Alright, who opened Pandora's Box?

(photos from Reuters and Yahoo News)


Well, I guess we all knew something like this was going to happen. After 9 nine days of relatively peaceful anti-government protests in the center of Bishkek, where far fewer people than opposition organizers hoped for camped out in tents and yurts on Ala-Too square and the Old Square in front of Parliament, the shit finally hit the fan. I am sitting here in the secure confines of the UN Building, five blocks east of the White House and Ala Too Square, where just a few hours ago a skirmish broke out between a rowdy group of probably drunk protesters and the police in front of the White House. The police and interior ministry special forces then decided to make their endgame move and push all the protestors out of Ala-Too Square once and for all with the help of stun grenades, tear gas, batons and attack dogs. We heard the thunderous concussion grenades going off as we dined at one of the posh Chtyri Saison (Four Seasons) restaurant a few blocks away. I immediately knew what it was. My personal introduction to these satanic noise bombs last November left an indelible imprint on my nervous system.

Oddly enough we barely blinked and continued to eat our okroshka soup and salmon as if it was just another round of wedding night fireworks going off, so ubiquitous here in the warmer months. I guess we were trying not to think about the possibility that armageddon had beguun. Yet across the park in Ala-Too Square, under the the pained gaze of the towering Erkindik, a statue of a woman lifting up a tunduk (national symbol), cheerfully lit by colored string lights, chaos reigned.
As we watch later that night the raw footage broadcast on the independent Pyramid TV, a group of rowdy and probably besotted protesters attempted to approach the gates of the White House. Some people started throwing rocks and bottles at the police. The debate raging in the aftermath was whether this provocation was pre-meditated by the opposition organizers, or by some pro-Bakiev provacateurs, who had certainly been active throughout the weeklong demonstrations, as an excuse to crackdown and end the protests once and for all. While an opposition leader likened the alleged provocation by undercover government thugs to the Nazi's planned burning of Reichstag in Berlin, the Kyrgyz government has issued criminal charges against the opposition leaders for purposefully causing civil disorder.

However it started, it ended with a steady and disciplined march of waves of armored swat police launching stun grenades and tear gas into the main square. Some resisted, others mostly just sheepishly trudged back onto Kievskaya street behind the square. Especially eery was watching the footage of the last holdouts of the opposition cowering on the stage, screaming helplessly into the PA system as streaming gas canisters reigned down around them. Soon enough they too joined the other demonstrators now scattering out in the neighborhood behind the square (our neighborhood!) and engaging in running street battles with police, occasionally stopping and smashing passing cars with bricks and sticks.

The police pursued, firing rubber bullets and more teargas up and down every surrounding street. As we drove home from dinner we had to keep turning around to avoid the masses of protesters occupying the streets as I had to also swerve around rocks, bricks and gas canisters strewn around the streets. At this point its every man for themselves as other drivers screamed through intersections to avoid getting stopped and smashed by protestors. Meanwhile, within an hour of making the final putsch of the square, the police had managed to dismantle the yurt village set up by protesters nine days earlier, and the queer emptiness of Ala Too square was quickly restored.
(my photos the morning of 4/19, view the rest here)




All in all it was an efficient operation to clean out the square and end the protests, though several protesters and police alike were treated for a variety of injuries, one deemed grave, and the resulting street battles resulted in some property damage and some looting, mostly of the poor little kiosks that line every street. The next day life around the American University where I work in downtown Bishkek strangely returned to normal. No yurt village outside parliament, no more incessant echo of speechifying and Kyrgyz pop music, no more multi-colored flag parade blockades around the parliament. Just bluebird skies and steady hum of students stressing over their term papers and final exams.

As the dust settles the political situation seems to have notched down from crisis mode, while political fallout has yet to seem clear. President Bakiev is still in power, and probably stronger than ever after soundly sweeping away the protests without too many casualties. There was a hunger striker who seems to have died of mysterious causes, and the Governer of Naryn province has been blamed by the President, whether the governor was just used as a scapegoat it may never be known. But perhaps the biggest casualty may be ex-Prime Minister Felix Kulov's career. Kulov, who uncompromisingly led a fractured opposition movement, was widely suspected of using the whole movement to just get himself back to power after he was unceremoniously booted out by the Parliament early in the year. Now it seems he overplayed his hand by annoying the local populace, dividing the opposition even further, and essentially achieving none of his goals, including the ouster of his former tandem partner, President Bakiev. Constitutional reforms are going on thanks to the initiative of the current Prime Minister and former opposition leader Almaz Atambaev, who Bakiev cunningly installed to take the steam out of the opposition a few weeks before the protests began. As the Prime Minister even said, most everyone dislikes Bakiev with a passion, but he's still president and changes must come through the compromise within the system, not from the street.

It's been said that the Kyrgyz have developed a perverted sense of what democracy really is after street protests in March 2005 lead to the Tulip Revolution. Thereafter they thought all changes in government could be made from the street. While an impressive compromise on a new constitution was reached at the height of the protests last November, all that noise was finally for naught as Bakiev and his supporters in Parliament managed to roll back all the changes just before the end of the year. After the failure of this latest round of protests, the Kyrgyz may be finally disabused of this notion of street democracy, which has also devolved into a farcical play casted with young, unemployed village men paid with money, vodka and a vacation from their otherwise mundane lives in the economically depressed rural areas of the country. Now the question is whether democracy as a whole has a chance in this fragile country, or whether Bakiev will finally be emboldened to turn it into a police state to safeguard his grip on power like his corrupt presidential friends in all the other Central Asian republics. One thing is for sure, Kyrgyz politics will continue to be one of the more interesting soap operas in the region.