Postcard from Bishkek

According to the old Music Hall song, “It’s a long way to Tipperary“.   The song was written for a bet but became popular among soldiers in the First World War and is remembered as a song of that war.   Like many of the songs of that war, it emphasized the longing for home.

It may well be a long way to Tipperary, but there are longer journeys.  The longest journey on record is that of the Voyagers – I and II – which have, (or may not have – yet), left the Solar System.  It was on April 27th, 2002, that we effectively lost contact with another spacecraft that is destined to leave the solar system heading towards the star Aldebaran, which is about 68 light years away. Without “warp drive”, it will take more than two million years for the spacecraft to reach the star.

For the record: Although the last complete telemetry was received from Pioneer 10 on April 27, 2002, the power was failing and subsequent signals were barely strong enough to detect and so provided no usable data. The final, very weak, signal from the spacecraft was received on January 23 the following year, when it was 12 billion kilometers from Earth.

At the suggestion of Carl Sagan, the two Pioneer craft, (10 and 11) carry a gold-anodized aluminum plaque in case either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life-forms from another planetary system. The small plaques, (six inches by sine, or 152 by 229 mm), portray nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.

I wonder where the gold came from … probably not Kyrgyzstan.

 

It’s not quite as far from Bishkek to Boston – and Kyrgyzstan has been well and truly linked with the city in Massachusetts this week.  As you can imaging there has been quite of coverage of the events surrounding the marathon bombings and the history of the Tsarnaev family who lived for some time in Tokmok, 60 kilometers to the East of Bishkek, over ten years ago.  There were photographs of the family home and quotes from people who say that they remember the family … and have only good words to say about what they recall.

The families complicated history – involving Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Dagestan, Russia, the US – not to mentiion the fictional Kazakyzstan, (CNN repeating John Kerry’s gaff) and even the Czech Republic, (who felt that they had to put the record straight and tell Czech and Chechen are different things) – is, according to some report, likely to have implications for America’s immigration policy … and I couldn’t help wondering about how it might possibly impact on the various individuals from Kyrgyzstan who live and work in the States.

It wasn’t long, of course, before the conspiracy theories started to emerge – but not from here … as far as I could tell, they emanated from Russia and, (believe it or not), America.

 

It was all brought home to us with a  bomb scare during the week.  A suspicious bag was found in the building of former building of the Constitutional Court … which turned out to hold explosives – and was duly defused.

Perhaps more worrying is the news that broke a couple of weeks ago of young people from Southern Kyrgyzstan being recruited to go off and fight in Syria.  A group were discovered in Turkey and the State Commission on Religious Affairs is looking into the involvement of certain mosques in the affair … and one guy was arrested at airport in Osh who is suspected have being involved in the affair.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but there’s been an antio-terrorist exercise held down in the South this week.  The sim was to simulate the response of the the government agencies to a potential terrorist attack of “invasion” such as we saw in the late 1990s, as well as to develop a mechanism to coordinate the efforts of the agencies.

One Kyrgyz citizen, a pilot, was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan.  He was on a helicopter en route for Kabul which had to make a forced landing in the Logar province – one of about ten passengers including people from Turkey, Russia and Afghanistan as well as him.  There has been quite a bit of diplomatic activity to try and locate him … apparently he has been moved around quite a bit.

And then there was the strange case that emerged during the week of an American citizen, (admittedly, who was born in Uzbekistan but who has lived in the States since he was fourteen), apparently being banned from entering Kyrgyzstan and cannot find out why … apparently the fear of militants is not all “over there”.

It seems that he is not alone in that Foreign Ministry have requested the authorities in Russia for a list of Kyrgyz citizens who are prohibited from entering Russia.  It seems that some people have been going to Russia to look for work and have had problems with their documentation – resulting in many of them being deported and the consequent ban.

 

The other big item in the news this week was the protest rally called for Wednesday to demand the denunciation of the Kumtor agreement, dismissal of the parliament and the release of the deputies convicted of attempting to seize power at a previous rally back in October.  We were assured by the organizers that this would be a peaceful rally, without guns, sticks or attempts to scale the fence around the White House … and that’s more or less how it turned out.  They had promised a turnout of 10,000 but in the end far less turned up … by mid morning there were various reports of 150 or 300 – I logged onto the streetcam view and I think the higher figure was probably a better estimate.

Late that estimate rose to 800 or 1200 … although one of the supporters talked of a much higher figure – but most of the commentators think she was overstating the number.  It wasn’t easy to  tell because it quite a few people had taken to standing “underneath the arches” at the edge of the square to keep out of the rain – but there were nowhere near the 10,000 that had been promised.  Some commentators suggested that the police outnumbered the protesters – which, I suppose isn’t a great surprise – but more tellingly, others said that the number of people tending the flower beds and cleaning the square was also greater.

It may be that the inclement weather has dissuaded some people from turning out – but in reality it wasn’t that bad.  It certainly didn’t stop the speeches, there were plenty of them and there seems to have been quite a bit of noise but, on the whole, it went peacefully enough.  At one point a small group walked away to White House, but they were persuaded to go back although one man was arrested as an agent provocateur.

One of the politician who had called the rally wanted to attend a sitting and where the deputies would debate the Kumtor agreement – but it wasn’t on the agenda and the authorities wouldn’t let him in.

It was announced that the when the rally ended the protesters would stay in the main Ala Too Square and yurts were brought in … but then they had second thoughts and in the end they all went home again.

Maybe it really is a case of, (as President Atambaev said), we’ve already lived through our own version of “the Arab Spring” and we are now entering the next phase where demonstrations are seen as a normal part of the democratic process … where people have a right to rally and protest in order to try and get their view across.  They “can be held every day,” he said, ” … Recently, around 300,000 people participated in a rally in Paris.  People accepted it as a usual event.  We also should get used to rallies as they are attributes of democracy.”

After the rally, some ten cubic meters of rubbish were removed from the square.

 

For the record, there had been another rally in Djalal Abad in Southern Kyrgyzstan, earlier in the week.  Apparently, about 200 people gathered gathered to express their dissatisfaction with the government and decided to head to Bishkek for the big rally on Wednesday – apparently some 200 minibuses were reported heading to Bishkek.   I am not sure if they made it, but reports there were reports that no minibuses bringing people up from the south had been detected.

Another rally took place in Talas, opposing the development of the mining sector and calling, once again, for a fifty year moratorium on the sector.   This rally attracted some 450 participants and, once again, turned out to be a peaceful event.

Interestingly enough, the Ministry of Justice have reported receiving their first ever “People’s Legislative Initiative” since the measure was introduced in the new constitution.  It’s been registered with the number 001 and calls for the denunciation of the Kumtor deal.  They had collected some 27000 signatures in support of the measure, (although according to the constitution they only needed 10000), however, apparently more than half of these were discarded upon inspection.

Mind you, another gold mining company is complaining bitterly that they are being targeted by an alliance of locals together with “Chinese Rare Earth Interests”  which, they say, is the reason they face so many bitter legal battles.

Talking of Gold, there were some interesting tweets during the week pointed out that thge price of gold had fallen 20% since January and, whereas the global price of a gram of gold that day was 2000 som, the cost of production at Kyrgyzstan’s second largest gold firm was 2200 som.  That doesn’t sound too good for business.

 

Having said that, the prognosis for the economy from the World Bank, IMF, Asian Development Bank and so on, seems to be quite good.   Although we are not doing quite as well as some of our neighbours, there is still growth and inflation seems to be under control.  The amount of foreign exchange reserves is growing – although, at just under two and a half billion dollars, it is still long way behind China’s 3.44 trillion dollars

The Customs Union has also been in the news – with Jantoro Satybaldiev, the Prime Minister, receiving assurances of help his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev.  Satybaldiev is convinced that Kyrgyzstan will benefit from joining with Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus – as he sees the domestic market for goods and services as too limiting but there are some sections of the Kyrgyz “elite” classes that are less than enthusiastic.  The whole situation is very complicated.

 

Another piece of high profile news during the week was the delivery of new trolleybuses, both here in Bishkek and in Osh.  It is hoped that the new vehicles will help to resolve some of the city’s traffic chaos reducing the number of vehicles on the road.  However, it’s been pointed out that most of the existing fleet of buses and trolleybuses are in the parking lots awaiting repairs … and even if they were repaired and put out on the streets, there probably aren’t enough of them to make a real dent on the number of  minibuses that ply their routes – yet alone the number of cars.

One activist who happened to be in Britain for a couple of days suggested that Bishkek considers  replacing the existing fleet with Double Deckers like those found in London.  Although that might help – we might still have a problem with the two main underpasses.

 

A piece of good news is that we are about to be declared as a “Malaria Free” territory.  It seems that there are seven species of mosquito in the country, and the changing climate coupled with reservoirs and irrigation have made Kyrgyzstan a favourable environment for them.  However, the number of cases has shown a steady decline and since 2011 there hasn’t been a single case – apart from some which were “imported” from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Africa.

 

Knowing my fascination with statistics, I hope you’ll forgive me for quoting this one … apparently,  the number of weddings has increased almost fourfold in the last ten years – unfortunately the number of divorces has also increased over the period – by a factor of 26 … yes, I had to take a second look at that figure too.  I suppose it could be because the number of divorces ten years ago was quite low but I seem to remember that one of the criticisms often made of the Soviet was that divorce was relatively easy and the rate was quite high.   As they didn’t quote the raw numbers, however, I am going to have to do some research to work out what has being going on.

In the meantime, the head of ZAKS, (the registry office), is complaining that the number of registrars has not changed – and apart from the additional workload, there is no more pressure on conducting weddings away from the “Wedding Palaces” and in Restaurants and even swimming pools.  They have even had a request to conduct a ceremony whilst skydiving … having been to several local weddings, I am not sure how they could do that.

 

Sometimes the roads in Kyrgyzstan make even the shortest journeys seem “longer”.  There is often criticism about the state of Kyrgyz roads – which, incidentally, I think is a little unfair.  It’s true that many the surface of many roads – especially in the cities – are riddled with potholes or have weathered and become “uneven”, and that once you get off the main roads on to some of the side roads – especially in the mountains – then it can be a bit of an adventure … but work on repairing and resurfacing the main trunk routes is underway.

There is also more work being undertaken on the construction of an additional North-South route as an alternative to the main Bishkek-Osh highway which is effectively the only road connecting the two parts of the country.  According to the Prime Minister, some agreements on financing a three stage project have already been reached with the Japanese.

The China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbek railway, however, ran into a little difficulty when he reported that there were still problems with the feasibility project – it seems as if this is a result of the constantly rising cost of the project – an estimated four billion dollars.

Mind you, the road outside our office was dug up when they were building the shopping mall over the road in order to lay new pipes etc. for the utilities – and the weather was such that they said they couldn’t carry out repairs … so they laying small fancy shaped paving slaps, which are not really meant for road services.  It was supposed to be a temporary repair and they promised that work on replacing the asphalt in the second week of April.  Well we are almost into May and they still haven’t started.  The weather, apparently, is still a problem and we are assured that the work will begin … soon.

Mind you, we are being told that the municipality have started on repairing ten major roads in the city.

In the meantime,  the municipality – with the help of the Japanese – are experimenting on a new road surface elsewhere … concrete.  Apart from being cheaper, it’s thought that concrete will be better suited to Bishkek’s climate than asphalt.  We’ll see.

 

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Postcard from Bishkek: the weekly postcard that I send out as an email also gets posted on the website ianbek.kg each week – and there are other postcards which don’t get sent out.  This week, for example, there has been the following postcards:

• Souvenirs - What to buy as a momento of Kyrgyzstan – 21/04/13
• Better late than never … - With an impeccable sense of timing, on April 9th the Kyrgyz Government issued a Rasporyazheniye, (an order), approving a list of some 19 anniversaries to be officially commemorated in 2013: the birthdays of eighteen famous people and one institution.  - 22/04/13
• A puzzling time - Helping Maxim with his homework, I discovered a discovered a simple piece of software for creating simple Crosswords … and here’s an example – 23/04/13
• Borsh : Where’s the beetroot? … Wheres the Meat? - My efforts to cook the standard soup always seems to create problems – 24/04/13
• Summertime – and the living is easy … - I always have trouble with the calendar, and the designation of April 25th as the first Day of Summer, (in Iceland), seems a little optimistic – 25/04/13
• Archa - One of the most common trees in Kyrgyzstan is the Archa, (or Juniper) – 26/04/13

It is possible to follow me on Facebook, (where I have specific pages for Celestial Mountains and ianbek … and also links.kg, Kyrgyz Diary and Kyrgyzstan Visitki), and also on twitter, (@Bishkekpostcard and @celestialMTC ).

 

 

Tags: Expat, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan, Weekly_Postcards