tulip revolutionKyrgyzstan is a country of 5.3 million Turkic speaking muslim people in the strategic Central Asian region, living in dire poverty.The country has also been at times coming under the influence of US and Russia mainly for economic reasons .
But the current unrest was compounded by autocratic and corrupt rule of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who fled the capital city of Bishkek and further rumored to have left the country for some unknown place.
The interim government of the country headed by Roza Otunbayeva intends to prosecute the ex-president , there being serious charges of his having illegally transferred $200 million abroad through his close associates .With numerous agreements and conventions of legal assistance ,the authorities consider the probability of prosecuting him quite high.
Ex-president took power in the year 2005 after the Tulip Revolution that almost offered a hope of bringing democracy to the former Soviet Republic.But soon he turned an autocrat with his rule marred by corruption and human right abuses.
Recently Obama courted him to ultimately retain the rights to the military base of ‘Manas’ being used to supply US troops to Afghanistan so crucial at the present juncture. But even more recently Russia had offered Bakiyev sizable amount of aid , in an effort to persuade him to close the said ‘base’.This adds significance to this timely action to bring Kyrgyzstan back to Russian influence.
Kyrgyzstan , however, hosts both a Russian and US military airbase. US forces set up their base in this country when they overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan late in 2001 and later used the Manas base to support the current operations in Afghanistan.
How the US and Russia interests compete here can be reckoned from the facts the Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted in February 2009 to approve the closure of the US base after securing pledges of $ 2 billion in aid and credit from Russia. Washington later agreed to pay $180 million to Kyrgyzstan to keep the base open.
The economy of this impoverished Central Asian state sways from global as well as Russian factors. Its economic growth fell to 2.3% in 2009 from 8.4% in the earlier year hit by the global crisis. The country’s foreign currency revenues are fed mainly from Kyrgyz laborers working in Russia, but Russia’s own woes in later years left many of them unemployed or doing jobs that pay less.
Currently the country is in grip of “south-north divide” and any further turbulence in this context is considered worrisome since south lies at the heart of Central Asia’s most flammable corner where hundreds died in 1990s in ethnic clashes between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz .
With government treasury statedly near empty ,Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin announced $50 million in humanitarian aid with Putin promising even larger amounts of humanitarian aid to help people weather the situation.
US Assistance Secretary of State Robert Blake is also holding talks with the interim government to normalize thesituation.
Published (20/4/2010)
http://samaylive.com/english/nation/articles/676462010.html
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