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The news of Kyrgyzstan has been marked in recent days by an incredible political crisis between the government and former President Almazbek Atambayev. Events that have left the Special Forces dead as a result of two chaotic assaults to arrest the former president accused of corruption. A country divided between north and south that decrypts the researcher David Gaüzère from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.
David Gaüzere is a researcher, a specialist in Kyrgyzstan, attached to Bordeaux IV University and an associate member of the Montesquieu Research Institute.
RFI: David Gaüzere, how would you present this country that is called both Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyzstan and which is officially the Kyrgyz Republic?
David Gaüzere: It is a young independent Central Asian Republic since 1991, with a population of 6 million, 75% Kyrgyz and 25% other ethnic communities, located in eastern China. in southern Kazakhstan and northern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It is a country that has the particularity of being a mountainous state and this is very important in the current crisis, since the two extreme valleys, which are south and north of the territory, are opposed. In the middle is the great Tian Shan mountain range, which rises to more than 7,000 meters with passes over 4,000 meters above sea level. So, there are difficulties of access every winter between the valleys that have curled up on themselves, and that explains a lot of things.
A configuration that has marked populations differently ?
The Kyrgyz majority belong to the Turkish-speaking group: they are Sunni Muslims, with a traditionally moderate Islam, impregnated with Sufism. They speak two languages, Kyrgyz, which is the national and state language, and Russian, which is the state language, spoken mainly in professional life. Afterwards, in the northern valley, there is a strong Russian minority around the capital Bishkek and, in the southern valley, there is a strong Uzbek minority around the city of Osh (also called "the capital of the south" ).
This Republic has the particularity, because of the competition between the two plains, to have had political alternations which gave a more free and more democratic power to this nation compared to the other countries of Central Asia.
What were the highlights of contemporary history that have marked this country and can shed light on the current situation ?
Kyrgyzstan was originally a Soviet country, a member of the USSR, created artificially between 1924 and 1936 by Stalin. As the Kyrgyz people have always lived in these mountains, the Soviet power has therefore added these two plains to the north and south of this country of mountaineers to make this republic viable, even though they were composed of very different populations. On August 31, 1991, the Republic became independent and since then has had a tumultuous political life. Its elections were more freely conducted than in neighboring countries, but with frauds that provoked strong discontent among the population. There were two revolutions (2005 and 2010) to win what had been confiscated by the ballot boxes, with each time a revenge from the north on the south and from the south on the north.
Since then, Almazbek Atambayev has been elected President (2011 to 2017), after a year of provisional leadership led by Roza Otunbayeva, who was the first woman president of Central Asia. Atambayev did not want to represent himself and handed over his power in 2017 to his former protégé, Sooronbay Jeenbekov, who is the current president.
What differentiates north and south in this political landscape?
In the north, the country is more industrialized. On the agricultural side, we are more focused on potatoes and beets, unlike the south. It is a more Europeanized, more Russified region, one speaks Kyrgyz and Russian. In addition, there has been strong action by Protestant churches since independence to counter the southern Islamic push. As a result, we have a partisan political life as in Europe with a left-right split between people from the north with different parties, which we do not see in the south. In the south, we have an agricultural region with a strong Uzbek influence, more strongly Islamized and more vulnerable to the problem of Islamist radicalization, and so we have a more authoritarian political tradition, called the "khanstvo". which refers to the despotic power of the Khan.
Which means that in the north-south opposition, we can only have regionalist opposition. In the south, they are tribal and regionalist oppositions. When the north takes power, it is more inclined to respect the parliament, to honor the terms of the mandates and to respect the political right. Conversely, when the south takes power, it leads in an authoritarian and solitary way. It is for this reason that in the end, it often ends with a violent event.
It is a mechanism that is rather atypical. These two plains of the north and south, which have been joined by the Soviets, have completely different cultures which represent, from my point of view, a great danger in the long run for national unity.
What happened between former President Almazbek Atambayev and current President Sooronbay Jeenbekov?
Almazbek Atambayev, who was president from 2011 to 2017, is a center-left, social-democratic man who has always been supported by the northern tribes. Despite the corruption that has been found throughout the history of this country, it has had the particularity of developing public infrastructures, roads, hospitals, schools and we have seen the emergence of a middle class, which was very rare before. Apart from that, he has not escaped the traditional Kyrgyz opposition and there have been political figures of the opposition who have been arrested and put in prison. At the end of his term, he appointed a young and promising prime minister, Sapar Isakov, from the north and a member of his party. At the time of the transfer of power, Jeenbekov the new southern president ran on a tandem with Isakov and was elected mainly for the voices brought to Isakov. Jeenbekov had promised the population: " If I become president, I will appoint Isakov first minister ," but once elected, he had him put in jail. As a result, all state political bodies have experienced waves of dismissal and replacement of civil servants by people from the south. While Atambayev, although from the north, had still left some parity.
Following this, Atambayev took stronger and stronger positions against the new president. At the end of July, he went to Moscow on his own initiative to meet Vladimir Putin, thinking that he would be supported by Russia's president, but Putin did not bend his position, preferring political stability on the spot.
How did this last crisis take place between the former president and the government?
At the end of June there was an election to lift the immunity of former Kyrgyz presidents, a law that does not concern the current presidency, and which allows Jeenbekov to continue to enjoy his immunity. This device, which seems to have been designed to reach Atambayev and which is added to other decisions seems to be mainly directed against opponents. At the same time, an investigation was launched against Atambayev for corruption. The former president who denounces with his supporters of the north these processes, refused to appear twice at the summons of the judges and entrenched himself in his residence 25 km from Bishkek while waiting for the troops to assault to seek it. There was a first assault on August 7 that was blocked by Atambayev's supporters. The special forces were subdivided, six men of the intervention forces were taken hostage by Atambayev's supporters. All this created a failure with very negative consequences in terms of image for Jeenbekov. The following day, a new assault was carried out and resulted in the death of a member of the Special Forces, and the arrest of Atambayev. The latter, who admitted that he had used a weapon to defend himself during the assault, is accused, in particular by propaganda media, of being the author of the shooting that killed the soldier, and that makes him a criminal.
What is the situation now, at the end of this last crisis?
Today Atambayev's lawyer is asking that the case be tried by the International Court of The Hague and not in Kyrgyzstan because of the partiality of justice, but there was no positive response to this application. It is finally a victory for the Kyrgyz President Jeenbekov who comes out of it. The day after the arrest of Atambayev, Ömürbek Babanov, former prime minister, a man from the north, who had been a serious competitor of the Republican Party of Jeenbekov during the elections and had to flee to Moscow fearing for his safety, returned August 9 in Kyrgyzstan to carry the voices of the north. He was not arrested when he arrived. Since then, he has spoken and is today the representative of the North and the main opponent. Calm has returned and in my opinion it will last a few years, especially since people are tired of these permanent revolutions. But with the confiscation of freedoms by the people of the south and the cutting of all the organs of power in the hands of the people of the south, it is a Pyrrhic victory (victory obtained at the cost of heavy losses for the winner) and the scenario will start again with another person, perhaps in 2023 with the next presidential election.