New Social Policies Needed to Bridge Regional Conflicts

16-May-07

Regional divisions in Kyrgyzstan are widening as a result of the political rhetoric that has accompanied the standoff between opposition leader Felix Kulov and President Kurmanbek Bakiev. NBCentralAsia observers say the government must respond with social policies that unite rather than divide its citizens.

On May 10, the Centre for Early Conflict Prevention, affiliated with the Foundation for Tolerance International, a Kyrgyzstan-based conflict resolution group, issued a report expressing concern at the frequent clashes between people of Kyrgyz ethnicity in the northern Chuy region. Some villages have witnessed conflicts local Kyrgyz and migrants who have moved from the south of the country.

The country’s largest industrial and processing enterprises are concentrated in the Chuy region, and it is also home to the capital Bishkek, which gets most of the country’s financial and investment inflows. Hence the region attracts most of the migrants who are seeking a better life than have in economically underdeveloped regions, in both the north and south.

NBCentralAsia observers say the rivalry between northern and southern political elites remained hidden until the beginning of 2007, when it came out into the open and escalated with the collapse of the alliance between President Bakiev, a southerner, and the northerner Kulov, who was prime minister at the time.

Bakiev and Kulov got their respective jobs in summer 2005 after forging a pre-election pact on the understanding that since each drew most support from his own regions, they should join forces to avoid inter-regional strife.

Kulov then left office and became head of the opposition United Front for a Worthy Future for Kyrgzystan which, together with the Movement for Reforms, went on to stage demonstrations calling for early presidential elections and constitutional reform.

NBCentralAsia analysts say that because domestic migration is continuing apace and regional differences have become a political issue, the government should seek to de-politicise the issue and devise a programme to promote inter-regional tolerance.

“The state does not have a coherent social policy at the moment, so serious research centres and sociologists should work on this,” said political scientist Toktogul Kakchekeev. “Conflicts of this kind could escalate unless the policy is corrected immediately to take account of the problem of regionalism.”

Bazarbay Mambetov suggests the north-south confrontation has been artificially hyped up over the past few years. The increasing frequency of grassroots clashes within the same ethnic group – the Kyrgyz – is, in his view, a sign that the idea that regional groups are divided by irreconcilable differences is being implanted from above.

“This could be a catastrophe for our country. The state should take preventive measures and study the causes and consequences of conflicts like this,” Mambetov said.

Atay Namatbaev, an expert with the Politics, Religion and Security Studies Centre, believes this kind of clash is common, even inevitable in nearly all countries, but that does not mean it should be ignored.

Namatbaev suggests that education on tolerance between and within ethnic groups should form part of the ideological foundations of a multinational state.

“To avoid such conflicts in the future, the state should develop an ideology that unites peoples rather than dividing them. And the law-enforcement agencies should be objective and impartial when trying to resolving the conflicts that arise from day to day.”

(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)