This is a translation of the article that Alieva published in Russian about the scandal that was triggered after Kyrgyzstan chose to extradite 5 Uzbek refugees, claiming their criminal ties with extremist movements.

According to “Uzreport” local prosecutors in Andijan distict of Uzbekistan are now questioning 5 Uzbek citizens who got extradited from Kyrgyzstan.

According to the sources in the office of the state prosecutor of Uzbekistan these 5 are now facing a number of charges: including terrorism, attempts to overthrow constitutional order in Uzbekistan as well as establishing an armed gang.
Officials in Uzbekistan announced that after the conducted investigation it was confirmed that Rasulgon Pirmatov, one of those under trial, was linked to the extremist movement “Akromiya”. He allegedly was one of the most active participant of the raid against police in May 2005 in Andijan that followed by the prison break with 500 inmates being released and armed by the group.

Two other refugees Djangair Maksudov and Odiljon Rahimov who were also handed to Uzbek authorities are now accused in assisting the prison break and producing explosives for the attack.

According to official Bishkek one of the extradited who pretended to be a refugee was also a criminal with record. Yakub Tashbaev who was released from Andijan prison on May 12 was serving his term on a whole bunch of charges including selling drugs and homicide attempts.

Though the personal records of extradited collected by Kyrgyz authorities as evidence and, for that mater, as an excuse for expelling refugees apparently didn’t have enough appeal for international community. Kyrgyzstan got fiercely criticized by EU, OSCE and UN. UN Refugees Committee announced that

“the decision to extradite refugees was a shocking one” since it will seriously endanger the lives of those expelled by Kyrgyzstan. In the statement released by the UNHCR it’s emphasized:
“We think that the lives of the refugees handed to Uzbek authorities are now under serious threat. The act of extradition in this case seriously violates the Convention on the refugees that was ratifies by Kyrgyzstan. We were extremely disappointed by the decision of Kyrgyz authorities who failed to harbor the people who were in need of support and help. Considering the previous record of Kyrgyzstan in handling Uzbek refugees we can say that it creates a very bad precedent in the international humanitarian practice. We are now trying to push official Tashkent to provide us an access to the 5 people being under trial to ensure that their basic human rights are being violated.”

Human rights advocates in Kyrgyzstan also spoke up against the decision of the Kyrgyz White House. Human Rights Watch recently forced out from Uzbekistan and now based in Osh, Kyrgyzstan expressed its deep dissatisfaction with the manner Kyrgyz side chose to handle the situation. According to Rachel Denber, Uzbekistan is a country where torture is widely spread and now with the precedent created by Kyrgyzstan such countries as Kazakhstan and Russian may start considering diverting refugees and sending them back to Uzbekistan.

International analysts in this situation tend to think that official Bishkek while extraditing refugees was desperately trying to win over Uzbek authorities. The matter is that now official Bishkek is strongly dependent from Uzbekistan in terms of water and energy security.

Though the office of the State Prosecutor in Bishkek rejects any allegations stating: “no politics is involved”. It was also announced that actions undertaken has been in accordance with state legislation of Kyrgyzstan.

It’s obvious, that Kyrgyzstan in this situation is balancing on a very fine line. As the aid of the US State Secretary Richard Boucher emphasized during his recent visit to Central Asia, recent extradition is not just purely a domestic issue of Kyrgyzstan especially considering the dynamic of events in Uzbekistan in the aftermath of Andijan events.

At the same time Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kyrgyzstan Alykbek Djekshenkulov is preparing to go to Uzbekistan at the end of August to launch a preparation for an official visit of Kurmanbek Bakiev to Tashkent later this fall. As Djekshenkulov emphasizes this visit can become a turning point in Uzbek- Kyrgyz relations that has been going through its tense and unfriendly stage during the past 8-9 years.

This is a translation of the post that Alieva wrote about the confusion with the first book of Kurmanbek Bakiev that was recently published in Kyrgyzstan. The original article in Russian you may find on our Russian version of NewEurasia.Net

The first book of the second president of Kyrgyzstan published last week. The title of the piece is “Every Kyrgyz citizen deserves better life”. As skeptics pointed out this was meant to be a PR action to mark the first anniversary of Bakiev’s presidency.
The leaders of the party “Labor and Unity” that was literally created in the day of Kurmanbek Bakiev’s inauguration assured that the president himself wrote the book not relying on the work of White House’s spin writers.
The party announced that its members were honored to become the first readers of the book that Bakiev personally presented as a gift to “Labor and Unity” to celebrate their common anniversary.
The main confusion of the story is that “Every Kyrgyz citizen deserves better life” turned out to be not quite a book but rather a brochure containing information on the work of the president’s team in the years 2005-2006. The book appeared to be composed of the reports of ministries and local administrations on the state of the social- economic development of the country after the revolution in March 2005.
Though the members of the pro- presidential party assumed that Bakiev was indeed the author of the book. After the confusion became obvious the party admitted its mistake and apologized for “misreading” the message of the president.
The press secretary of the “Labor and Unity” Alexander Ivanov in the disclaimer stressed :

“Since authorship of the book was not specified on the front page we just referred to the names that appeared inside. We assumed that since the president himself presented it to us he must be an author himself. ”

Bakiev never reacted at the PR manipulations of his supporters and, probably, admirers.
It’s worth emphasizing, that the money from the state budget was used for publishing the brochure that confused univocal supporters of the president. Publishing costs have not been yet announced. The book is being disseminated now free of charge and, as it was announced, is aimed solely at providing state officials with essential information on the current development of the republic. Ideally it is meant to become a manual on dos and do nots of the state practices in Kyrgyzstan.
By the way it may be a coincidence but the first president of Kyrgyzstan Askar Akaev also published his first book exactly a year after his inauguration. Every following year if his presidency was marked by a new book release.

What follows is one part of a cross-blog initiative that commemorates the 1991 Moscow coup and evaluates the years in between.

An Empire Falls

August 19,1991. Soviet people are embraced by music. “Swan Lake” is being played everywhere on radio and TV, replacing all programs and newscasts.

Soviet people know that too much of classical music is a bad sign. My parents recall that every time they hear lots of Tchaikovsky on TV they would expect one more ancient ruler of the country to descend into a new Kremlin tomb. People were trained to read between the lines, or for that matter, even between the keys of a tune.

This time “Swan Lake” was indeed announcing one more death - the political death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and the last president of the USSR. August 19, 1991, when the State Committee for the State of Emergency (SCSE) assumed power in Moscow, became the point of no return for one of the most powerful countries on the globe. Driven by political ambitions and being already able to sense the smell of power leaders of some Soviet Republics jumped to announce Gorbachev a lame duck and USSR – a lame state.

The political turmoil in Moscow echoed in Kyrgyzstan almost immediately. Amidst the fight between old communists and new progressive thinkers an attempt was made to depose the first president of Kyrgyzstan- at that time the young and very promising new president of a small country which was about to step into the exciting period of its independence. For the sake of clarify, though, it’s necessary to emphasize that Askar Akaev, since the first day of his presidency ( he got elected in October 1990), proclaimed his adherence to an idea of integrity. Reforms, according to Akaev, were to strengthen the sovereignty of Kyrgyzstan within a renewed USSR.

Akaev the Reformer

In this light, Akaev at that time was the best example of the people’s president thinking in one accord with the majority of population in the country since in a referendum on the preservation of the U.S.S.R. in March 1991, 88.7% of the electorate approved the proposal to retain the U.S.S.R. as a “renewed federation.”

Akaev denounced the Moscow coup and announced his resignations from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the week after the coup was curbed. The Supreme Soviet of the republic declared independence from the USSR on August 31, 1991.

Reform Without Development

15 years after those historical events we still don’t know whether there is a reason for Kyrgyzstan to celebrate. The concept of independence was indeed an important one but mainly as a concept. Practical implications of gaining the status of an independent state were much more complex and not necessarily positive.

In the first years of independence the reformist government of Askar Akaev started implementing economic reforms on a scale never seen before. The first results seemed to be rather promising: in 1992 Kyrgyzstan becomes a member of the World Bank, in 1993 the national currency was introduced, in 1998 the country enters the World Trade Organization. Though, presumably positive reforms in economy during the first years of independence never prevented the process of the continuing impoverishment of the population in Kyrgyzstan. Every year the number of people qualifying as those living under the poverty line was steadily growing. The new government has never been able to really handle the situation making people more than nostalgic about the old good Soviet times.

In 1993 the first corruption scandal shattered the pillars of support of the Kyrgyz government. With some of the key figures being involved into alleged corruption practices the trust of population towards the government started declining.

By the mid-1990s the tide began to turn for independent media as well as for civil society that once was called “vibrant”. What was an “island of democracy” with more than promising prospects turned into a sinking ship of unfulfilled promises, corrupt practices of officials and desperately poor population.

By the beginning of 2000 an official rate for poverty in the country was reported as high as 40 %. Though, according to some NGO’s, conducting alternative economic surveys and research, the number of impoverished people in the country skyrocketed up to 70 %. Huge economic regress was even more obvious in comparison with other ex USSR republics. Ten years after the independence was gained became a faltering state, leaning, according to some analysts, towards becoming a failed one. It’s obvious that the economy of Kyrgyzstan was severely affected by the collapse of the Soviet trading block. In 1990, some 98% of Kyrgyz exports went to other parts of the Soviet Union. Thus, the nation’s economic performance in the early 1990s was worse than any other former Soviet republic except Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan where civil wars were waged at that time.

Not only economic ties were broken after the collapse of the USSR. Thousands of personal lives were affected after the disappearance of the empire that for many ordinary people was an embodiment of stability and guaranteed future. Relatives turned out to be living in different countries not being able to see each other any more. Borders would pop up all around the place making people imprisoned in their countries. It was a new and shocking experience for many people living in Kyrgyzstan as well. The wave of migration of the Russian speaking population caused tremendous problems for the industry in newly independent Kyrgyzstan. Many factories and industrial entities would just die on the spot leaving almost no hope for agonizing economy. The country got trained to survive on foreign grants and donations with no long term planning but with a visible desire of new leaders to benefit from the money aimed at supporting widely advertised economic freedoms and values that in reality hardly ever existed in Kyrgyzstan.

This day marks the 15 anniversary of the coup in 1991. This year Kyrgyzstan is to celebrate the 15 anniversary of its independence on August 31. The question is : do we really have anything to celebrate? According to the latest survey of the World Bank Kyrgyzstan is approaching the 15 anniversary of its independence with evidences of rampant corruption in place. These years have also been featured by political and social instability. As a result, people not seeing any ray of hope, keep leaving Kyrgyzstan for other, more successful, states. According to official statistics about 700 000 Kyrgyz nationals choose to work in Russia to make their living and to provide for their families. As it turned out independent Kyrgyzstan can hardly cater its citizens with decent jobs and salaries. No wonder, that many people in the country would blame the coup of 1991 for all the troubles and miseries Kyrgyzstan never got to experience before the independence descended on the country 15 years ago.

An article in yesterday’s Vechernii Bishkek made no mention of the Imam, only noting that “3 extremists were liquidated” in the Ak-Tilek microregion of Osh and that the men killed were suspected of involvement in the attacks on border posts on May 12. Today, however, the newspaper ran a story confirming Kamalov’s death:

Witness

Well-known preacher amongst killed extremists

The funeral of the head of the local mosque, well-known preacher Mukhammadrafik Kamalov, was held yesterday in Kara-Suu.

The imam was killed on Sunday evening in Osh during a special operation by the Kyrgyz National Security Agency. We reported on his preachings and their results in yesterday’s edition. The law enforcement agencies did not immediately reveal the truth that the famous religious activist was amongst the 3 men shot dead. His relatives and journalists only found out about his death around lunch-time yesterday.

Several tens of people gathered outside Osh Municipal Hospital’s morgue where identification was carried out. Police also stood outside armed with machine guns. Their presence was explained by a deputy of the local directorate of internal affairs as being to ensure public order was maintained. According to him, the people who had gathered outside the morgue had already tried to force their way into the morgue, breaking down the iron fence. It was therefore decided to strengthen the police presence.

The deceased’s body was handed over to relatives at about 1pm. They immediately took the body home to Kara-Suu, where a wake was organised for the shot man. Thousands of people continued arriving until late evening to pay their respects to the Imam.

Both in Kara-Suu and the south more generally Kamalov enjoyed much support and respect. The younger brother of the first Mufti of Kyrgyzstan, Sadykjan Kamalov, Mukhammadrafik had for the last 20 years worked as the Imam of the largest mosque in the region, the Kara-Suu central mosque. It is attended by five to six thousand people on Fridays.

Kamalov was also an active community member. He often appeared in the media talking about relevant topics, including political issues.

Dark days began for him after the May raids by fighters who attacked the Tajik border post Lyakkan, our [Kyrgyz border post] Ak-Turpak, and moved further into Kyrgyz territory. During the counter operation, as is well-known, several law enforcement and customs employees died. During the investigation, the competent authorities suspected the imam of involvement with the events and arrested him. Our newspaper has already reported these events. The holy man was released the next day, but he was kept under observation.

“The internal affairs authorities had reliable information about his involvement with an extremist organisation. And yesterday this was confirmed” said an official from the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Main Directorate for Fighting Extremism and Illegal Migration in response to a request to comment on the situation from Vechernii Bishkek’s correspondent. “Events is Osh indicated the active involvement of Kamalov, with the other 2 men killed, [who were] fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (now the Islamic Movement of Turkestan – editor’s note [from Vechnernii Bishkek]). The connection was not coincidental.

According to the law enforcement structures, the latter 2 were wanted in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for terrorist activity. They were suspected, among other things, of having attacked a prison in Kairakuum (Tajikistan), during which the head of the isolation unit, Gadoiboev, was killed, and several member of the Islamic Movement of Turkestan and the religious group Bai’at were freed.

The day before yesterday during the operation in Osh to neutralise them [the extremists], law enforcement officers confiscated a large quantity of weapons. This included a Kalashnikov machine gun, hundreds of rounds for it and a stand, several grenades, a map of Uzbekistan on which certain places were marked with the word “jihad”, a pair of military binoculars, extremist literature and fake passports.

The special forces carried out the operation with colleagues from Uzbekistan, as the press service of the Council for National Security of the Kyrgyz Republic reported.

Kamalov’s relatives disagree with the allegation that he was connected with underground activists and are demanding a thorough investigation into what happened.

Oibek Khamidov.

Ataman Rankin’s comments on yesterday’s post are well worth a look for more background and links.

The BBC has a report that Rafik Kamalov, an imam from the southern town of Karasuu, has apparently been killed, according to his family:

According to his family and local police, the imam - Rafik Kamalov - was shot dead by Kyrgyz special forces.

But security officials have not confirmed his death.

The Ferghana Valley lies in the south of Kyrgyzstan - the very heart of Muslim Central Asia.

Authorities have been cracking down on what they call Islamic fundamentalism.

Outcry

In an interview with the BBC, Kyrgyz security officials confirmed that they had killed three men during a special operation on Thursday night and that all of them were members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan - a banned radical organisation.

The officials neither confirmed nor denied that Rafik Kamalov, the Imam of the biggest mosque along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border, was among them.

But family members, who are preparing for the funeral, deny that he belonged to any Islamic group.

For the past month, Kyrgyz security services, often with the help of their Uzbek colleagues, have launched a massive operation aimed at eradicating what the government here calls the serious threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

But human rights groups have voiced concern that this label is often used to silence political dissent.

The death of this hugely popular Imam could provoke a major public outcry among the deeply Islamic population of the Ferghana Valley.

This is a translation of the article that Inga posted on our Russian version. In her post she elaborates on the issue of death penalty in Kyrgyzstan. Some background information in Russian can also be found here. For additional comments on the controversial death sentence of Rustam Abdullin check dieselforum.

This week Kyrgyz court came up with one more death sentence. Rustam Abdullin was sentenced to death penalty for based on the number of charges. He is accused to be the one responsible for the murder of the Kyrgyz MP Tynichbek Akmatbaev, for creating a criminal gang and possessing guns. But today no one can actually predict how long it’ll take before Abdullin is actually penalized since the real death penalty has not been carried out in Kyrgyzstan for almost 8 years for now. Every year, following the recommendations of the world community, Kyrgyzstan keeps prolonging the moratorium on death penalty. Since June 1998 charges of 35 convicted to death were dropped, but twice as much people just died in jails. Now there are about 200 people sentenced to death are in line.

At the end of the day it turns out that the government trying to be human is not human at all. Stretching the terms of death penalties inevitably leads to packing up prison cells with more and more people. Nowadays in almost every “death” cell there are 6 to 8 convicted whereas normally the whole prison for criminals sentenced to death can accommodate only 32 people.
In this situation it’ll probably be wise to change the status of convicted and shift into the category of life term imprisoned. President Bakiev has already suggested this last year but no concrete measures have been undertaken by far. In the country there are no even special premises for such prisoners.

The Head of the Kyrgyz Court Kurmanbek Osmonov thinks that the system is not ready to deal with life term sentenced prisoners at all. This opinion is shared by many of those who are dealing with sentenced criminals every day.

“We can not handle many life term convicted prisoners because we simply don’t have enough money for that,”-comments the director of the Prosecution Unit 1 in Bishkek Asylbek Kydyshev,-“Now those prisoners who are already in our jail keep living in terrible conditions. We can not provide them with enough food, not to mention about medicare.”

As Uzbek agi Chotonov ,one of the religious thinkers, emphasizes: “When we are dealing with such criminals we should pay them back with the same price. The concept of revenge is not foreign for me at all. I’m for public death punishments. Western countries want us to ban death penalty. But if they are humanistic let them adopt all our criminals and handle them outside of Kyrgyzstan ”.

There is certain logic in this approach. No person, no problem. Those supporting death penalty use it as the main argument. But according to the opinion of Maria Lisytzina it’s not the best solution.

The leader of the Youth Human Rights Advocates group argues: “This is indeed a lame excuse. Does it mean that if we don’t have money we should kill everyone? Kyrgyzstan should reconsider its priorities provide prisoners with decent life conditions ”.

Though for now the working group handling the process of drafting the new Kyrgyz Constitution decided to stick to the old variant of the legislation concerning death penalty.

Here we provide the translation of the post that was featured on the Russian version of NewEurasia.Net. Our permanent contributor Nastia discusses the confusion over the situation with the state debt of Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan.

On July 21,2006 the Ukranian ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Vladimir Tiaglo announced that Ukraine doesn’t have an intention to fulfill its obligations when it comes to covering the debt of 27 192 320 $. Ukranian side went even further that the debt is simply non existent and the sum that Kyrgyzstan identifies as a Ukrainian debt was formed in the process of financial transactions between commercial banks and their clients for which Ukraine doesn’t have any responsibility.

The main source that Ukranian ambassador would refer to in his polemics about the non existent Ukranian debt was the Paris Financial Club that has been handling all cases of mutual debts in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

According to Mr. Tiaglo : “After undergoing all necessary procedures and paying off its Soviet time debts Ukraine is clean. According to the assessment of the Paris Club, Ukraine owes nothing to Kyrgyzstan”.

So here we are all clean and clear and who cares about money. After all everything happened quite a while ago. Or may be it was a mistakes but to it’s so difficult right now to trace who is really responsible for that.
Probably all these confusions keep occurring because traditionally some big cheese people in Kyrgyzstan at a certain stage of their careers start confusing personal and public. The well known phrase “The state is I” has a very special meaning in the context of Kyrgyz politics. The formula “The state is I” automatically implies that I everything that belongs to the state belongs to me but all my mistakes are ascribed to the state.

In a whole bunch of situations the result of such philosophy is deplorable.In the case we are talking about we’ve been constantly reminded for 10 years that Ukraine was about to pay Kyrgyzstan back. We’ve been expecting the money to arrive and alleviate a bit our ongoing economic crises. It was also stated that if Ukraine for some reason would start rejecting its debt we can use our membership in WTO in order to vote against Ukrainians entering this organization. We seemed to be pretty solidly fixed on our position while negotiating on that with Ukraine but than the greatest confusion ever occurred. One of the speakers of the Kyrgyz Parliament Kubanichbek Isabekov announced that all papers confirming the fact and the sum of the Ukrainian debt disappeared. Just like that. No papers, no financial obligations.

That’s a real shame! Though ordinary Kyrgyz people were not even surprised that much (check an online discussion about that). We got so used to our state being a lame duck in so many situations that the only way to survive is to laugh a little bit. Well, after all the state and the people are two completely different categories. Let’s imagine the money is paid back. Do you think any of the ordinary citizens can benefit from that? No way.

Though something else bothers me in this case. It has again been confirmed that we don’t have any professionals in power. Neither in parliament nor in the government. Instead there are lots of ambitious dilettantes, someone’s relatives and kids, someone who is able to bribe their way through. It’s all around the place: both in politics and in economy.

That’s why the only choice for us is to make fun of ourselves and to give the whole world lots of chances to make fun of us.

This week president Bakiev was informed about the outcomes of the nationwide discussion on the project of new Kyrgyz Constitution which includes several variants of governmental reform.

In spite of the deadly hot weather the initiators of the reform visited all regions of Kyrgyzstan. The head of the working group, former general prosecutor Azimbek Beknazarov, according to his words, has an intention to polish all the three drafts of the Constitution, so that on the 1st of August to present them to Kurmanbek Bakiev.

Beknazarov recently made an attempt to reach as many people in Kyrgyzstan as possible to spread the word about the work of the constitutional committee. But so far it’s to early to judge whether the attempt was a successful one. Beknazarov claims that after meeting people in southern regions of the country he came up with the conclusion that majority there supports the variant of the Constitution that grants more power to the president of the country. According to the former general prosecutor, this signifies that officials conducted a solid campaign aimed at “advertising’ the president on the largest scale possible.

Beknazarov though is not going to give up. After being kicked out from his official position he is keen on restricting presidential powers in the draft of the new constitution.

“Whichever draft is accepted for implementation I’m, as the main “composer” of the new Constitution, have an intention to reach my goal, namely to impose certain restrictions on the president. In each of the three drafts there is a chapter prohibiting Kyrgyz president to fire general prosecutors as well as local judges. Or another example: Bakiev doesn’t hesitate saying that he would not mind to be in charge of an executive branch of power. If he is really positive about that, than I as a member of Parliament will demand him to show up in Jogorku Kenesh whenever we, deputies, want to address questions to him,”-comments Beknazarov to NewEurasia.

One general conclusion pops up in this situation: after all revisions of the new Constitution are made Kyrgyz president will be officially turned into a scapegoat. It may partly be his own fault since almost every reformist suffers consequences of his reforms. Especially, considering the fact that the whole process of drafting yet another Constitution was assigned to a long standing opponent and a rather scandalous political personality- Azimbek Beknazarov. This endeavor is already considered to be rather risky, since Beknazarov announced that another radical intention of him was to eliminate the official status of the Russian language form the Constitution.

While addressing this issue Beknazarov said : “ We talked with the president about the status of the Russian language in the country. He was very keen on keeping it as an official one, but after all we can probably grant some kind of a status like the language of international communication to the Russian. I think it’d be enough. Who cares, after all, everyone’s already gone”.

Beknazarov’s flamboyancy grows as he generously offers to grant Kyrgyz citizenship to those who left the country a while ago and than, for some reason, chose to come back. It’ll work though only for ethnic Kyrgyz. No exclusions are made by Beknazarov other nationalities. Who cares about human rights when such an extraordinary person as Azimbek Beknazarov is in charge of drafting the main legislature documents?

Analysts already warned that in the current situation the radicalism employed by Beknazarov (someone who is less politically correct refers to it as a stupidity) can lead to some fatal consequences.

In general the whole issue of constitutional drafting is getting more and more complicated. Trying to set a referendum, which main question will be “Which form of the government you support?” the official power is taking a risk. Not being fully aware about causes and consequences people in Kyrgyzstan can make a choice that will again lead to political clashes and escalation of the situation. It’s vary possible that this option is very appealing to the opponents of the current president since it’s much easier to manipulate public opinion in a situation of uncertainty and growing instability.

It’s also possible that in case the draft of the Constitution is sent to the parliament the process of adopting it will be standing idle for a while. At least until the year 2009 when the mandate of the current parliament is over. Now MPs in Kyrgyzstan seem to be the group indeed longing for stability since, as it turned out after the “tulip” revolution, drastic changes hardly do any good to small but terribly complicated states.

Gazeta.kz reports that the United States are to reduce its military presence in Central Asia. John Abizaid, Head of the US Central Command, said:

“The level of our co-operation will be growing, but the US military presence will decrease.”

Now that a deal on the Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan has been inked (as Yulia and Nathan reported), the question of whether the US is actively seeking replacement for the abandoned K2 base in Uzbekistan seems to be answered.

Here we present a fresh version of what is being written nowadays in the blogs in Kyrgyzstan and about Kyrgyzstan. In this roundup of the blogging activities I, as always, highlight the latest articles by NewEurasia Russian version contributors and other authors writing about Kyrgyzstan.

The steamy topic of the discussions is the “officially” waged war ( traditionally called Djihad) that according to some sources was waged by the members of the illegal religious organization “Hizb-ut-Tahrir” and is aimed , in particular, at fighting Kyrgyz official law enforcement bodies. Inga writes an article about that in Russian, stating that people in the country are terrified by the fact that confrontation between extremists and authorities is becoming more visible and apparently inevitable. She points out that in Kyrgyzstan because of the obvious reasons has provided some fertile soil for extremists. Her claim is it’s exactly internal corruption, tribalism and the lack of professionals in law enforcement bodies contribute to solidification of the network of supporters of radical Islamic movements. My material in English about that read here.

Along these lines Registan.net posts a note about the monograph being published by John Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies’ Central Asia-Caucasus Institute. Apparently the issue of Islamic fundamentalism is not solely an internal problem of Central Asian countries facing this evil on their own territory. Laurence in his posting describes the approach implemented by well known scholars dealing with issues of the development of Islamist extremist organizations. Though the quality of the analyses is questioned by Registan.net with an emphasis on this research being slightly outdated.

Nastia in her post discusses the recent announcement of one of the speakers of the Kyrgyz parliament Kubanychbek Isabekov about the necessity to renovate the building of parliament in Bishkek as well as to “refresh” the stock of the cars for Kyrgyz deputies. She mentions about the recent scandal with 2006 budget approval when it was clearly stated that Kyrgyz deputies spend too much money on their “working” needs. To read more on Nastia’s conclusions about the ways Kyrgyz deputies spend budget and extra budget money click here.

This week we also featured a post about the life of disabled people in Kyrgyzstan. Inga prepared a report on that emphasizing that while subsidies for impaired people don’t 10 $ per month some NGO’s activities became the only hope for those who are indeed neglected by the state. During her investigation she discovered though that recent policies of the state were aimed at shutting down civil society organizations out of the fear of their political influence. Inga argues that such a step is almost a criminal one since authorities don’t offer any alternatives and just deprive those who are to survive only because of the activities of these organizations.

Nastia continues discussing this topic in her article about the scope of activities of NGOs in Kyrgyzstan and about their public image in the country. She suggests that the decision of authorities to leash the civil society activities is connected with aggravated fears of official power to lose control over the situation. Nastia comes up with the conclusion that in the current situation civil society can challenge some activities of the state officials and the latter is indeed unwilling to cope with such challnges.