Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s “southern capital,” has been angling for the trappings of a true, national capital. Last month, the city’s mayor unveiled his own anthem and flag. Now he wants his own police force.
Melisbek Myrzakmatov said on November 10 that his municipal police plans are in the drafting stages, but could come to fruition in the near future. According to AKIpress, the new force, including a special forces unit, would be independent of Bishkek’s Interior Ministry. The mayor complained that police currently carry out political orders, not legal ones, on behalf of Bishkek. The Interior Ministry called the move illegal.
Myrzakmatov’s latest show of nonalignment with Bishkek will pose a big test for President-Elect Almazbek Atambayev. Among Western investigators, the meaty-armed mayor, perhaps more than any other official, has been linked to the ethnic violence last year between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, which killed over 400, and is often described as part of the reason his city remains divided. The central government, almost 700 kilometers away, beyond a twisting mountain road, has been powerless to remove him. Appointed by ousted ex-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in January 2009, Myrzakmatov won’t budge. When Bishkek tried to fire him in August 2010, shortly after the ethnic bloodletting, he brought his supporters into the streets and declared the central government has “no legal force in the south.”
Since then, Bishkek has kept mum.
With a private army, what would Myrzakmatov become—a protector of the peace or a warlord-in-waiting? In the summer of 2010, the International Crisis Group called the virulently nationalist mayor “the south’s pivotal political figure” and its report on the ethnic violence found “strong indications that prominent political figures, particularly in Osh city, were actively, perhaps decisively involved” in the “pogroms.” The respected research group likewise implied that Myrzakmatov and his allies abused the firepower they had at their disposal: “Most security forces in the region, who in Osh currently answer to local leaders rather than the capital, were slow to act or complicit in the violence.” (More recently, the city has seen a rash of dubious business takeovers, with municipal authorities standing by.)
Today, a lot of people in the distant capital think Kyrgyzstan’s regional divisions are best ignored. It’s as if they fear that talking about them will make the gulf wider. On the northern side of the mountains, they sometimes say that we foreign journalists are stoking the discord with our reporting, that really there is no rift.
Yet down south, where a lucrative drug-exporting route winds out of Afghanistan, Myrzakmatov shores up his strength and thumbs his nose at the central government. When Bishkek tries to exert power – by suggesting, for example, that international monitors could support Osh police – a crowd of protestors appears outside his office and the boss vows to defend the homeland from outsiders. That defiance reinforces loyalty to him as the champion of local concerns, and master of his own medieval fiefdom. The newly proposed municipal police force could further buttress that devotion—and do a whole lot more.
Every leader in Kyrgyzstan has his own network of patrons and clients. In Osh, Myrzakmatov’s is deeply entrenched. The president-to-be did not win the south in last month’s elections, but what can he do to not lose it altogether?
David Trilling is Eurasianet’s managing editor.
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