Desperate in Kyrgyzstan

THE TOPPLING of President Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan is being compared, too quickly, to the popular movements in Georgia and Ukraine that replaced corrupt authoritarian regimes with democratically elected governments. The desperately poor people of Kyrgyzstan deserve a better government than they have had, and the outside world ought to help with sensible development aid. But there is reason to doubt that Kyrgyzstan is experiencing a flowering of democratic peoples' power akin to the Rose Revolution in Georgia or the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

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The crowds that took over towns in the south of Kyrgyzstan and fought against Akayev supporters in Bishkek, the capital, did not abjure violence. It was Akayev who gave orders that the police facing those crowds not use firearms. An American graduate student reached by phone in Bishkek Friday described bands of looters rampaging through the city, firing guns and frightening the populace. Those bands of angry rioters, he said, inspired more anxiety than elation among the residents of the capital.

The political opposition has not been able to control the rioters. Unlike the democratic forces in Georgia or Ukraine, the Kyrgyz opposition is not unified, has no acknowledged leader behind whom activists and the population can rally quickly, and does not suggest an unambiguous break with the post-Soviet habits of autocratic regimes in Central Asia. The best-known of those leaders served in ministerial positions under Akayev and are tainted with complicity in unsavory practices.

Originally Akayev was an exception to the rule of onetime Communist bosses ruling as authoritarian nationalists. He was also exceptional in being far more liberal and democratic than the despots ruling Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, or Tajikistan. Akayev introduced multiparty democracy to Kyrgyzstan, undertook privatization of the economy, and submitted to economic reforms required by the International Monetary Fund.

Those IMF policies became a primary cause of his downfall. The resulting impoverishment caused enormous numbers of people to seek even the lowest-paid work in Russia or Kazakhstan. Another cause of Akayev's demise was his transformation, during the last decade, from a pluralistic liberal into an autocrat concentrating power in his own hands, arresting competitors, and allowing his family and clan to acquire a gaudy share of the country's profitable businesses.

Since US-funded organizations promoting the development of democracy have been active in Kyrgyzstan, Washington has an obligation to help the country not merely to hold fair elections and protect free speech but to begin overcoming the staggering poverty that did not vanish this week when Akayev absconded.