International and local human rights groups continue to chronicle the aftermath of the conflict in southern Kyrgyzstan and the further gruesome discoveries of death and destruction. Ultimately, their efforts to build a record -- if and when validated – both by international observers and national courts of law -- could serve to build a basis for justice and stabilization in the region.
WASHINGTON -- Following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's trip last week to Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, RFE/RL’s Washington correspondent Heather Maher asked US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, the top US diplomat for human rights and democracy, for an assessment of what Clinton accomplished and of the rights situation throughout the region as a whole.
The European Parliament has issued the latest appeal for Bishkek to allow an independent, international investigation into the June 10-14 violence in southern Kyrgyzstan.
The legislative body urged the Kyrgyz authorities “to immediately conduct independent investigation into the reasons of recent interethnic unrest in the country,” read a statement from Strasbourg, ITAR-TASS reported on July 8. “Perpetrators of crimes must receive just punishment.”
For weeks, foreign observers and governments have called on the Kyrgyz government to support an independent investigation. The idea has received widespread backing from academics and activists in Bishkek. Salavat Usmanov, head of International Relations faculty of Kyrgyz-Slavonic University in Bishkek, for one, says the inquiry must be led by outsiders “due to a sharp political struggle between different factions [in Kyrgyzstan].”
“All of us are somehow related to someone or to something here. Therefore, we need a totally objective and fair assessment of the events in the South,” he added.
On July 7, Human Rights Watch said Bishkek had requested help preparing an investigation, though no government officials have thus far publicly backed an internationally led investigation.
In June, Ambassador Francois Zimeray, France's envoy for human rights, visited Ashgabat, met with Turkmen government officials, and said he saw a genuine desire by Turkmen authorities to improve the human rights situation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's (RFE/RL) Turkmen Service reported.
... you're getting military aid from Tajikistan. But that is the situation poor Kyrgyzstan finds itself in:
The head of the Commonwealth of Independent States' security organization says Tajikistan has agreed to help stabilize southern Kyrgyzstan, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.
Nikolai Bordyuzha, the secretary-general of the CIS's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), said after meeting in Dushanbe today with President Emomali Rahmon that the Tajik leader had signed a CSTO agreement providing emergency aid to Kyrgyz law-enforcement agencies.
The issue had been previously discussed at a CSTO Security Council meeting in Moscow on June 14.
Bordyuzha said he had even discussed with Rahmon what kind of weapons and technical and special equipment should be sent to Kyrgyz forces to help restore order in the cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad, where at least 291 people were killed and thousands left homeless after several days of ethnic clashes in mid-June.
This follows promises of aid of helicopters from Kazakhstan and Russia, and armored vehicles from unspecified other countries. Thus far there doesn't seem to be any news about delivery or use of this equipment.
But what the CSTO does over the coming weeks and months in southern Kyrgyzstan will be an important test. Most observers agree that the organization failed its first test: intervening quickly to stop the violence. (Azerbaijanis are already crowing about this failure, suggesting that it means CSTO member Armenia would also be alone in the case of a war between those two countries.) But is it going to be able to set up a credible force to maintain the fragile peace that exists there now? We will see.
I missed the RFE/RL article when it first came out last month, but it's topic -- Turkey's growing influence in the Balkans -- makes it worth revisiting. As the article makes clear, while a lot of attention is being paid to Turkey's moves in the Middle East, it has been no less active in the Balkans, where Ankara is working to increase its influence by capitalizing on its Ottoman roots in the region. From the piece by Anes Alic:
Over the past two years, Turkey has launched a massive
political, social, and economic offensive across the Balkans, focusing
primarily on Bosnia-Herzegovina. More than two decades after Turkey first formally applied to
join the European Union, it now appears to be developing a two-pronged
strategy: turning its attentions to its eastern neighbors (notably Syria, Iran
and Russia), while at the same time seeking to enhance its prospects for EU
membership by intensifying its influence in the Balkan countries, which are
growing closer to Europe. Turkey's ambitions in the Balkans have forced the EU to pay
more attention to political processes in the region, where Russia and the
United States are also vying for influence. After Romania and Bulgaria joined
the EU in 2007, Brussels slowed down the membership process for the countries
of the western Balkans on the assumption that doing so would have no real
effects as those countries, surrounded by other NATO and EU member states, had
no alternative but to move toward Europe.
It was meant to herald the start of an epic democratic odyssey that would see Turkey easing censorship and free-speech restrictions and result in it joining the European Union.
After several years of trying (fruitlessly) to convince Moscow to cough up rent for the Russian bases in his country, Russia has offered Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon even more troops. Might this be an offer he cannot refuse?
Viktor Ivanov, the Kremlin's anti-drug tsar, says Moscow could again help protect Tajikistan's long and porous border with Afghanistan, RFE/RL reports. International anti-narcotics officials say the Tajiks could use the help.
Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia's antidrug agency, met with Rahmon on July 1 and stated that Tajikistan needs help dealing with the increase in narco-trafficking from Afghanistan.
Ivanov said it is possible that Russian border guards who patrolled the Tajik-Afghan border until July 2005 could return to Tajikistan if "both sides had such an interest."
The Kremlin is eager to blame narcotics traffickers for the June bloodshed in Kyrgyzstan. Almost all Afghan heroin passing through southern Kyrgyzstan first transits Tajikistan. And Rakhmon, like other regional leaders, likely saw a Russian hand in Bishkek when Kurmanbek Bakiyev was unseated this April. It will be interesting to see if he has the "interest."
BISHKEK – People in Kyrgyzstan have begun voting on a new constitution aimed at reducing presidential powers and paving the way for the country to become the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, a region known for its autocratic presidents.
