Ethnic Strife in Kyrgyzstan continues

I think the best coverage of the situation in Kyrgyzstan is on the Radio Free Europe website. They have actual Kyrgyz people at their headquarters in Prague and people on the ground in Osh and Bishkek covering the story.

One question many people have is where is Kyrgyzstan and why does it matter. Well, if you're from the US, it matters because the US wants to base aircraft there to stabilize Afghanistan. It's also one of the main trafficking routes for Opium out of Afghanistan as I discovered with my former AP colleague Dave Carpenter some years ago. It's located just west of Tibet, north of Tajikstan, south of Kazakstan and east of Uzbekistan. That's a lot of stans to be sure, but places it squarely in the heart of central Asia. There are of course people made up of all the aforementioned ethnicities and they have lived in Kyrgyzstan for years. When the USSR broke up in 1991 there was some ethnic based civil-strife, but it died down and the people decided to live together. Since 1991 there have been two violent revolutions and two governments have been overthrown, the latest happening just April 2010.

So there's a stability issue in Kyrgyzstan now and the president who was overthrown in April repaired to his stronghold in Osh and is obviously using the ethinc wedge to create divisiveness and instability as a path back to power. The question, I believe he, and every revolutionary has to as to ask himself, is at what cost. What did it get the Slobodan Milosevic when he used the ethnic card to break up Yugoslavia? What about the Hutus in Rawanda? And look at Afghanistan, a myriad of ethnicities that has been at each other's throats for the past 20 years! What was left after the civil war from 1989-1996 was destroyed by the inflexibility of the Talaban.

But I digress, there are a very nice set of photos on the Boston Globe's "Big Picture," some of which are hard, but tell the story of the strife, the refugee crisis and the government's reaction nicely. Have a look for yourself. 

Kurgunbai Inambayev, an Uzbek, is seen in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh, on June 15, 2010. Inambayev said the bruises on his face were inflicted by Kyrgyz attackers during days of ethnic rioting in Kyrgyzstan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

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