Tashkent Website Probes Claims on Osh and Jalal-Abad

Indicating deteriorating relations between the oft bickering neighbors, Tashkent has toughened its jarring rhetoric towards Bishkek. 

First came warnings of a potential “slaughter on the border” if Kyrgyzstan’s provisional President Roza Otunbayeva failed to rein in her security forces. Now a state-controlled website is questioning Kyrgyzstan’s claims to the southern cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad, scenes of ethnic violence between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in June. One would think the discussion sets an awkward precedent given how Moscow issued Tajik-speaking Samarkand and Bukhara to Soviet Uzbekistan in the early years of the Soviet Union.

The press-uz.info website, which Tashkent insiders believe is controlled by President Islam Karimov’s Security Council, has concluded that residents of Osh and Jalal-Abad would have avoided the recent violence had the cities remained part of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbek SSR).

Press-uz.info claims that this decision gave Bishkek the population it needed to form a republic (the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1936 and thus receive equal representation, in theory, with the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1991, the Kyrgyz SSR became independent Kyrgyzstan. 

However, the cities were never part of the Uzbek SSR, but all of the Ferghana Valley was once part of the Tsar's Turkestan. 

Moreover, press-uz.info’s argument that the ethnic Uzbeks of Osh and Jalal-Abad would have been safe had they been in independent Uzbekistan falls flat when one recalls the fate of the Uzbeks of Andijan, just 40 kilometers from Osh. In May 2005, Uzbek government troops opened fire on protesters and killed hundreds, if not thousands, human rights groups estimate, in broad daylight.

As Tashkent uses its tightly controlled media to bemoan perceived territory losses and suggest claims on Kyrgyz cities, it may wish to ponder irredentist Tajik claims on Samarkand and Bukhara. The situation may also make Bishkek wonder if it will ever settle the two countries' 20-year border demarcation dispute and fear what else Tashkent has in mind.