100's People Killed in Kyrgyzstan Protests

[Paul Rigby]

Here is a Foreign Office/SIS briefing, as regurgitated by Simon Tisdall, The Guardian’s regurgitator-in-chief of FO/MI6 briefings. I particularly like the opening – “It’s beyond argument…” – which means, I suppose, that no UK journalist with ambition should be so stupidly careless with their careers as to suggest anything to the contrary:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...oup-regret

Russia may regret Kyrgyzstan coup

The Kremlin is not known for its support of pro-democracy movements, and it may have bitten off more than it can chew

It's beyond argument, two weeks after the overthrow of Kyrgyzstan's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, that Russia played a critical, possibly decisive role in his downfall. But as ethnic violence, score-settling, and political confusion continue to roil the impoverished central Asian country, the coming question is whether a clever-boots Kremlin has bitten off more than it can chew.

Having tendered his handwritten resignation by fax to the interim government last week, Bakiyev insisted today, from the relative safety of Minsk, that he was still in charge. "I will do everything to restore constitutional order … only death can stop me," he said dramatically. "I call on international leaders not to recognise the authority of this illegitimate gang."

Bakiyev's southern supporters, centred on Dzhalal-Abad in the Ferghana valley (where most residents are ethnic Uzbeks) are also stubbornly refusing to recognise the administration formed by former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva. Meanwhile fighting broke out around the capital, Bishkek, this week involving minority ethnic Russians and Meskhetian Turks.

Otunbayeva says she wants to create a parliamentary republic and hold free, democratic elections. That would be a welcome change. The Bakiyev era was blighted by repression, human rights abuses and corruption, with the exiled president accused of embezzling $200m. But it is uncertain whether she has the clout to hold the country together.

Cohesion is not the only imponderable. The fact that Russia recognised the interim government within hours of the coup taking place, while the US and the EU have yet to do so, shows how the Kyrgyzstan upheaval is also turning conventional political calculation on its head.

Vladimir Putin's Kremlin is not known for its support for pro-democracy movements in the former Soviet "near abroad", either in central Asia or the Caucasus. It has worked hard to reverse such tendencies – notably in Ukraine, which recently elected a pro-Moscow president and has now agreed to continue to host Russia's Black Sea fleet. Paradoxically, in Kyrgyzstan, it finds itself as foremost sponsor of a popular, anti-authoritarian revolution.

Washington, on the other hand, has in theory promoted a "freedom agenda" in these same regions and the Middle East. Barack Obama is now under fire at home for placing strategic and security considerations ahead of Kyrgyz democratic self-determination, although George Bush did much the same.

"US policy toward Kyrgyzstan has focused almost exclusively on keeping open its military base at Manas [a key supply hub for Afghanistan]," wrote David Kramer in Foreign Policy. "Many who are now serving in the interim government still feel betrayed by the US for giving Bakiyev a free pass as long as Manas stayed open."

According to analyst Tom Malinowski, Washington's duplicitous, self-interested approach is evident elsewhere in the region as it battles Russia and China for geopolitical advantage.

"US policymakers increasingly view central Asia as a transit point to somewhere else. It is a region through which oil and natural gas flow to Europe, reducing US allies' dependence on Russia. It is a region through which fuel, food and spare parts flow to US and Nato forces in Afghanistan," Malinowski said. Officials had coined a new name for the region, he added: the "northern distribution network".

The way Russia encouraged and manipulated the political opposition to Bakiyev also confounds stereotypical behaviour. Bakiyev's authoritarianism did not worry the Kremlin but his perceived double-crossing of Russia did, so they used American-style "soft power" tools to undermine him.

In the months before the uprising, financial assistance was withdrawn, Russian-language television and website outlets highlighted Bakiyev's alleged crimes, energy prices were forced up by tariff increases (as in Ukraine and Belarus), trade and banking regulations were tightened, and opposition figures were courted in Moscow. By the time the coup began, Bakiyev was already destabilised. This was an almost exact copy of US tactics preceding the Georgia and Ukraine "colour revolutions".

Now Russia is rightly worried about what it has wrought. President Dmitri Medvedev warned recently of anarchy and a "second Afghanistan". This week the Russian military was told to be ready to protect ethnic Russians – 20% of Kyrgyzstan's population.

It probably won't come to direct intervention. But the downside for the Kremlin of its too-clever Kyrgyz coup is becoming clearer. A democratic Kyrgyzstan may prove less biddable than Moscow would wish. The level-headed Otunbayeva may yet refuse to evict the Americans from Manas. Political divisions may become lethally corrosive. And, most dangerous of all, ethnic violence combining with popular discontent and Islamist agitation in the Ferghana valley linking south Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, may spark a wider conflagration.

It's happened before and it could happen again. Such are the perils of externally incited regime change.