A proliferation of revolutions

Mar 25th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Demonstrations in Kirgizstan have forced the former Soviet republic's government from power. The tremors could be felt elsewhere in undemocratic Central Asia

DOES three make a trend? Kirgizstan has become the third post-Soviet republic in which disgruntled voters, unwilling to accept a fraudulent election, have taken matters into their own hands. On Thursday March 24th, Askar Akaev, president of the Central Asian republic for 15 years, was forced to flee the capital, Bishkek, after protesters took the government headquarters. A new government has been proclaimed, and a court has annuled the elections. Now Kirgizstan’s “tulip revolution” joins Georgia’s “rose revolution” and Ukraine’s orange one. But Kirgizstan’s uprising has been more violent than those other two, and unlike them it has no single leader. The future for the remote republic is clouded.

On Thursday, protests which had begun in the south of the country a few days earlier reached Bishkek, in the north. Demonstrators stormed the “White House”, the government headquarters, making their way past riot police who either melted away or joined the protesters. The defence minister was led from the building under a hail of stones and sticks. Unnamed opposition figures announced the government’s fall on state television.

The turmoil had begun soon after the first round of elections on February 27th, which foreign monitors rated as deeply flawed. During the election campaign, state broadcasters openly supported the government, independent media were harassed and opposition candidates were disqualified from standing for niggling reasons. The second round, earlier this month, was little better. And rather than take it on the chin, as had voters in flawed elections in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan recently, quiet protests turned into full-scale insurrections. Two cities in the relatively impoverished south, Jalal-abad and Osh, were the first to fall. But it was the arrival of unrest in Bishkek that showed the disaffection was no flash in the pan.

After several bloody clashes, and looting and vandalism of the White House, opposition leaders have appealed for calm and promised fresh elections in June. The best-known among the revolution's leaders are Roza Otunbaeva, a former foreign minister, Kurmanbek Bakiev, a former prime minister, and Felix Kulov, a former vice-president, who was freed from prison by the protesters. They and other leaders have formed a “co-ordinating council for national unity”. Mr Bakiev will be interim president and prime minister, and Mr Kulov will run the security ministries. It is not yet clear that they can stop the looting, or potential score-settling between pro- and anti-Akaev groups. The police, for now, seem to have disappeared.

Will it ripple through the region?

Kirgizstan used to be seen as an island of democracy in Central Asia. Mr Akaev, a respected physicist, won a tough fight for the presidency in 1990 against a communist boss, and won popular election in 1991 after the republic gained independence. He reformed the economy and introduced multi-party democracy. But over the 1990s he became more authoritarian. Elections held in 1995 and 2000 were criticised by observers as less than free and fair. Following unrest in 2002, when an opposition member of parliament was arrested on petty charges, Mr Akaev promised reforms. But the result was a dodgy referendum that strengthened the presidency and replaced the party-list system with single-member districts for parliamentary polls. This weakened the parties and handed more clout to powerful individuals. Mr Akaev’s son and daughter both won seats in this year’s elections.

Though the country is small and remote, and lacks the energy reserves of some of the other Central Asian republics, events there are being watched with interest. Both America and Russia have military bases near Bishkek. America moved heavily into Central Asia for the war in Afghanistan, and the two big powers have eyed each other warily in the region ever since. Many have criticised America for tolerating brutal regimes that help it in the war on terror, notably that of Kirgizstan’s neighbour, Uzbekistan. But America’s ambassador in Bishkek, Stephen Young, has been admirably frank with both the press and Mr Akaev’s government about concerns over deteriorating democracy in Kirgizstan.

Russia had good relations with Mr Akaev, and Vladimir Putin, its president, expressed dismay that yet another former Soviet republic has had its government changed “illegally”. But the new leaders are mostly former ministers, people Mr Putin says he knows and can work with. Both America and Russia plan to keep their bases in Kirgizstan. Unlike in the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, foreign policy was not a big point of difference between government and opposition.

Kirgizstan’s neighbours are also watching closely. It has a tricky relationship with Uzbekistan, whose dictator, Islam Karimov, has cracked down heavily on Islamic militants. Uzbekistan even mined the border with Kirgizstan to prevent militants from escaping, to Mr Akaev’s deep annoyance. A new Kirgiz government might show more consideration for ethnic Uzbeks in the south, which could perhaps improve relations with its bigger neighbour.

Events in Kirgizstan are unlikely to have much effect in Turkmenistan, a North Korea-style dictatorship in the region. But Kirgizstan’s other neighbours, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, may feel tremors. In Kazakhstan to the north, the president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, has doled out money and favours (from the country’s mineral wealth) to keep himself in power. But there is a visible and lively, if so far unsuccessful, opposition. Tajikistan, which is poorer and endured a civil war in the 1990s, could be shakier. Recent elections, criticised by international observers, strengthened the party of the president, Imomali Rakhmonov. Might he be the next to succumb to Central Asia's new-found people power?

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