Presidents flight

Deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev surrounded by bodyguards, at Teyit village near Jalalabad in southern Kyrgyzstan on April 12.-SERGEI GRITS/AP

FIVE years after the Tulip Revolution, a violent popular revolt has once again overthrown the government in Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished former Soviet state in Central Asia. Protests that broke out in the capital Bishkek on April 7 over a 200 per cent hike in utility prices escalated into a national uprising within 24 hours. The authorities ordered the police and the army to open fire on demonstrators but failed to hold back the angry crowds that stormed official buildings and state-run television stations in Bishkek and other cities. By the following evening the government fell, and President Kurmanbek Bakiyev fled to his home region near Jalalabad in the south of the country. Prime Minister Daniyar Usenov signed a letter of resignation.

The violence left at least 78 people dead and over 1,500 wounded. An interim coalition government headed by former Foreign Minister Roza Otunbayeva has promised fresh elections in six months after the new Constitution is drafted.

The latest upheaval closely resembled the Tulip Revolution of March 2005, which brought down the government of the first post-Soviet President, Askar Akayev. Economic hardships and rampant corruption provided fuel for that revolt. Bakiyev, who was catapulted to power then, vowed to tackle the economic problems, fight corruption and advance democratic reforms. However, corruption, nepotism and cronyism only increased during his tenure. Bakiyev inducted his close relatives into the government. He put his younger son, Maxim, in near-monopolist control over the national economy and made his younger brother, Zhanysh, the de facto head of all military and security establishments.

One opposition leader said Bakiyevs relatives worked like a shadow government, exercising power from behind the scenes. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin quipped: Bakiyev stepped on the same rakes as Akayev.

Bakiyev pushed for amending the countrys Constitution to facilitate the transfer of power to Maxim. Under the new rules, a special presidential committee would choose an interim President if the incumbent left his post prematurely. Since March 2005, more than a dozen political opponents and journalists have been assassinated in Kyrgyzstan, and all media outlets were placed under government control.

The global economic crisis last year severely hit the Kyrgyz economy, which depends almost completely on the export of two commodities gold and labour. Gold mining mainly enriched Bakiyevs family, while remittances from Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia and Kazakhstan contracted by two-thirds compared with 2008 when they accounted for about 40 per cent of the countrys gross domestic product.

Even though the economic and political situation in other Central Asian countries Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan is hardly any better, there is a reason why Kyrgyzstan has been hit by political turmoil twice in the past five years. The seeds of the latest upheaval were sown in 2005, when the country became the target of a campaign by the United States to engineer regime changes in the former Soviet Union through coloured revolutions staged under the slogan of spreading Western-style democracy.

By the time the U.S. trained its sights on Kyrgyzstan, the country of five million, squeezed between China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, had travelled much further along the road of democracy than any of its neighbours. Askar Akayev, who had behind him a successful academic career as a physicist, promoted a free press, allowed opposition parties to be represented in Parliament, and embarked on market reforms under the patronage of the International Monetary Fund. Ironically, it was the pro-democracy environment than enabled the U.S. to subvert Kyrgyzstan by deploying an impressive array of non-governmental organisations and foundations that cultivated and financed opposition groups.

The past year or two saw the wilting of the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet Union. Georgias erratic President Mikheil Saakashvili, hero of the Rose Revolution, brought his country to catastrophe by launching an armed attempt in August 2008 to retake the breakaway territory of South Ossetia. Russia, which had a peacekeeping mission in the region, crushed the Georgian attack and recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist region of Georgia.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine suffered a rollback earlier this year when its leader, President Victor Yushchenko, crashed out of a presidential race, which was won by Viktor Yanukovich.

Kyrgyzstans meltdown over the past five years is a striking demonstration of the dangers of the U.S. cynical meddling in the name of democracy. While the mass protests that took place during the U.S.-sponsored Tulip Revolution were stage-managed carefully by power-hungry wealthy elites, the protests in April 2010 were a spontaneous and chaotic revolt by a disgruntled population. In five years, Kyrgyzstan has travelled from relative stability to explosive volatility. It may be a question of time before the new government is swept away by angry crowds.

The U.S. crusade for democracy has thoroughly destabilised Kyrgyzstan and with it the whole of Central Asia, which is a tinderbox of disputes and conflicts over ethnic issues, borders, water and energy resources. Given the catastrophic economic situation and political instability in the country, it was utterly reckless of Bakiyev to get involved in the Great Game in the region between Russia and the U.S., both of which have military bases in Kyrgyzstan.

Bakiyev came to power promising to promote integration processes with Russia-led defence and economic alliances of former Soviet states and setting a deadline to end the U.S. military presence. Last year, he finally had Parliament approval for the closure of the Manas base and served a 180-day eviction notice on the Pentagon after Russia pledged to give over $2 billion in loans and grants. However, Bakiyev made a U-turn when the U.S. offered to increase the rent for the base threefold and channel about $170 million a year in fuel charges and fees through companies controlled by Bakiyevs family. After Bakiyev was toppled, a Russian government official was quoted as saying that he had reneged on his promise to close the U.S. base.

There should be only one military base in Kyrgyzstan the Russian one, the official said. Bakiyev also went back on his agreement with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to set up a Russian military training centre in the south of Kyrgyzstan. In March, it was announced that the U.S. would build a $5.5-million anti-terror training centre for government forces in the province of Batken, where the Russian facility had been planned.

The U.S. closed its eyes to Bakiyevs authoritarian and corrupt rule. In the interests of keeping the Manas base open, the U.S. either looked the other way or actively colluded in a corrupt regime that lost popular backing, Britains Guardian newspaper wrote in its editorial. In proclaiming that its task was to democratise one country in Central Asia, it was doing the opposite in a neighbouring state.

Bakiyevs decision to break his promise to Russia on the closure of the U.S. base and allow increased U.S. military presence in Kyrgyzstan added to peoples anger against his regime. A day before the uprising began, the countrys Council of Aksakals (Elders) demanded the withdrawal of the U.S. base. They accused Bakiyev of spoiling relations with Kyrgyzstans long-time friend and strategic partner, Russia.

We believe it is impermissible to have on one small territory military bases of two world powers that take opposite stands on many issues, the aksakals said in their resolution. Kyrgyzstan has unique strategic value for the U.S. as a key staging post for its military in Afghanistan, especially after Uzbekistan shut down the K2 base at Karshi Khanabad in 2005. In March alone about 50,000 troops passed through the base on the way to and from Afghanistan. U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and U.S. Central Command head General David Petraeus visited Bishkek earlier this year to underscore the importance of Kyrgyzstan for the U.S. Bakiyev saw the visits as signals of U.S. support he could rely upon to tighten his grip on power. When a mob was storming Bakiyevs office, Maxim and the Foreign Minister were in Washington for trade talks and political consultations.

Bakiyev overplayed his hand by trying to milk both Russia and the U.S. His fatal mistake was to put an equation mark between the two powers and their commitments to Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. was willing to buy up the Bakiyev family in order to keep its military foothold in Kyrgyzstan, but it was not prepared to bail out the Kyrgyz economy.

Russia was ready to provide critical economic assistance to Kyrgyzstan in return for loyalty. Last year alone, Russia gave Kyrgyzstan $150 million as a free grant and another $300 million as a loan, and wrote off a $180-million debt. But when Bakiyev leaned over to Washington, Moscow turned off the tap, halting the disbursement of the $2-billion loan and slapping export tariffs on petrol and diesel that Kyrgyzstan used to get duty-free.

Shortly before Bakiyev was overthrown, Russian media outlets, which are popular among the Russian-speaking population of Kyrgyzstan, mounted scathing attacks on the corruption and nepotism in his government. Putin denied any Russian hand in Bakiyevs ouster, but leaders of the Kyrgyz opposition, including interim government head Otunbayeva, are known to have visited Moscow a few weeks before the revolt. Russia was the first country to voice support for the new Kyrgyz leadership, with Putin promising humanitarian aid to Kyrgyzstan based on a special nature of relations between our two countries.

It is too early to speculate on the foreign policy orientation of the new government. Otunbayeva, 59, had served as ambassador to the U.S. and the United Kingdom. She was one of the leaders of the Tulip Revolution and has admitted to drawing inspiration from the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, where she was serving at that time as a U.N. envoy. Her interim Cabinet is a motley collection of opposition leaders, some of whom profess patently pro-Western views. It is not yet clear what the government will look like after the elections Otunbayeva has promised to hold in six months. But it would be reasonable to expect the future Kyrgyz leadership to pay more attention to Russian interests, if only because the Kyrgyz economy badly needs Russian help.

Even if Kyrgyzstans economy can be stabilised, restoring political stability will be a challenge. The opposition is as disunited as it was five years ago when it fell apart immediately after ousting Akayev, allowing Bakiyev to grab power. With two violent coups within the past five years, numerous criminal groups and a powerful drug mafia have learned to engineer and exploit mass riots.

It remains to be seen whether the U.S. learns its lessons from Kyrgyzstans upheavals and works in concert with Russia and China to stabilise the region. All three have vital stakes in the regions stability. For Russia, Kyrgyzstan is the most vulnerable part of its soft underbelly. Drugs, terrorists and illegal labour freely enter Russia through its open borders with the former Soviet Central Asian states. Chinas restive Xinjiang Autonomous Region lies on the border with Kyrgyzstan, which is also a gateway for China to energy-rich Central Asia.

For the U.S., stability in Kyrgyzstan and the rest of Central Asia is critical for the safety of its supply routes to Afghanistan. There is some hope that things may turn out better for Kyrgyzstan now than they did five years ago.

In early April, the U.S. and Russia finally pressed the reset button in their relations with the signing of a major nuclear arms reduction pact. Kyrgyzstan will be a litmus test for the readiness of the two nuclear superpowers to take their reset beyond arms control.