Kyrgyzstan

A

Soviet Period

During the Russian Civil War (1918-1921), the Bolsheviks sought to reclaim territories in Central Asia and other parts of the former Russian Empire that had split off following the collapse of the monarchy. Despite resistance by the basmachis, an organized movement of armed Islamic and nationalist guerrillas, the Bolsheviks managed to reestablish control over Central Asia. In 1921 the area of present-day Kyrgyzstan became part of the Turkistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) within the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The Turkistan ASSR also included present-day Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and part of Kazakhstan. The Bolsheviks founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in December 1922. In 1924 the Soviet authorities began to delineate new territories in Central Asia along ethnic lines. That year the area of present-day Kyrgyzstan became the Kara-Kirgiz Autonomous Region (renamed Kirgiz Autonomous Region in 1925), and in 1926 the region was upgraded to an autonomous republic, or ASSR. Ten years later it was again upgraded, this time to the status of a constituent republic of the USSR, and was officially named the Kirgiz Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). It was commonly known as Kirgizia.

Soviet policies had a drastic impact on the life of the Kyrgyz people. The traditional Kyrgyz way of life, which was based on nomadic livestock-herding, was abolished in the course of land reforms during the 1920s and 1930s. The Soviet government consolidated all arable and grazing lands into large state-owned farms, and by the mid-1930s the majority of Kyrgyz had been forcibly settled to work on these farms. Other Kyrgyz fled to the mountains, and even into China, to escape this fate. The collectivization of agriculture eradicated longstanding Kyrgyz landholding patterns, which were based on family and kinship ties.

Large-scale industrialization was another centerpiece of the Soviet planned economy. Heavy industries and uranium-mining operations were established in the Kirgiz SSR. This was accompanied by a large influx of Russians into the republic’s urban areas, and Russians came to constitute a majority of the population in Frunze (now Bishkek). The Russian language was promoted as the primary language in education, business, and politics. Kyrgyz-language schools were virtually nonexistent in urban areas.

The Soviet regime meanwhile sought to eliminate any opposition to the new order. The Kirgiz Communist Party, a local branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), was established as the only legal party in the republic. During Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s violent purges of the 1930s, many members of the Kyrgyz intelligentsia and any others who expressed dissent were imprisoned or executed. A modest political relaxation occurred after Stalin’s death in 1953, but centralized control from Moscow was by then firmly established.

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In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader. Gorbachev instituted a program of far-reaching political and economic reforms called glasnost (Russian for “openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”). Gorbachev’s policies led to demands within the various Soviet republics for greater levels of autonomy. Several unofficial quasi-political groups formed in the Kirgiz SSR in 1989. In 1990 the Soviet government agreed to change the Soviet constitution to allow non-Communist parties to take part in political life. However, the conservative Kirgiz Communist Party leadership opposed this development. In February candidates affiliated with the party ran virtually unopposed in elections to the 350-member Kirgiz Supreme Soviet (legislature), thus securing the party’s control over government in the republic.

Meanwhile, reformist groups rallied around the issue of the republic’s acute housing shortage and challenged the Kyrgyz government to alleviate the problem. In June 1990 disagreement between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz over access to land and housing around the city of Osh, near the Kirgiz-Uzbek border, sparked violent interethnic clashes. The Kyrgyz government imposed a state of emergency, and the border between the Uzbek and Kirgiz republics was closed. The violence continued to escalate, however, and at least 300 people were killed. Order was restored in August, although the state of emergency remained in effect until 1995.

In October 1990 the Kirgiz Supreme Soviet convened to elect a president of the republic. Although the legislature was dominated by the Kirgiz Communist Party, the violence in the Osh region had discredited the party’s candidate, and Askar Akayev, a liberal academic on the reform wing of the republic’s party organization, was elected to the newly created post. Akayev allied himself increasingly with the new political forces emerging in Kirgizia, and he pushed for economic and political reforms that were opposed by many officials in the Kirgiz Communist Party bureaucracy.

In 1991 the Soviet republics began to declare independence. Taking the name Kyrgyzstan, Kirgizia declared its independence in September, shortly after a failed coup attempt by Communist hardliners in Moscow. Among the heads of the 15 Soviet republics, only Askar Akayev in Kirgizia and Boris Yeltsin in Russia openly resisted the coup. In the wake of the coup, the Kirgiz Communist Party was temporarily dissolved (until 1992). Although Communist conservatives continued to dominate the legislature, they did not put forth a candidate in the presidential election in October. Akayev ran unopposed in the direct election and was reelected president. After the USSR collapsed officially in December 1991, Kyrgyzstan joined most of the other former Soviet republics in the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose alliance for political, economic, and military cooperation.

B

Independent Republic

In 1993 Kyrgyzstan adopted its first post-Soviet constitution. Although the constitution created a parliamentary system of government, the president retained considerable authority, including the power to dissolve the legislature and appoint the prime minister. The country’s first legislative elections were scheduled for 1995, thereby allowing the legislature that had been elected in 1990 to complete its term.

Akayev quickly went forward with an intensive program of market-oriented economic reforms, outpacing the reforms implemented in the other Central Asian states. He also championed democratic reforms, allowing political opposition and a free press to develop in the country.

In October 1994 Akayev called a national referendum on a constitutional amendment to make the legislature a bicameral (two-chamber) body, and voters approved the proposal. Elections to the lower house of the legislature, called the Jogorku Kenesh (Supreme Council), were held in February 1995. Although 11 parties won representation, independents (politicians with no party affiliation) claimed the majority of seats.

Also in 1995, Akayev sought to extend the length of his term through a national referendum, but the Jogorku Kenesh resisted this initiative. The legislature’s only concession was to allow an early presidential election, thereby giving other candidates little time to campaign. In December Akayev won a second term amid allegations of widespread voting irregularities. In early 1996 he called a referendum in which voters approved constitutional amendments enhancing his powers. Akayev was subsequently accused of developing an increasingly restrictive regime and of steering Kyrgyzstan from the path of democratic reform.

In the legislative elections of February and March 2000, independents again won a majority of seats. Six parties gained representation in the Jogorku Kenesh, with the most seats going to the Union of Democratic Forces, a newly formed alliance of three pro-Akayev parties. Many opposition politicians were disqualified from running on minor technicalities that were widely viewed as politically motivated. In the presidential election held in October, Akayev was reelected to a third term. Despite a constitutional limit of two terms, the Constitutional Court had authorized Akayev to stand for reelection because his first term began under the constitution of the Soviet period. International observers of both elections reported widespread voting irregularities.

Meanwhile, in the late 1990s militant Muslim groups began to stage armed guerrilla incursions into southern Kyrgyzstan from neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The government responded with large-scale military interventions, at times aided by Uzbekistan forces. Like other Central Asian leaders, Akayev viewed Islamic fundamentalism as a potential threat to his country’s political stability. To improve border security in the region, he joined Kyrgyzstan to regional security alliances that include Russia and China. Following terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, Kyrgyzstan allowed U.S. forces to use Bishkek’s Manas airport as a base for military operations in Afghanistan. In October 2003 Russian forces were allowed to establish a military base in Kant, near Bishkek, under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Collective Security Treaty Organization.

B

1

Political Unrest

In 2002 political unrest erupted in southern Kyrgyzstan, long the most economically depressed and politically marginalized region of the country. The arrest of an opposition politician from the region, Azimbek Beknazarov, sparked a series of protests. In March several protesters were killed and more than a dozen were wounded when police fired into a crowd in the southern district of Aksy. In the wake of the incident, additional protests were held demanding that those responsible for the killings be punished. Protesters also called for Akayev’s resignation. Several former regional prosecutors and police officials were subsequently sentenced to prison in connection with the Aksy shootings, but critics charged that senior officials who had authorized the use of force had not been prosecuted.

Faced with continuing demands for his resignation, Akayev called for a nationwide referendum in February 2003 asking voters to decide whether he should serve out the remainder of his term through 2005, as well as to approve or reject a package of amendments to the constitution. The amendments included guaranteeing former presidents immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office. According to official results, an overwhelming majority of voters supported allowing Akayev to remain in office and approved the proposed amendments. However, local and international observers noted numerous voting irregularities.

The amendments of 2003 reconfigured the Jogorku Kenesh, making it a single-chamber body composed of 75 members, while also changing the system of voting in legislative elections. The system of proportional representation was abolished in favor of a “first-past-the-post” system, which critics charged would disadvantage smaller opposition parties. The changes, scheduled to go into effect with the 2005 legislative elections, were widely viewed as a bid by Akayev to strengthen his position ahead of his term’s expiration later that year.

B

2

Akayev Swept From Power

Many opposition candidates were disqualified from running in the 2005 legislative elections for alleged campaign violations, sparking a new wave of protests in southern Kyrgyzstan prior to the February poll. Following an indecisive first round of voting in many districts, runoff elections were held in mid-March. Supporters of Akayev won an overwhelming victory, but both the opposition and election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) described the vote as seriously flawed.

Akayev became the focal point of continuing protests, as opposition forces demanded his resignation in the wake of the elections. Protests gained momentum in the south, with demonstrators taking over government buildings in Jalal-Abad and Osh, and erupted in Bishkek in the north on March 23. The following day demonstrators stormed government buildings in the capital. Akayev fled the country, taking refuge in Russia. He initially refused to step down, but on April 4 he finally conceded, signing a resignation agreement in Moscow. The newly elected Jogorku Kenesh accepted his resignation on April 11 and scheduled presidential elections for July. Opposition politician Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the main leader of the protests in Bishkek, won the election by a landslide, taking 89 percent of the vote. Election monitors associated with the OSCE said the free and fair election represented tangible progress in establishing democratic standards in Kyrgyzstan.

Constitutional reform was a major rallying point of the protests that ousted Akayev, who had orchestrated many constitutional changes over the years to increase his power at the expense of the legislature. Once in office, however, President Bakiyev resisted implementing the democratic reforms he had promised. Massive protests demanding his resignation erupted in Bishkek in November 2006. Protesters also called for immediate constitutional reform. These demands found support in the Jogorku Kenesh, which was dominated by legislators who had supported Akayev. Faced with a growing political crisis, Bakiyev approved a new constitution in November that limited presidential powers and gave more authority to the legislature. However, in the following weeks amendments were written into the new constitution that returned many key powers to the president. Bakiyev signed the much-amended constitution into law in January 2007.

In September 2007 the Constitutional Court of Kyrgyzstan ruled that the new constitution was invalid because it had never been approved by referendum. The court restored the 2003 constitution. Bakiyev soon unveiled a new draft constitution and announced that voters would be asked to approve it in a referendum. According to the official results of the referendum, held in October 2007, voters gave overwhelming support to the new charter, as well as a new electoral law. However, independent election observers reported numerous violations in the voting. Among other provisions, the new constitution gave the president the power to dismiss the government and to directly appoint judges and local administrators.

Immediately following the referendum, Bakiyev dissolved the Jogorku Kenesh and called for early parliamentary elections. Under the new constitution members of the Jogorku Kenesh would be chosen from central party lists through a system of proportional representation, rather than by direct vote as before. In the elections held in December, Bakiyev’s new political party, Ak Zhol (Bright Path), won an overwhelming majority in the legislature. The opposition Ata Meken (Fatherland) party was denied any seats due to the new electoral law requiring parties to receive more than 5 percent of the national vote as well as a certain number of votes in each region. International monitors described the election as flawed.

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