U.S. officials are keeping a close eye on the conflict, not least because the United States has an important military base on the outskirts of the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, that supplies the expanding NATO mission in Afghanistan. A U.S. official in Washington confirmed that the Kyrgyz government was having “trouble exercising command over the security forces.”
Already, the new Kyrgyz government has given mixed signals about whether it will renew the lease on the U.S. base -and its weakness has added fresh uncertainty aver a strategic competition between the United States and Russia. Russia also has military facilities in Kyrgyzstan and in recent years has vied with the United States to win the favor of the Kyrgyz.
While it is still early, the tensions in Kyrgyzstan could lead to the kind of ethnic standoff that has repeatedly arisen across the former Soviet Union. These clashes - in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and elsewhere - are often referred to as frozen conflicts because they have not been resolved over many years. They entangle the major powers, as in the case of the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia over the renegade enclave of South Ossetia, which soured relations between Russia and the West, particularly the United States.
The government had been hoping to solidify its standing by holding a referendum an a new constitution on June 27, but the ethnic violence has thrown those plans into doubt. Ethnic Uzbeks, who make up about 15 percent of the population, will not take part in the voting unless international peacekeepers arrive in Kyrgyzstan, an unlikely prospect.
If the referendum is canceled, then tile government may be further adrift.
Senior officials in Bishkek defended the government’s performance, saying that they were facing towering obstacles in trying to steer the country, including a depressed economy and meddling by Mr. Bakiyev, who is in exile in Belarus.
The interim president, Rosa Otunbayeva, traveled to the south on Friday. She bad not been able to visit because of security concerns. The government said that she planned to meet with local leaders to ease the tensions.
Farid Niyazov, a government spokesman, Said Thursday that Ms. Otunbayeva, who is an ethnic Kyrgyz, believed that it was improper to make overtures to Kyrgyz or Uzbeks based solely on their ethnicity.
“The government is offering its condolences to all and its commitment to maintain peace and security,” he said. “We do not name ethnic groups. To do so could provide the impulse for another explosion.”
No matter what Ms. Otunbayeva does, it will be enormously difficult to salve the fury of Uzbeks. That was clear during a visit on Thursday to an improvised cemetery in a barren lot in Osh, where Uzbek victims of the violence were being buried.
The first was Lochinbek Sabirov, 15. His father looked on, wiping his tears with a handkerchief, unable to make sense of what had happened.
The father, Makhamadzhan Sabirov, 42, said Lochinbek had been wounded in the chest and hand on the first day of the conflict, when he went outside to see what was causing the commotion. He died later at the hospital.
“Do you think that this is going to be easy to forget?” he said. “If I had a machine gun, I would go out into the city and shoot people. I don’t want this government anymore. They don’t have the right to be in power.”
The bodies of other Uzbeks followed, borne into the earth on a bier wrapped in multihued fabric: a 50-year-old woman whose throat had been silt, a 39-year-old man who had been clubbed to death. Some had already been hastily interred without identification, their remains burned beyond recognition, their loved ones unable to properly mourn.
The scene at the cemetery strongly suggested that the scope of the bloodshed was far greater than the interim government had formally acknowledged. The official death toll is about 200, but volunteers overseeing this cemetery alone said they had buried more thin 50. And ethnic Uzbek leaders said many cemeteries had been set up. At just four cemeteries, the figure totaled more than 160, according to interviews. (An unknown, but much smaller, number of Kyrgyz were also killed.)
The government is not recording the Uzbek burials or playing any role in overseeing them, underscoring an increasingly significant dynamic here: the ethnic Uzbeks want self-rule, and nothing to do with the Kyrgyz authorities. Bakhrom Iminov, 34, was keeping track of the burials in a children’s notebook, sketching out grids that he filled with any information he could gather about the dead. He said about 20 percent or 30 percent were unidentified.
“The only way that we can protect ourselves is to put a fence up and govern ourselves:’ Mr. Iminov said. “That is the only way that we can guarantee that what occurred will never occur again.”
Ellen Barry and Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.
Already, the new Kyrgyz government has given mixed signals about whether it will renew the lease on the U.S. base -and its weakness has added fresh uncertainty aver a strategic competition between the United States and Russia. Russia also has military facilities in Kyrgyzstan and in recent years has vied with the United States to win the favor of the Kyrgyz.
While it is still early, the tensions in Kyrgyzstan could lead to the kind of ethnic standoff that has repeatedly arisen across the former Soviet Union. These clashes - in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and elsewhere - are often referred to as frozen conflicts because they have not been resolved over many years. They entangle the major powers, as in the case of the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia over the renegade enclave of South Ossetia, which soured relations between Russia and the West, particularly the United States.
The government had been hoping to solidify its standing by holding a referendum an a new constitution on June 27, but the ethnic violence has thrown those plans into doubt. Ethnic Uzbeks, who make up about 15 percent of the population, will not take part in the voting unless international peacekeepers arrive in Kyrgyzstan, an unlikely prospect.
If the referendum is canceled, then tile government may be further adrift.
Senior officials in Bishkek defended the government’s performance, saying that they were facing towering obstacles in trying to steer the country, including a depressed economy and meddling by Mr. Bakiyev, who is in exile in Belarus.
The interim president, Rosa Otunbayeva, traveled to the south on Friday. She bad not been able to visit because of security concerns. The government said that she planned to meet with local leaders to ease the tensions.
Farid Niyazov, a government spokesman, Said Thursday that Ms. Otunbayeva, who is an ethnic Kyrgyz, believed that it was improper to make overtures to Kyrgyz or Uzbeks based solely on their ethnicity.
“The government is offering its condolences to all and its commitment to maintain peace and security,” he said. “We do not name ethnic groups. To do so could provide the impulse for another explosion.”
No matter what Ms. Otunbayeva does, it will be enormously difficult to salve the fury of Uzbeks. That was clear during a visit on Thursday to an improvised cemetery in a barren lot in Osh, where Uzbek victims of the violence were being buried.
The first was Lochinbek Sabirov, 15. His father looked on, wiping his tears with a handkerchief, unable to make sense of what had happened.
The father, Makhamadzhan Sabirov, 42, said Lochinbek had been wounded in the chest and hand on the first day of the conflict, when he went outside to see what was causing the commotion. He died later at the hospital.
“Do you think that this is going to be easy to forget?” he said. “If I had a machine gun, I would go out into the city and shoot people. I don’t want this government anymore. They don’t have the right to be in power.”
The bodies of other Uzbeks followed, borne into the earth on a bier wrapped in multihued fabric: a 50-year-old woman whose throat had been silt, a 39-year-old man who had been clubbed to death. Some had already been hastily interred without identification, their remains burned beyond recognition, their loved ones unable to properly mourn.
The scene at the cemetery strongly suggested that the scope of the bloodshed was far greater than the interim government had formally acknowledged. The official death toll is about 200, but volunteers overseeing this cemetery alone said they had buried more thin 50. And ethnic Uzbek leaders said many cemeteries had been set up. At just four cemeteries, the figure totaled more than 160, according to interviews. (An unknown, but much smaller, number of Kyrgyz were also killed.)
The government is not recording the Uzbek burials or playing any role in overseeing them, underscoring an increasingly significant dynamic here: the ethnic Uzbeks want self-rule, and nothing to do with the Kyrgyz authorities. Bakhrom Iminov, 34, was keeping track of the burials in a children’s notebook, sketching out grids that he filled with any information he could gather about the dead. He said about 20 percent or 30 percent were unidentified.
“The only way that we can protect ourselves is to put a fence up and govern ourselves:’ Mr. Iminov said. “That is the only way that we can guarantee that what occurred will never occur again.”
Ellen Barry and Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.
