Osh City Research Articles

Stateness, contested nationhood, and imperilled sovereignty: the effects of (non-western) linkages and leverage on conflicts in Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACTThe case of Kyrgyzstan, mired in a durable oscillation between abrupt descents into violence and swift returns to stability, represents a useful vantage point to capture the trans-national dimension of post-Soviet conflicts. Drawing on the linkage and leverage framework, this paper investigates the role of external actors in the domestic conflicts that have occurred in the country, focusing especially on the 2010 events in and around the city of Osh. It shows that linkages with international actors have grown more dense and diverse over time, most notably with Russia and, to a lesser but growing degree, China. The paper also finds that non-western leverage has become increasingly consequential in shaping Kyrgyzstan's domestic and foreign policy. This has been both conflict-inducing and -mitigating, and has varied considerably throughout the conflict cycle. Once violence broke out no outside actor showed willingness to become embroiled in the conflict, despite the local authorities’ calls for external intervention. Conflict dynamics have altered both the domestic political landscape and trans-national linkages.

Public and communal spaces and their relation to the spatial dynamics of ethnic riots

Purpose– This paper is one of the first attempts to explain the local dynamics of the 2010 ethnic riots in Kyrgyzstan. No scholarly work has attempted to systematically analyze the 2010 ethnic violence and its local dynamics on the neighborhood scale. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on this gap by analyzing neighborhoods’ responses to the emerging violence in the city of Osh. In order to do this, the author compares two typical neighborhoods in Osh, one violent and the other non-violent, with different spatial structures and built environments that demonstrate/represent similar dynamics of riots in many other neighborhoods.Design/methodology/approach– The empirical findings of this paper are based on the ethnographic fieldwork the author carried out in 2010 and between 2012 and 2014. During nine months (in total) of the author’s ethnographic fieldwork, the author conducted around 60 semi-structured interviews in Osh city mainly with community leaders. In the author’s interview sampling, the author used two approaches: the snowball method and geographically/territorially representative sampling.Findings– The author argues that among other factors, a particular type of public space provides favorable conditions for riot occurrence or non-occurrence. For example, in Osh, such places as areas around the central bazaar and densely populated multi-story building complexes were especially riot-prone. By contrast, residential areas with individual-unit houses and low residential mobility represented communally private spaces with more easy riot-control. In addition, some residential areas implemented strategies such as physical self-isolation to avoid violence. By restricting freedom of movement and erecting improvised barricades, the residents of such neighborhoods created a temporally new space with its own rules and interethnic cooperation.Originality/value– This paper suggests new insights in the analysis of riots by connecting theoretical categories and concepts of space provided by scholars of contentious politics and applying them to the case of the 2010 ethnic riots in Osh city. By analyzing riot dynamics on the neighborhood scale, this research contributes to the understanding of the spatial dynamics of ethnic riots.

Single mothers in Osh

After the 2010 intercommunal violence in Kyrgyzstan, women in the city of Osh were exposed to many difficulties. Conflict eroded people's contentment, and satisfactory living conditions were supplanted by increased challenges—such as deteriorating health and education systems, declining communication and economic opportunities, and the loss of property. Men's deaths during the conflict and the increased labor migration of men after the conflict also resulted in increased numbers of single mothers. This article presents trends among women, examines their coping mechanisms, and explores the well-being of single mothers by considering what makes women's lives meaningful in a postconflict situation.

Review of Morgan Y. Liu, Under Solomon’s Throne: Uzbek Visions of Renewal in Osh

In a body of scholarly literature on Central Asia that has tended to foreground dramatic themes, polarized identities and the grand abstractions of ‘transition’, Morgan Liu’s carefully crafted portrait of Uzbek social imaginaries in the city of Osh is a striking and refreshing contribution.Under Solomon’s Throne is an urban portrait in miniature. It is at once a brilliant example of the capacity for immersive, long-term fieldwork to bring new light to enduring questions of urban conviviality, and a demonstration that subtle, multilayered analysis can be rendered in clear and accessible prose. Liu’s focus is on what he calls Uzbek social imaginaries. An ‘imaginary’ here is a regularly structured, socially organised and tacitly held model of the social and political world: one that is learned in, and articulated through, the spaces of the city. Liu’s is an expressly ‘ground up’ approach; social relations are not merely played out in place, he argues, but ‘constituted by it in a fundamental sense’ (p. 135). His ethnographic narrative draws upon extensiveUzbekand Russian-language fieldwork in several Uzbek-majority mahallas (residential communities) in Kyrgyzstan’s second city, Osh, between 1993 and 2011. This extended temporal scope, perhaps unique in the growing ethnographic literature on the region, illuminates an ongoing process of social navigation, as Osh Uzbek men use their city to calibrate the virtues and failings of two very different models of post-Soviet statehood, those of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The result is a manylayered story of social complexity and social change. Uzbekistan’s protectionist economic policy, led by the seemingly khan-like Islam Karimov, for instance, invited pervasive praise from Liu’s male Uzbek interlocutors in 1995. Ten years later, after an unprecedented demonstration of state violence in Uzbekistan towards unarmed protestors, the range of attitudes was much more diverse, and many Osh Uzbeks felt relieved to live in the relatively freer environment of Kyrgyzstan. Liu’s attentiveness to the practice of social navigation enables him to bring a nuanced voice to debates about Kyrgyz-Uzbek relations that are often conducted in sharply polarised terms. His research was undertaken in a context of considerable economic Cont Islam (2015) 9:109–112 DOI 10.1007/s11562-013-0260-0

Human Trafficking in the Southern Kyrgyz Republic

This report was prepared on the basis of a sociological study conducted in three southern oblasts of Kyrgyzstan (Osh, Batken, Jalalabad, and Osh City) from June to October 2011. The work is presented by Alina Tashybaeva, an independent expert on human trafficking (HT). The study was conducted in partnership and with the support of the Osh field office of the OSCE and the OSCE Centre in Bishkek as part of the project “Preventing HT in Southern Kyrgyzstan in the Wake of the Events of June 2010,” implemented by the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Golden Goal (GG). This study reflects the current HT situation in the southern region of the country as well as an analysis of the primary factors contributing to an increase in the local population's vulnerability to the risks of the slave trade. During the course of the study, sociological surveys were conducted among both the country's southern population and experts (local government representatives, NGOs, and others). Results from this study can be used for research purposes in this field, and may be of interest for national and local government agencies, non-governmental structures, and international organisations whose work is related to the prevention of HT.

Shared Space, Divided Space: Narrating Ethnic Histories of Osh

In June 2010 the Kyrgyzstani city of Osh was engulfed in three days of mass killing, arson, and looting. Accounts by journalists, academics, politicians, and organisations tend to either overdetermine ethnicity as a causal factor, or dismiss its significance as a social process. As a result, internal responses to the tragedy have been viewed by outsiders as mendaciously irrational. To overcome this impasse, this paper foregrounds the idea of Osh as national territory. Based on ongoing ethnographic study since 1995, plus an analysis of media reports, it shows the ways in which Uzbek and Kyrgyz residents of the city have narrated its ethnic past as one of divided or shared space. The resonance of these narratives can both help account for responses to the violence within Kyrgyzstan that have puzzled outsiders, and also uncover resources of hope. The paper highlights the importance of considering nationalism as a geographical phenomenon in explicating ethnic-based violence in contemporary Central Asia.

‘Death to Sarts’: History, injustice and a complex insult in Central Asia (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Recently published independent inquiries and detailed chronologies of the violence that occurred in the southern Kyrgyzstan city of Osh in 2010 noted the frequent and threatening use of ‘Sart’ against Uzbek residents in the city's mahallas. This article explains the significance and potency of this insult as the confluence of perceived historical injustices, iniquities in post‐independence land privatizations, and current hardships of food insecurity and poverty. It considers the significance of narratives of ‘Soviet injustice’ (outlawing of pastoralism, collectivization, and land confiscation) for contemporary nationalist agendas which emphasize Kyrgyz harm. With increasing political fragmentation and social disunity, the fear of further inter‐communal violence is ever present, and it is suggested that twenty years on from independence the Kyrgyzstan government will need to find ways of openly debating such interpretations of the past without undermining national reconciliation.

Crisis in Kyrgyzstan: conundrums of ethnic conflict, national identity and state cohesion

During the second week of June 2010, history repeated itself in Central Asia in a most gruesome and tragic fashion. The city of Osh, a fabled Silk Road city in southern Kyrgyzstan, was torn by bloo...

Interethnic Tensions in Kyrgyzstan: A Political Geographic Perspective

Two U.S. geographers review an array of intertwining political geographic issues that provide context and set the stage for deadly armed conflict between groups of ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the southern Kyrgyzstan city of Osh in June 2010. Applying a disaggregated and localized approach to understanding the ambiguous and complex factors underlying the current instability in Kyrgyzstan, they focus on: the role of north-south political competition; the country's uneasy economic relationship with its western neighbor, Uzbekistan; widespread official corruption and the penetration of organized crime into government structures; as well as broader geopolitical issues. The latter include Tashkent's policy toward the Uzbek diaspora, perceived threats from international terrorism/Islamist fundamentalism, the potential for the export of a "color revolution" to Uzbekistan, the presence of U.S. and Russian military forces in Central Asia, and the relative ineffectiveness of regional security structures such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

Leisure, business and fantasy worlds: exploring donor-funded ‘youth spaces’ in southern Kyrgyzstan

This article explores the participation of university students in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other forms of association in the city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan. While the literature tends to criticize donor interventions in the post-Soviet space, an analysis of donor-funded youth projects calls for a more differentiated evaluation. It is argued that youth-oriented associations appeal to the students of Osh because these associations have created much needed ‘youth spaces’. In some cases, however, the appeal has little to do with the missions of the projects. Whatever the blueprints prepared by foreign donors, youth-oriented clubs and NGOs provide young people with opportunities for entrepreneurship, for leisure pursuits and for experimenting with their dreams and fantasies. Offering a case study of a group of students who have joined a donor-funded NGO, Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), the article then charts the students' appropriation of this NGO.

Ethnic and geographical variability of breast cancer at the Osh region in Kyrgyzstan.

Abstract Abstract #6096 Background. To study age, regional and ethnic breast cancer incidence at the Osh region of the Kyrgyz republic.
 Material and methods. Calculated the incidence of breast cancer between 1995 and 2005. There were registered 386 females with a new diagnoses of breast cancer. Collected dates from histological or cytological findings, and deaths certificates.
 Estimated population relative risk (RR) for breast cancer in the urban and rural areas. The population figures and cancer incidence rates for this report were provided in for age groups (0-4, 5-9, 75 >) and ethnic groups. Counted crude, age-standardized rates (ASR) per 100 000. The classification scheme used by ICD-10.
 Results. Only one patient (0.3%) has T1N0M0 stage of disease. Stage distribution: II – 107 (28%), III – 233 (60.9%), IV – 41 (10.8%).
 ASR annual incidence in breast cancer was 6.51 (1995), 8.54 (2000), and 12.53 in 2005. Cancer incidence was significantly higher at the Osh city (17.87). Average rate was registered at the Karasu (8.06), Uzgen (7.09), Aravan (6.09), Naukat (6.4), and Karakuldga (6.14) regions. Low incidence was registered at the Alay (2.12), and Chonalay (4.55) areas.
 High incidence of breast cancer was registered in the urban (ASR-16.6) compared with rural regions with ASR 5.16 (RR=3.21, CI 95%- 2.7; 3.8)
 Relative risk for breast cancer was significantly higher in the Slavic ethnic groups (Ukraines and Russians with ASR of 66.4 cases per 100 000) compared with 3.75 for Kyrgyzs (RR=17.7), or 7.16 for Uzbek females (RR=9.27).
 High incidence rate of breast cancer was registered in female with the richest socioeconomic status (more than 80% cases), compared with poorest status. Also high incidence was demonstrated in female in reproductive time of live (53.1%), dysmenorrheal status (78.8%), and aborts in anamnesis (65.4%).
 Discussion. Breast cancer incidence at the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan is very low and similar to those reported from some developing countries. These analyses suggest that relative high risk in Russians compared with native ethnic groups may be related to some reproductive characteristics, number of child, socioeconomic status, and other. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(2 Suppl):Abstract nr 6096.

Informal Ethnopolitics and Local Authority Figures in Osh, Kyrgyzstan

The contribution examines local-level ethnopolitics in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, particularly in the southern city of Osh, in 1990 site of one of the bloodiest inter-communal conflicts of the late Soviet era. First, instruments of managing multi-ethnicity are briefly introduced, with particular attention being paid to territorial autonomy, also a pillar of Soviet ethnofederal structure. Next, the contribution focuses on Uzbek ethnopolitics in Osh as a case study which illustrates how formal and informal politics shape state–minority relations in an ethnically mixed and post-conflict setting. The contribution argues that local authority figures and patron–client relations are key to understanding how Uzbek ethnopolitics unfolds and violence is prevented from re-occurring. A combination of informal and formal institutions accounts for preserving inter-ethnic stability in post-Soviet Osh.