Revolt peaceful, but aftermath feared
MOSCOW -- The street protests that yesterday helped push the government from power in Kyrgyzstan may echo peaceful revolts that led to victories of democratic forces in two other former Soviet republics. But unlike in Georgia and Ukraine, the outcome in multiethnic Kyrgyzstan could be far more violent and unstable because of the fierce poverty, heavy drug trafficking, and presence of radical Islamic cells in the Central Asian nation.
In Georgia and Ukraine, protesters rallied around their leaders Mikhail Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko, and then elected them presidents of their countries. But in Kyrgyzstan there is no one opposition leader with broad support.
Last night, a former opposition lawmaker, Ishenbai Kadyrbekov, was named interim president and others were given posts in the new administration.
''We don't have just one Yushchenko! We have dozens of Yushchenkos, hundreds of Saakashvilis," a leader of the opposition coalition, Aziza Abdurasulova, was quoted as saying by the Gazeta news agency.
Kyrgyzstan sits in a commanding strategic position. It borders China and lies close to Afghanistan; since soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has operated an air base outside the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Russia has a military base less than 20 miles away.
Yesterday, opposition control over Kyrgyzstan's southeastern provinces that had been expanding northward engulfed Bishkek. Protesters seized the main government building, then marched to a prison outside the city to free jailed opposition activists. President Askar Akayev was reported to have fled the country, but his location last night could not be confirmed.
Kyrgyzstan's political opposition includes various factions that lost to Akayev's allies in the February parliamentary election and a second-round vote in March. They seemed united primarily by their demand for the president's resignation. Kyrgyz officials insisted that the opposition had been joined by traffickers in Afghan opiates vying for power.
In the past few days, Akayev had alleged that the opposition was financed from abroad, and accused it of ties to Islamic extremists and drug smugglers. He has warned about the possibility of interethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan, which, in addition to the Kyrgyz, is home to ethnic Uzbeks, Russians, Ukrainians, Tajiks, Germans, and others, and has a history of ethnic and religious conflicts.
Higlighting concerns over Kyrgyzstan's stability, there were reports of volunteer militias forming to prevent a slide into anarchy in the southern towns of Osh and Jalal-Abad, where stores and restaurants had been locked for fear of looting and the price of bread had doubled. Russia's Izvestia daily reported widespread bank robberies in the Osh district by mobs earlier this week, but opposition leader Anvar Artykov, an ethnic Uzbek who is acting chief of the Osh district, denied the reports.
The Fergana valley, which Kyrgyzstan shares with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, has seen repeated insurgencies by Muslim extremists seeking to carve out an Islamic state in the region, and was a site of battles between Islamic radicals and government troops in the 1990s. Islamic fundamentalists remain entrenched in the valley.
Saakashvili, the Georgian president elected following his country's peaceful ''Rose Revolution" a year ago, appeared to recognize that the developments in Kyrgyzstan may be fraught with many more dangers than the Georgian revolt. In a letter to the Kyrgyz president earlier this week, he offered to act as mediator between Akayev's government and the opposition. ''It is in our common interest to preserve Kyrgyzstan as a democratic leader in the region," Saakashvili wrote.
Though Akayev tightened government control over Kyrgyz political life in the past few years, he pushed through overhauls in the 1990s that made Kyrgyzstan one of the more democratic states among the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia. None of them enjoys Western-style freedoms, and most have much less.
Tajikistan has yet to recover from a 1992-97 civil war, and its president keeps a tight hold on power. Turkmenistan is gripped by a North Korea-type dictatorship and dominated by a personality cult of its leader. In neighboring Uzbekistan, authorities have suppressed dissent, citing worries about a spread of radical Islam, and have been accused by a UN report of torturing opposition activists.
Yesterday Uzbekistan said it would seal the border with Kyrgyzstan, fearing a spillover of unrest. Kazakhstan, with vast mineral resources, is the most prosperous and has seen no major conflicts among ethnic groups, but the president's powers are vast and opposition activity limited.
Kyrgyzstan also lies on a heroin smuggling route from Afghanistan, across Central Asia to Russia, and on to Western Europe.
A presidential spokesman, Abdil Segizbayev, said earlier this week that the southern provinces have been fully taken over ''by a third party, by criminals linked to the drug mafia, who are striving for power."
