It’s Time
It’s been about five years since the last “election” in Kyrgyzstan, called the Tulip Revolution, so it was time for a change. Kurmanbek Bakiyev replaced Askar Akayev for being a corrupt, power mad dictator, and some people are making the same charges against President Bakiyev, with a side order of nepotism.
The BBC article, Kyrgyzstan opposition sets up ‘people’s government’, is as good a place as any to get an overview of what outsiders think is going on,
Kyrgyzstan is important to the US because we have the main transit point for aerial resupply of the troops in Afghanistan at Manas Air Base in the country.
For more than you really want to know about the situation, you could start with my post, Creative Cartography II, which covers the “swirl” of the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. That is important because the current President, Bakiyev is a “lowland” Kyrgyz, which means he is probably an ethic Uzbek and is certainly resented by the “highland” Kyrgyz. Tribalism and nationalism are alive and as nasty as ever in Central Asia.
Bakiyev is probably just as bad as Akayev, but people would have ignored it if he was a member of the “right” tribe. He set things in motion when he started arresting opposition leaders, and their followers took to the streets. The violence, in part, is the result of those leaders being unavailable to control their followers.
