Eurasia Insight:
KYRGYZSTAN: E-REVOLUTION
Claire Wilkinson: 7/21/05
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from TOL

Over the last decade, the Internet has increasingly developed into a rich source of information about all aspects of Central Asia, especially for people without physical access to the region, but also to varying degrees for the inhabitants of the five former Soviet Central Asian republics. In addition to the strong web presence maintained by numerous non-governmental organizations and international agencies working in the region, such as Radio Free Europe’s Central Asia service, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the UN, and the U.S.-based democracy and civil society support organization IFES, the Internet has increasing provided an outlet for non-official and opposition points of view. This has been particularly important as regimes, even the more liberal such as that of Kyrgyzstan's ex-president Askar Akaev, have sought to extend their control over the media and suppress dissenting voices: unlike other forms of media, the Internet remains virtually impossible to regulate, short of directly limiting physical access.

In Kyrgyzstan, despite low levels of internet usage, particularly outside of the capital, the significance and potential of this electronic medium had not gone unnoticed. The official presidential web site provided much information about Akaev’s regime, including transcripts of speeches in Russian, Kyrgyz, and English, and a dedicated press service complete with an email subscription option. Similarly, the Kyrgyz parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh, maintains its own site with electronic links to legislation including the Constitution. Opposition parties also established sites, such as Ar-Namys’ site, which served to highlight the imprisonment of the party’s leader, Feliks Kulov. Independent publications such as ResPublica and Moya Stolitsa Novosti (MSN) have increasingly resorted to e-publishing as print versions of the newspapers become increasingly difficult to produce.

Even so, due to the limited reach of the Internet (research indicates that only about 200,000 people use the Internet in Kyrgyzstan, or 3.8 percent of the population), the main beneficiaries of the wealth of information available have been people outside the republic and a young and well-educated few in Bishkek, the capital. However, during the period leading up to the parliamentary elections at the end of February and then on throughout March as protests escalated, the domestic political significance of the Internet became more fully apparent. While there is still debate about the name and nature of Kyrgyzstan’s "revolution," events in the Internet domain can rightly be considered an "e-revolution," representing the culmination of a lengthy period of electronic information warfare. The end result of this revolution has been the explosive development of a medium that all sides have been quick to utilize to express their points of view, and which allowed events in Kyrgyzstan to be broadcast and discussed in real time on a scale never previously seen in Central Asia.

VIRTUAL BARRICADES

In tandem with the political and social unrest that culminated in the rapid and largely unexpected overthrow of the Akaev regime, a political e-revolution took shape and contributed to the consolidation of Kyrgyzstan’s Internet community.

The first signs of the Internet’s new strategic importance appeared as the first major controversy of the pre-election period occurred, involving the Central Election Commission’s refusal to allow well-known opposition figure Roza Otunbaeva (now foreign minister) to register as a candidate on the grounds that she could not meet the stipulated residency requirements. As Otunbaeva’s supporters took to Bishkek’s streets with yellow banners, where they were soon joined by supporters of another opposition movement, the People’s Movement of Kyrgyzstan and their pink banners, a “black PR” e-mail campaign got underway, with messages aimed at discrediting the opposition being sent from “spoofed," or falsified, e-mail addresses supposedly belonging to legitimate independent Internet domains such as Gazeta.kg and CentrAsia.ru. The e-mails were written mainly in Russian, although several were sent out in English as well, and had headings ranging from the banal (“Pleasant details”) to the bizarre (“Election Commissions ‘The Wolf and Seven Goats’ ”), and an accompanying range of accusations.

It is difficult to gauge the scale of such e-mail campaigns due to the individualized nature of this means of communication – I am still, for example, unaware of how my address came to be included on these mail lists, other than the fact I subscribe to a number of Kyrgyzstan-based or -themed e-lists. However, the sheer number of emails received in a relatively short period (more than 25 between January 9 and 18) and the range of topics covered suggests that the authors considered it a potentially significant way to discredit the opposition and quash talk of a “color revolution” in Kyrgyzstan. Many of the messages launched personal attacks on opposition leaders, especially Otunbaeva and Kurmanbek Bakiev, who were variously portrayed as Western-funded agents, self-interested money-grabbers, printers of counterfeit money, and communist-era politicians intent on deceiving people for their own gain. Bakiev was also targeted on the basis of events while he was prime minister in 2001. In addition, reports of opposition splits were circulated, as were a number of anti-Western texts seeking to associate any possible revolution with anti-Kyrgyz attitudes and beliefs.

REVENGE OF THE CLONES

This political spam, as Internews.kg called it, was perhaps the most delicate tactic used in the battle for control over the Internet; there was little anyone could do to identify the authors of the propaganda beyond publicizing the phenomenon. In February, political spamming gave way to direct attempts to limit access to the Internet. This was taken by many to be a direct attempt to silence the opposition. These efforts were less subtle and precise, involving direct attacks on major internet service providers such as Elcat and AsiaInfo to block access, as well as flooding e-mail accounts with spam. The result of these "denial of service" attacks was to make many sites, regardless of affiliation or ownership, inaccessible for a period of several weeks both inside the republic and abroad, further curtailing already limited coverage of events in Kyrgyzstan.

There was greater scope for investigation of these attacks, for instance by the Open Net Initiative (ONI), an Internet monitoring effort run by several Western universities, which issued reports on the attacks and their causes. These reports cited the role of a group known as “Shadow Team,” which claimed to be behind the denial of service attacks and demanded that certain websites be removed if the attacks were to be halted. Under pressure to keep web traffic flowing, Elcat complied with this demand in cooperation with the owners of the targeted sites, which included those of the independent newspapers ResPublica and MSN, resulting, as ONI noted in their interim report, in de facto censorship.

The opposition was inevitably quick to blame the authorities, but it is far from clear that they were behind such attacks, or indeed if they had much motivation to do so: blocking access in such a clumsy manner played directly into the hands of their opponents, further fueling discontent with the regime that had already been inflamed by government interference during electoral campaigning. Indeed, it was in no one’s real interest in Kyrgyzstan that access be blocked or even limited. ONI’s interim findings supported this view, noting that both sides in the republic were in a position to benefit from the surrounding publicity. Interestingly, though not necessarily significantly, ONI’s investigations indicated that Kyiv-based hackers may well have been responsible for the attacks, thus casting further doubt on the hypothesis that Kyrgyz opposition forces received support from like-minded groups in Ukraine, Georgia, or Serbia.

One instance that does appear to have been a direct attack instigated by the authorities involved a youth group, KelKel (meaning “renaissance” in Kyrgyz) that was formed early in the election campaign. The incident began with the deregistration of the domain name Kelkel.kg. This domain name was then used as the site of a KelKel “clone” that was pro-government and non-political, announcing “We are for stability in the country and do not want young people to be used as 'pioneers' for an imported revolution or for personal interests. We think that young people should get on with their own business, and that they are more suited to studying and going on dates.” Their anti-political attitude was made even clearer by the slogan they added to the original KelKel logo: “Have fun while you’re still young!”

Significantly, in this case the people behind this clone site, widely thought to be the government, did not stop at the creation of a cyber-"GONGO" (government-operated NGO). They posted photographs of (clone) KelKel members on a trip to a local ski resort, smiling and holding a banner with the slogan “Down with demonstrations! Down with the revolution!” and went so far as to stage their own political events and press conferences. In a further effort to usurp the original movement, they also subverted the theme of an earlier KelKel action, when activists in January handed out lemons as a "symbol of young people" to picketers in front of the government complex in Bishkek. The clone KelKel parried by distributing lemon tea to passers-by at a February event called “Dobryi limonnik” under the slogan, “They scare us with lemons, but we crush them!” The original KelKel was quick to move to a new domain and posted a warning on the new site about the clone.

DESPERATE MEASURES

As with previous Internet attacks, this one had the effect of strengthening opposition to the regime by showing how far it was prepared to go to hold onto power. As KelKel announced on its new site, “From today, the civil campaign KelKel announces that it will be a campaign of peaceful resistance fighting for free and fair elections.”

The mood of protest among young people was reflected in the founding of a second youth group, Birge (Together) in March. They too became a target of provocation: a “letter of happiness from Birge” sent out from a spoofed version of their email address. The letter claimed to advocate free sex and the legalization of narcotics, and said the group was paid $10,000 by Bolotbek Maripov (a candidate against the president's daughter, Bermet Akaeva, in the parliamentary elections) to protest, but had decided to spend the money on distributing this “letter of happiness.” Moreover, the hyperlink to their website had been redirected to a porn site doctored to include the group’s logo.

The moves by KelKel and Birge to counter efforts to discredit them reflect a wider trend of proactive Internet usage among opposition activists, particularly to mobilize supporters and communicate with other pro-democracy and youth movements abroad. In this respect the opening of the site Akaevu.net can be seen as the direct outcome of the heightened profile and power of the Internet in the election campaign. In contrast to other opposition sites, Akaevu.net did not represent a particular organization, simply reporting on events from an openly anti-Akaev stance and calling for his resignation (needlessly as it happened, as the site, whose punning name means "No to Akaev" in Russian, went online just one day before the disgraced leader fled the country).

BUILDING ALLIANCES

In the aftermath of the revolution, the Internet has remained an important source of information and a way for civil society and youth groups to publicize their activities. In particular, e-mail groups run by Yahoo have proved to be a popular way for groups to disseminate information of interest to their members. The scope for networking and the rapid dissemination of information provided by the Internet was demonstrated by reactions to the bloody and violent events just a few miles over the Uzbek border in Andijan on May 13, with civil-rights groups and NGOs using the Internet to distribute news as rapidly as possible to raise international awareness: members of the KelKel Yahoo group, for example, posted eight messages regarding Andijan in a matter of hours. The massacre at Andijan and the initial muted response from the international community gave greater impetus to networking efforts between civil campaigns in various countries, particularly those in the former Soviet Union, such as the Ukrainian groups PORA and Pomaranch, Zubr and Charter 97 in Belarus, the YOX movement in Azerbaijan, and Idushche bez Putina (“Walking Without Putin”) in Russia. One tangible sign of the greater interaction among groups in different countries was the Ukrainian site Maidan’s hosting of an Internet conference with Uzbek opposition politician Nigara Khidoyatova on 1 June, which was publicized via e-lists. Similarly, the creation of a site similar to Akaevu.net but directed against the Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, was also promoted on e-lists, and KelKel's and Birge’s websites give links to other pro-democracy civil campaigns and movements, the latest of which is the Kazakh youth movement Kahar, whose press release was posted on KelKel’s site.

The growth of domestic and regional cyber communities and the increased usage of the Internet for disseminating information widely and rapidly reflects the medium's relatively democratic qualities in comparison to other media in the region, albeit by default, and its heightened status as a forum for protest movements and different points of view. The interim government appeared to be aware of the importance of having a suitable Internet presence, announcing the launch of a new site for the then Acting President Bakiev in June – but the site does not appear to be active. Exiled former leader Akaev also opened a new “official” site. The 10 July presidential elections that gave Bakiev a resounding victory also came under the Internet’s influence, with the civil campaign “Ya – za chestnye vybory” (“I’m for Honest Elections”) running a parallel vote count on its website, in addition to the official Shailoo election site. This increased utilization and awareness of the Internet to support political change and a forum for debate and mobilization, arguably, is as much a revolution in Kyrgyzstan as the events of March 24.

Editor’s Note: Claire Wilkinson is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, and is currently a visiting student at the University of Copenhagen.