United Nations: violence in KG began with coordinated attacks
Kyrgyzstan, Politics and Society5 Comments
Screen capture from video of unrest in Osh from neweurasia's Mirsulzhan Namazaliev.
Big news everyone: the office of the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights says that, based upon analysis of eye-witness accounts, violence in Kyrgyzstan appears to have begun with five coordinated attacks before taking on its current inter-ethnic character. The office’s spokesman, Ruper Colville, stated:
“We have strong indications that this event was not a spontaneous inter-ethnic clash — that it was to some degree orchestrated, targeted and well-planned. Several of these reports suggest that the incident began with five simultaneous attacks in Osh involving men wearing balaclavas and carrying guns. It looked like they were seeking to provoke a reaction.
“So it might be wrong to cast it, at least in origin, as an inter-ethnic conflict. There seems to be other agendas driving it initially. But once it start to take off on ethnic lines, then of course you start to get a clear divide and tit-for-tat reactions which is what’s so particularly dangerous.”
Whether these were the Bakiyevists, Bakiyev-contracted Tajik mercenaries, agents of local mafia, Russian special forces, or any of the other potential agents provocateurs hypothesized in the rumors currently circulating the Twittersphere is far from clear.
On the one hand, I must confess shock that the rumors are more than just empty conspiracy theory or thinly veiled excuses for other atrocities, as I’ve previously mulled. On the other hand, everyone should nevertheless be cautious about their interpretations of events (myself included!)
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Why the shock that the rumours appear to be more than conspiracy theory/excuses? I was more shocked to read the suggestion that it really was as basic as one group deciding to start murdering another one day. I’m not denying that there haven’t been tensions between ethnic groups, but it seemed excessively simplistic to see the violence as a logical outcome of that without some catalyst to spark the whole thing off. Still, I guess it depends how Hobbesian one is feeling.
What’s going to be interesting is seeing who ends up getting the blame for these tragic events (I think it’s unlikely we’ll find out who was really behind the provocations), and also where Osh, and Kyrgyzstan as a whole, goes from here. I’m hoping it’s in a peaceful direction, but the stakes are horribly high and recovery is going to take a very long time.
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The problem in Kyrgyzstan is that there are a lot of young, poor, and unemployed people. Who, like a lot of youngsters, are very brave and not very cautious. And shameful of their poverty and lack of power.
In Kyrgyzstan it is well known that money is the fuel of all these revolutions, coup d’etat, unrests, …
While it will not take more than a few thousand dollars to find youngsters to start an unrest, there will be problems in Kg.
Look at demographics: the problem will worsen and peak in some years.
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[...] ousted President Bakiyev and his son were behind these events. Eyewitnesses in Osh stated they saw Tajik masked men shooting at both the Kyrgyz and Uzbek. Interpol arrested President Bakiyev’s son, Maksim, in the UK at the request of the [...]
[...] neweurasia.net » United Nations: violence in KG began with … [...]
[...] the tragedy. This is what the international journalistic community thinks it knows and only that: as affirmed by the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, it appears that gangs of masked men attacked, in an organized and premeditated fashion, Uzbek and [...]