You make an astute point: it is important to define what we mean exactly when using broad terms like “democracy.” I think I saw the Economist refer to it as the right to “fire your own government,” and the Kyrgyz certainly have taken that idea to heart!

I think what I meant was that it certainly seems that the Kyrgyz people have decided that it is everyone’s right to participate in politics. Bakiyev is constantly challenged. People protest in the streets. Demands to crack down on organized crime are made. Especially when their next door neighbors get shot when they try the same, this seems to me to be a very significant step.

You and Ataman rightly point out that this is not the same sort of participation we see in the West, the protests are crippling the government, and in many cases are merely paying lipservice to the idea of democracy to advance their own agendas.

I am not contradicting any of that. I was merely trying to put what is going on in Kyrgyzstan into some kind of perspective by using US history as an example (but by no means implying that the two countries are directly comparable).

My comment wasn’t a rebuttal to what you said, just a perspective. Thanks for all the outstanding posts!

PS - IMHO, this statement comes pretty close to describing the current system in the US with all the various interest groups vying for influence (note: certainly not saying the situation is therefore comparable to Kyrgyzstan): “individual groups deciding to have a go at getting their way.”

Een if you asked James not me, my 2 c: I don’t think so. Certain interested groups do pay lip service to it for the sake of the $$$ and jobs attached.

But for many a sovok (in Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere) ‘democracy’ has become synonym for ‘bardak’ — a mess, read: impoverishment; corrupt elites pilfering the economy; social and moral degradation. And this — “not least as the protests carry on - from my point of view it seems far more like individual groups deciding to have a go at getting their way” — is true imo and has strenghtened that perception.

What we see now is merely the rot that was accumulated during the rule of the Akayevs that comes brrooobs to float up. But as I said, from the mess and the instability might come something new.

And that ’something’ will not come from the classical pro-democracy groups (discredited+too foreign grant-dependent+little real social base) nor from local NGOs (80% are merely grant grabbers) nor from the classical urban intelligentsia (co-opted by the regime or IO+disconnected from society at large).

It will likely come from what Olivier Roy calls ‘civil society as it is’ and from what Scott Radnitz calls ‘grass roots elites’: small and medium entrepreneurs; larger/more savvy farmers with authority in the village; people with an authority in the daily/informal economy; certain sub-groups among rural migrants; even certain people in the rayon and municipal administrations.

*That* are the socially mobile groups that are crucial for the future. What they want might not be (and is most likely not) in line with ‘Western democracy’.

No intention to lecture and humiliate who- or whatever, yet if the country and the Kyrgyz don’t want to end us totally screwed and marginalized it is high time to wake up (if necessary with a kick in the ass), stop to always expect ‘help’ from others and/or stop to try to take advantage of everyone and everything; and make a *realistic* (that means: no white elephant development or ‘Switz of CA’ fantasies) assessment of where the country should go and belong to.

I will come, probably in a new phase of turmoil and instability.

One query, James: do you really believe the Kyrgyz (Kyrgyzstani?) people have taken democratic values to heart? I’m increasingly unconvinced, not least as the protests carry on - from my point of view it seems far more like individual groups deciding to have a go at getting their way, rather than a feature of a “democratic” system. “Democracy” is a slippery term at the best of times and is being used and abused as much as ever here in Kyrgyzstan. We may all be using the same words, but do we mean the same thing?

IMO, it’s too early to judge where this country will go. I think that the cycle of change is not done yet and that the country, just like the region, will have to go through a phase of instability. That is unavoidable I think and might even open new opportunities. Now, there are too much conflicting interests in a region with too much social mobility frustrated by failed systems.

Yet, one fundamental thing: imo, it’s totally pointless to compare Kyrgyzstan with the US or the West, come up with other ‘Switzerland of Central Asia’ bollocks or to even expect that it will go its way along western values and concepts. Kyrgyzstan (and the other ‘stans for that matter) is not the West or Europe and will never be. In fact, that mistake — constantly made by the Kyrgyz establishment, the russianized-westernized Bishkek elite and, for long, the IFIs and ‘golden cage expats’ — has only created wrong development priorities, false hopes, the importation of outlandish development concepts and, a such, hastened the country’s ruin. It will backlash.

Apart from that, a big part of the country’s trouble is rooted in the mentality and general attitude of the Kyrgyz themselves - or, at least, of substantial coats of Kyrgyz society. OK one may think that this is just another arrogant outsider who ventilates opinions about other people yet I spent several years in the country and some of my points are also made/supported by several Kyrgyz acquaintances themselves.

1) Many Kyrgyz are obsessed with becoming rich overnight and without any effort (OK that would be nice for anybody J yet there is this thing called reality); several factors causes that: see point 2) and 3); lazyness; the consumerist mirages portrayed by the media, … ; in turn, that created a naive faith in all sorts of abracadabra schemes and scams that are supposed to bring on the big bonanza; that’s also why this country has been completely squandered and sadly brothelized over the past ten years.

2) While the Kyrgyz dominate the republic’s political-administrative apparatus, a substantial part of Kyrgyzstan’s daily economy is kept turning by more dynamic minorities (Dungan, Uighurs, Uzbeks), not by some sleazy Western investors that are often in cahoots with regime officials and, thus, part of the problem (I can understand popular antipathy for the latter group; many expats deserve nothing better than to be booted out asap).

3) Another characteristic is a clear culture of expectations from handouts from outsiders, and taking advantage of one or another patron or ‘big brother’, no matter whether that patron is ‘the Russians’, ‘the West’, China or one or another foreign company; on the official level, that mentality is best embodied in that so-called ‘multi-vectoral policy (read: ‘eating in everyone’s meadow’); it is also the consequence of Soviet colonialism where peripheral Soviet republics were basically subsisting on subsidies and imported cadres from Moscow, and has been extended and consolidated with the arrival of international financial institutions and aid programmes encouraged by the country’s relative openness in the nineties (even if many Kyrgyz will hate me for saying this, that culture of handouts and dependency is an attitude that is also widespread in certain parts of Africa).

4) Last but no least, there’s that lack of any identity and reference framework, a factor that should not be under-estimated. Who are the Kyrgyz in fact? Their nomadic culture, of what’s left of it, has largely become disfunctional and ‘folklorized’; they are russianized but no Russians; they are not really Muslims either; and while many try to imitate ‘the West’ but all it gives is a pathetic parody best seen in Bishkek. Is it a coincidence that minorities with a clearer, more outlined identity seem to fare better in Kyrgyzstani society than most Kyrgyz? When I was in Tokmak in 2004, a police major — ethnic Kyrgyz himself — told me: “We have much less trouble with the young Dungan here than with ‘nashi’; the Dungan, they are more Muslim. So their families stick together more, they work harder, drink less and take less drugs. And that’s why they live better than us.â€?

BTW, several of the above points are applicable for the Kazakhs too, with this difference, that for the time being Kazakhstan can hold itself to the oil bubble — which will burst sooner or later, but for the time being many Kazakhs clutch to the expectations that it brings.

News reports portray Kyrgyzstan as a state on the verge of collapse. However, historical precedent provides some cause for optimism. Take the US from 1776-1789; bad system, rebellions, severe economic depression. The picture was every bit as bleak as in Kyrgyzsan today, and no one expected the United States to emerge as a superpower.

I realize there are many more examples of countries tumbling in to anarchy following independence, so I’m not going to make that point too strongly, I’m just saying at least people seem to have taken democratic ideals to heart and are allowed to express them, which is more than Kyrgyzstan’s neighbors can bost.

Matt Jay has some interesting ideas on how the system can be improved over on the Kyrygyzstan blog.