Kyrgyzstan appears the latest third world country which has caught the wind of democratic change – this time "the lemon revolution" following on the heels of the rose revolt in Georgia, the orange reform in Ukraine, and the attempted Cedar revolution in Lebanon.
Events are still unfolding. But it appears fraudulent elections intended to perpetuate the rule of President Askar Akayev will be rejected. Akayev, basking in the glory of a third presidential term, sought to pack the parliament, including with several members of his family. His opposition saw him then rewriting the constitution and reneging on his promise not to seek another term in presidential elections scheduled for fall.
The four million Kirghis jammed up against China’s far western Singkiang province have played a special role since the Soviet implosion. Akayev, a former relatively obscure professor, had been seen as odd-man out in a region dominated by former Communist apparatchiks only slightly less authoritarian than their Soviet predecessors. Prodded by the U.S., particularly, and non-government organization activists, Kyrgystan has maintained a relatively free press and a persecuted but virile opposition.
Just as in the rest of Central Asia, 9/11 and the U.S. destruction of the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan was critical. Islamicist terrorists, aided and abetted out of Kabul and with a strong following among neighboring Uzbeks, threatened to overthrow civil society. Islamic opponents ranged from those professing a peaceful campaign to restore “a Turkestan caliphate”, a centralized Moslem religious led state in Central Asia, to allies of Osama Ben Ladin.
Azayev quickly acceded to American requests – as did his neighbors in Uzkebkistan, Kazakhstan and Azaerbaijan – for bases and air corridors during the Afghanistan invasion. The U.S. Ganci Air Base [named for the New York City police chief lost in the Twin Towers disaster] just outside Bishek, the capital, has become integral to the logistics to remake Afghanistan. And perhaps more important, it has become a prototype for the “lilly pads” – forward, relatively small, U.S. bases – which the Pentagon’s “transformation” sees as crucial in the new lighter, more nimble, hi tech post-Cold War deployment. At the very center of Asia, the renovated old Soviet bomber base with its ample 15,000-foot runway gives the U.S. a toehold in the middle of Eurasia.
But when the Afghan crisis cooled and the Islamicist threat receded, Akayev retriangulated. In 1993, with proper emoluments from Moscow, he offered the Russians a base within spitting distance of the Americans – balm for Putin’s imperial aspirations and recognition deflated Russian power still played a crucial regional role.
Akayev has been a passionate advocate for Russian language and culture in Central Asia. He also let the Chinese go back to old maps for what the Kyrghi opposition calls overly generous concessions in longstanding border disputes eroding the country’s only asset, abundant glacier water.
What made the 2005 elections different from earlier shams was not only the backdrop of the Georgian and Ukrainian revolutions but former Akayev loyalists in the opposition leadership, as in Ukraine. Another similarity is Putin’s public support for Akayev and Russian assurances the elections were properly conducted. The U.S. ambassador, on the contrary, has been outspokenly critical of electoral infringements and human rights – unlike neighboring Uzbekistan where American strategic interests have outweighed distaste for the worst repression.
The Kyrgyzstan situation has to worry Beijing. Its Singkiang province – with half its population Uighur and other Turkic Moslems – has a violent underground revolutionary movement allied by blood and history with the former Soviet Asian peoples. Akayev cooperated with the Chinese by handing over Uighur revolutionaries. Even the U.S. put one of the Uighur organizations on its terrorist list after 9/11 -- although Washington has refused to return to China Uighurs captured in Afghanistan and imprisoned at Guantanamo. [More recently, the U.S. supported a prominent Uighur millionairess retailer recently released from prison by the Chinese, accused of permitting nationalist literature and classes in her Umruchi department store.] But there is widespread sympathy among the significant Uighur minority as well as the Kirghis and other Central Asians for the Uighur cause in Singkiang.
For the Chinese, erosion or overthrow of what had appeared to be a friendly authoritarian government in full control, is a reminder of a classic nightmare scenario tracing back to the 1989 overthrow of their Romanian ally and acolyte, Nicolai Ceaucescu. On the eve of the collapse, China’s superspy, Qiao Shi, had attended the national congress of the Romanian Communist Party, reporting before he left Romania it was in fairly good [Communist] condition. As it turned out, the regime imploded and Ceausescu was executed shortly after Qiao Shi returned home.
No one is predicting overthrow of the Chinese colonial regime in Singkiang, nor in China proper. But growing public demonstrations against corrupt and arbitrary rule in China allied with the wave of popular uprisings across Asia must be giving pause to some in the Forbidden City.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
