upcoming referendum also intensifies the need to stabilize the situation, as legitimacy requires that people in the affected regions also be able to freely participate in the referendum, which currently looks nearly impossible in the planned timeframe.
Solutions:
R believes that the best and only way to put an end to the violence is to nip it in the bud. It is how the Soviet Union put an end to the Osh Massacre 20 years ago. The problem is that there is now no Soviet Union, Kyrgyz troops have proven ineffective, and in some cases have even joined in on violence against Uzbeks, and despite Kyrgyzstan’s appeals, Russia has so far refused to send in troops. Another possible solution, according to R, is to find a scapegoat, which will unite Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, “The only solution is to find a common enemy. Maybe that’s overly cynical, but that’s the only solution I can see.” In Soviet times it was the Soviet Union and Russians. Now, the two possibilities that Ruslan sees are Tajiks and Islamic extremists.
Here is an interesting opinion piece also arguing for Russia to send in troops.
A Radio Free Europe correspondent argues that Russia is unlikely to do so:
“But the big problem is – and this is going to be true for anyone who is looking to help – you have to look at the lessons of 1990. In order to restore order in the area in a time like this, you have to be willing to commit thousands of soldiers who are going to be there probably weeks, maybe months. And you have a weak government in Bishkek. So it's unclear if that government is going to make it through the rest of the year. So exactly who are you defending? If the government that requested you to restore order is in danger of falling, or does fall, then where does that leave you with your troops on the ground? You could end up with a new government that does not want you there and perceives you as the enemy and an occupier on their territory.”
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