Archive sections: ‘Living in Interesting Times’
Following the events of the Easter Revolution, and the eventual resignation of President Bakiev, it might have been assumed that things would settle down and we could all get on with rebuilding our lives, our businesses and society.
People were genuinely surprised on Monday when the city witnessed a march by crowds of young people demanding that they be allocated land in order to build houses. It’s funny that people don’t remember that we faced the same sort of incidents back in 2005. The incident got reported in the Russian press and we [...]
It’s a week since I last wrote a postcard about the recent events here in Kyrgyzstan … and as the former British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, once commented, “A week is a long time in politics.” It has certainly been a long week … an eventful week.
The curious case of the Matrushka Doll may seem like a plot from a James Bond movie, but it had serious implications for, and almost led to the downfall of, the fledgling government following the Tulip Revolution. Following the sudden and unexpected change of power in Kyrgyzstan on March 24, 2005, a split occurred in the victorious [...]
After the Batken Incidents of 1999 and 2000, the extreme South-Western corner of the Kyrgyzstan settled into a period of peace and calm. The Kyrgyz government created a new regional administration – the Batken oblast – hiving off the region and separating it from Osh in order to strengthen the local administration, help combat poverty in the [...]
Kyrgyz society (both Civil and Political) was rocked in March 2002 by an incident in the Southern Djalal Abad oblast that led to several politicians (including the serving Prime Minister – Karmanbek Bakiev) being dismissed and continuing tensions which eventual resulted in the Tulip Revolution of 2005. The incident has been referred to as “watershed” [...]
The extreme south western corner of the country, the mountain slopes forming the southern flanks of the fertile Ferghana valley, used to be part of the Osh oblast. It is a beautiful and remote location, but also one where the population tends to be poor and often feels neglected by the central government in Bishkek. [...]
Despite the general impression that the Soviet Union was a highly organized and tightly controlled society, it experienced several inter ethnic conflicts, of which the events known as “Osh 1990” was only one. There were, for example, four large scale violent conflicts which erupted in the Caucuses at about the same time.
Under the Soviet regime, content of the “News” was strictly controlled – and almost anything that could be considered to be negative was duly censored. As a result there was little known about episodes of social unrest and disorder within the Union, yet alone in the wider world beyond the country’s borders.
This is an email that I sent out to family and friends, colleagues and clients following the events of April 7th, 2010, when Kyrgyzstan found itself in the headlines once again as the result of what one newspaper called the “Easter Revolution” Let me start this “postcard” with some thanks, an apology and an explanation: [...]
