Destroyed livelihoods and lost hope in Osh’s bazaar
Business and Economics, Kyrgyzstan, Photoblog9 Comments
Editor’s note: Osh’s bazaar, located on the left bank of the Ak-Bura river, has changed dramatically over the decades, but never so much as when violence swept through the city this past June, destroying almost all the infrastructure of the bazaar. Guest blogger Mary Pole reports, writing, “A former thriving hub of commerce is now a shell of destroyed livelihoods and lost hope,” with heartbreaking photos at the end of the post.
Firoza smiles at me revealing her gold teeth so characteristic of Central Asia. A seventy- five year old ethnic Tajik, she has worked in Osh Bazaar since she was twelve years old. At the front of an abandoned section of the bazaar Firoza arranges her selection of black mashi, a unique type of boot, on the wooden slats of her stall. As she holds them out to me with her henna painted fingernails, her husband sits beside her, amused at our conversation and her attempts to sell a Central Asian necessity to a Westerner.
Osh Bazaar, located on the left bank of the Ak-Bura river, has changed dramatically during the sixty-three years that Firoza has worked there. The violence that ravaged the city of Osh in June this year destroyed almost all the infrastructure of the bazaar — a former thriving hub of commerce is now a shell of destroyed livelihoods and lost hope.
Wandering off the main street of the bazaar into the side streets that once contained a flourishing meat market, a gold quarter, and hundreds of choixonas, the silence and destruction are at times overwhelming. Scraps of material flutter in the breeze while rubble, dust and bricks sit untouched, surrounding remnants of businesses and livelihoods destroyed in four short days. Naked meat hooks glisten in the sun.
The spray-painted ‘Kyrgyz’ and ‘Sart’ on the doors of containers served as a threat to the predominantly Uzbek business community, which has vanished, frightened into silence and submission. Occasional clues reveal information about the owners of the destroyed businesses amongst the charred remnants of livelihoods — a pair of old men’s trousers, a fake orange flower, charred flower pots. In most cases businesses are unidentifiable due to the looting and targeted destruction that took place. Signs for ‘meat’ and ‘eggs’, even ‘billiards’ and ‘plov’ can be found behind broken flame-licked glass.
Once vibrant, with goods imported and distributed from all over Central Asia, the now-subdued bazaar now hosts blackened containers with padlocks wrenched off and broken tandoors. There are few reconstruction efforts, and the memory of what once was seems to have vanished with the traders who used to work there.
The story of the bazaar is one of many stories untold from June’s conflict. The two thousand residential properties destroyed remain poignant reminders of suffering and of the ethnic dimension of conflict, yet the thousands of destroyed livelihoods represented in Osh Bazaar are less tangible.
I approached one of the remaining traders a few stalls along from Firoza — a woman selling toiletries arranged neatly in small lines in a cardboard display case. ‘I’ve worked in the bazaar for 10 years but couldn’t work for three months after the unrest. This is my fifth week back. Many horrible things happened here; many places are burnt.’
The emotion in her voice is clear, ‘All of my stock was destroyed. It was in a warehouse here that was looted and then burnt. We couldn’t come here in time to collect it. Not one thing was left.’ She lowers her voice and scans the area for Kyrgyz people before continuing, ‘I have applied for compensation, but they keep saying “later”. They will compensate for “their” people but not for us Uzbeks.’
This is a complaint heard regularly in the bazaar. Umida says, ‘I lost 19,000 som [just over $400] during the violence as all the shoes I owned were stolen or burnt. I filed a complaint with the police for compensation but have heard nothing.’ She still perseveres by trading new stock obtained from nearby Kara-Soo bazaar. The double tragedy is that Umida lives in Cheryomushkee, a neighbourhood that suffered severely during the violence with whole streets being destroyed and hundreds killed.
The destruction of Osh Bazaar has contributed to the changing dynamic of the city. As the main hub for commerce and a point of contact between those from all ethnicities who worked side by side in many cases, the trading areas that remain within the bazaar are now divided between Kyrgyz and Uzbek. Vibrancy and cooperation have been replaced by fear and mistrust.
In place of the languishing Osh Bazaar, several new bazaars have sprung up, in clearly ethnically demarcated neighbourhoods, including one in the Kyrgyz area of Zapudnee that threatens to replace Osh Bazaar entirely. Locals started trading outside their houses straight after the conflict, afraid to leave their neighbourhoods, a pattern that has continued. The destruction of the bazaar has caused further ghettoisation and has contributed to the dramatic change in the atmosphere and composition of the city.
As I walk around a part of the bazaar now completely empty, a man walks out from the shell of a former billiard hall and questions me. ‘They all knew,’ he said. ‘Everyone knew it was happening, but they didn’t do anything. They just watched.’
A clothing business persevering against a backdrop of destruction.
Umida continues to sell shoes at the bazaar, one of the few traders remaining following the destruction of the bazaar in June.
The view over the river through the broken window panes of a burnt out choixona in Osh bazaar.
An old water dispenser stands next to broken pieces of corrugated iron in a once prosperous area of the bazaar that used to hold fabric stalls.
A tea pot featuring a traditional Uzbek design sits on the window ledge of a destroyed choixona at the edge of the bazaar.
One of the bazaar’s many walkways over the river is now a shell of vandalised and looted market stalls.
The stone archway in the centre of the bazaar remains, as traders begin to return slowly to work in the bazaar.
Hundreds of restaurants and choixonas were looted and burnt in Osh and Osh bazaar during the violence in June. Few run by ethnic Uzbeks remain.
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Impressive story and hearthbraking Mary.
Of course I cannot imagine how such is possible and the destruction of so many lives because I never had such fortunately. But I feel somewhat melancholic and sad when I read the story and see the pictures.
So many time I walked on the Osh Bazaar and liked the colorful people going there although I was regulary fooled with the prices asked.
When I see the devastation in the pictures and I cannot help think of the happy times I had there I feel silent and think of the people working there.
Hopefully it will become better, but I am afraid mistrust is not something to disappear fast looking at the people in Europe against Germans.
More and more I see that the city of Osh get lost as I follow the stories about Osh the last few years.
How it will be in some years?
Johan
Reply
I’m afraid we’re going to see a lot more of this, over the years to come.
Right round the edges of the Soviet Union, Stalin instituted a policy: there should be no group of people with a ”free border” to the world outside that was not involved in civil or inter-ethnic tension.
From Karelia in the far north-west, by way of the Baltics, Trans-Dniestria, Crimea, Adygeia, the Caucasus [north and south], Nagorno Karabakh, Bokhara rayon, the Ferghana Valley through to the Jewish ASSR, the Far East and Sakhalin.
How? By drawing ‘Republic’ boundaries deliberately across different ethnic areas. By arbitrarily altering the status of different parts from ”Constituent Republic” through ”Autonomous Republic” down to ”Autonomous District” and ”Rayon”. By moving whole populations from their homelands to far-off new territories. Then ‘allowing’ the survivors to return – but without the right to claim all their land back. By importing Cossack hordes to sensitive frontier zones. The list goes on . . .
Why? So that everyone close to the frontiers should feel under threat from neighbours, and come to regard Russian administrators and military as their ‘protectors’. So no-one would get dangerous ideas about leaving the USSR.
So: Stalin sowed the wind. Ethnic tension simmers right round a 10,000 mile frontier.
We are reaping the whirlwind.
What do we [people whose ancestors and countries have been through this before] need, to be able to help?
A set of principles, that we can offer to all those groups immired in conflict. Principles that balance the rights of aboriginal inhabitants, seasonal and pastoral migrants, ‘Stalin transmigrants’, economic migrants and refugees. Principles that set out how frontiers might be changed by agreement. And how new frontiers can be administered, whether as ”hard” or ”soft” borders, for migrant pastoralists and traders.
Do I have a set of these principles in mind? No.
But isn’t it time we broke free from the 19th century ”Borders are sacrosanct” mentality, and started looking at what people, families, clans, tribes and nations want?
Reply
Turgai Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
@Spanner48, “But isn’t it time we broke free from the 19th century ”Borders are sacrosanct” mentality (…)?”
Indeed, especially sicne there is a beautiful alternative: http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/multimedia/books/10607-book-emerging-world-order-the-islamic-khilafah-state
Reply
Well, Turgai, if that is what people really want, why not?
But:
1: The specifically Muslim argument for a unified Caliphate applies only to a part of the ex-Soviet ‘glacis’: from Adygeia to the Altai Republic.
2: There have been many attempts to unify the Muslim ‘ummah’ across different countries and regions down the centuries – many of them long before the US became a world power. All have failed. Where Mohammed first converted one country, now there are 40 or more. Recent unification attempts [Libya with Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan; Syria and the Lebanon; Syria and Iraq] have all foundered. If nothing else, there may be problems bringing together Sunnis [whose duty - strictly interpreted - is to kill any Shia they meet] Shias, Wahhabis and others.
With those reservations, though, a unified Caliphate stretching from Dakar in the west to Halmahera in the east does have attractions . . . . .
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Turgai Sangar Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 11:02 am
@Spanner48, Yes it has its attractions and the book explains that very well. It will not be obvious to realize (though today the technology of globalisation can be used for it) but the concept is not absurd either. Khilafah (Bagdad, Ottomans, … ) has existed and at some phase it was also the heyday of Islamic civilisation.
When the EU or the WTO expand, it’s called ‘progress’ and ‘integration’. When Muslims advocate a pan-regional entity like the Islamic State Khilafah, it’s called ‘extremism’.
The unification attempts that you mention (e.g. Syria with Iraq) indeed failed but they were not driven by the Khilafah movement but by secular Pan-Arab nationalism (Ba’athism). They key problem is the rotten nature of the compradore regimes and secular ‘elites’.
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Turgai Sangar Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
@Spanner48, Talking about popular support for Khilafah, this might interest you: http://www.start.umd.edu/start/…/research_briefs/20080131_caliphate_and_radicalization.pdf
Of course it’ are only data for 4 ‘classical’ Muslim countries and none in Eurasia but notetheless relevant.
Reply
Hello –
My name is Amanda and I’m on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, a non-profit organization, as a graphic designer. I am currently creating a website to encourage students to travel abroad. As I was researching and gathering inspiration online, I stumbled upon your beautiful tea pot photo and thought it would be a great shot to give students a visual of the culture and life of another country. I’d like to ask your permission to use this photo on this website, would this be possible?
Feel free to email me at: anbridgeman@gmail.com
Thanks, Amanda
Reply
[...] of aftermath of the violence in Osh were made by our blogger Mary Pole, focusing on the bazaar and [...]
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