Kyrgyzstan: from bad to worse

By Zoya Pylenko in Bishkek for ISN Security Watch (11/05/06)

One year later, the looting of shops in the center of the Kyrgyz capital that accompanied the 2005 March Revolution, which chased away President Askar Akaev, seems to have been an ominous sign indeed. Few of the new authorities’ promises, such as ending nepotism and corruption, have been fulfilled. But murders, property seizures, and demonstrations - some in support of well-known criminals - have become common place. Indeed, suspected criminals face little opposition and at least one of them has made it into parliament, prompting some experts to warn that Kyrgyzstan is slipping into mob rule.

On 13 April, Edil Baisalov, the leader of the nongovernmental organization For Democracy and Civil Society and one of the country’s most prominent political activists, was shot in the back of the head when leaving his office. He survived this apparent assassination attempt but is still recovering. There have been several murders in Kyrgyzstan since the revolution, but the victims have tended to be figures with dubious political and criminal connections. Baisalov has no such links. Instead, shortly before he was assaulted, he had organized a campaign against the decision to allow a wealthy Kyrgyz businessman with a shady reputation - Ryspek Akmatbaev - to participate in 9 April parliamentary by-elections.

Akmatbaev's reputation seems to have caught up with him. According to news reports, the alleged crime boss was gunned down Wednesday as he was leaving a mosque in the outskirts of Bishkek.

He was hoping to win the seat held by his younger brother, Tynychbek Akmatbaev, who was also killed in murky circumstances in the Moldovanovka prison near Bishkek in late October. However, Akmatbaev was under criminal investigation before being killed, accused of murdering two rival gang members himself.

Earlier, he was convicted for setting up a criminal band and the illegal possession of arms. The Central Election Commission first suspended his registration as a candidate - not for any of the above reasons, but because he had not lived uninterruptedly in the country during the last five years, as is required by the constitution of candidates for parliament. A court later ruled that he could register after all. Following that decision, Akmatbaev won the seat with about 80 per cent of the vote - although his inauguration as a deputy had been suspended until investigations were completed.
Criminalization of politics

Baisalov, with his demonstration in which some 2,000 people participated, sought to prevent Akmatbaev from becoming a deputy. The demonstrators gathered in front of the presidential administration in Bishkek but received no answer from President Kurmanbek Bakiev. Many people suspect a link between this demonstration and what befell Baisalov later. Some believe that he asked for it, with his perpetual demands for democracy. “What happened to Baisalov is his own fault,” one young Kyrgyz in Bishkek told ISN Security Watch. “What did he expect when he acted like this? There can be no democracy in Central Asia.”

Other observers believe it is not so much a question of democratization as of criminalization. The US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Mary Jovanovich, warned in March that criminals’ attempts to become members of parliament could create serious problems in Kyrgyzstan. Svante Cornell, deputy director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, agrees. “There is a merger of the political and criminal worlds in Kyrgyzstan,” he told ISN Security Watch. “Serious organized criminal kingpins play an open role in politics, influencing decisions directly and indirectly, and Bakiev has legitimized this. It is the largest danger facing Kyrgyzstan.”

This corroborates the opinion of a perhaps less objective analyst, former Kyrgyz president Akaev, who in an interview with RFE/RL in March claimed that the revolution was carried out with the support of criminals, who were now being repaid for their services.

True or not, for many people the revolution has not brought about any positive changes. And they are losing hope. One young Kyrgyz described the current situation in the country to ISN Security Watch as “terribly bad”, whereas before the revolution, it had just been “bad”. And yet he had come back from abroad, where he had worked for five years, just after the revolution, hoping for a better future within Kyrgyzstan under the new authorities. Now, he is planning to leave the country again - as are many others.

According to estimates, as many as 500,000 Kyrgyz (out of a total population of some 5 million) work seasonally or full-time abroad, mostly in Russia and Kazakhstan but also in neighboring Tajikistan, for example. An increasing number of these migrants have no intention of returning: 90,000 Kyrgyz are in the process of obtaining Russian citizenship.
Growing uncertainty

This massive emigration is not a surprise. People feel increasingly insecure and uncertain about the future. Deputies and businessmen are all too regularly shot down in Bishkek - and often enough in broad daylight. The murders appear to be connected with the re-distribution of property that followed the revolution. Many of those who enjoyed power and connections during the Akaev regime lost not only those, but their property as well. Now, people connected to the post-revolutionary elite are trying to get hold of the spoils - and if not the new elite, then criminals are trying to make use of the authorities’ weakness.

And weak they are, or at least inactive in the face of murder, demonstrations, or, like in November, a major and mysterious prison revolt that began with the murder of Akmatbaev’s brother. The incident left as many as 20 inmates dead before they were put down by security forces.

There is certainly cause for concern. “Basically, a whole year has been wasted. The government has been very passive reacting to events, handing the initiative to groups like NGOs and criminals,” one regional analyst told ISN Security Watch. “And things are getting worse and worse. With some exaggeration, you could say that soon, Kyrgyzstan will resemble Somalia in being just a name on the map, without a functioning government.”

But President Bakiev seems to be confident about the country’s future. In late March, he insisted that gross domestic product growth would reach 8 per cent in 2006 and 10-12 per cent in every subsequent year. This year would be one of economic breakthrough. Prime Minister Felix Kulov seems to go along with the president - saying that the latter’s goal is difficult and ambitious but fully attainable under the right conditions. The facts, however, seem to speak against this miracle. The Economist Intelligence Unit called Bakiev’s economic aims “unrealistic”. In 2005, the economy was on the decline (GDP falling by 0.4 per cent) and because no serious improvements have been made for it to perform better, it seems double-digit growth is out of the question. Only the shadow economy managed to grow by 10 per cent last year, according to the International Business Council, a Kyrgyz business association.

Therefore, Bakiev’s high demands begs the question of whether the president is still in touch with reality. Some believe he is not. “Bakiev, in my view, seems to have lost control of developments,” said Cornell.

Or perhaps political infighting is absorbing all the time that would otherwise be spent on boosting the economy and taking care of criminals. Faster and more devastatingly than in Georgia and Ukraine after their “color revolutions”, the Kyrgyz revolutionary establishment started cracking. In September, Bakiev fired prosecutor-general Azimbek Beknazarov, a revolutionary firebrand who has since been re-elected to parliament and gone into opposition. Later the same month, acting foreign minister Roza Otunbaeva failed to get parliamentary confirmation for her post. She has now joined Beknazarov in the opposition.
Another revolution?

On the eve of the first anniversary of the March revolution, Otunbaeva told RFE/RL that she was in opposition to the government because it was not serving the people’s interests, with Beknazarov claiming that Bakiev’s government failed to take any serious steps to change Akaev’s corrupt and nepotistic system.

In April, the new Kyrgyz opposition gained one more member when Almazbek Atambaev left his post of minister for industry, trade and tourism. He said on the occasion that nepotism dominated among top officials as it did before and that the fight against corruption remained pure rhetoric. Bakiev, on the other hand, said Atambaev resigned because he had not been able to fulfill any of the tasks with which he was charged.

This leaves about only Kulov of the early revolutionary leadership alongside Bakiev. And he might not be there to help the president. “Both Kulov and Bakiev don’t do much. They either don’t know what to do, or they’re waiting till the other makes a mistake to be able to grab all power for himself,” the regional analyst said. “Either way, it doesn’t help the country.”

On 29 April, an alliance of opposition politicians and representatives of NGOs held a rally in Bishkek to force Bakiev to implement measures to fight crime and corruption - or resign. The thousands of protesters dispersed after Bakiev - flanked by Kulov - addressed them. The president told the crowd that politicians “who say there has been no change in the country” since the revolution were “blind and short sighted”.

When organizing the demonstration, the opposition called for immediate constitutional reform in order to weaken the executive branch of government and reorganize the state-controlled mass media. When running for president, Bakiev promised to weaken the presidency - a reform he now wants to hold off until 2009. The opposition has threatened to hold new demonstrations until their demands are implemented. So for now, there will be no calm in Kyrgyzstan.

The combination of a population that feels crime and corruption are rampant plus an increasingly dissatisfied opposition, “very possibly” will lead to Bakiev being chased away as was Akaev, the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute’s Cornell said, adding: “This is exactly why Bakiev is capitalizing on relations with Russia to get [President Vladimir] Putin to support him and back him up.”

Putin, however, seems in no hurry to do so. Bakiev visited Moscow on 24-25 April, and the Russian daily Kommersant concluded that he had not been able to secure Russian support for his decision - although he had agreed to increase the Russian military presence at Kant airbase, near Bishkek. “Putin didn’t encourage talk on the domestic political difficulties in Kyrgyzstan,” wrote the daily, “signaling the Kyrgyz president will have to count on himself exclusively.”

Zoya Pylenko is ISN Security Watch’s correspondent in Kyrgyzstan. She studied English and Turkish at the Kharkov Pedagogical University and International Trade at Istanbul’s Marmara University.