Kyrgyzstan has reacted to allegations of tacit involvement in the Andijon uprising contained in the prosecutor’s report to the Oliy Majlis. The Deputy Secretary of the Security Council said that the charges were not based in reality and challenged the Uzbeks to present evidence for the Kyrgyz government to study.
Defense Minister Ismail Isakov had much more to say. To the charge that militants received training from foreign advisers at an abandoned near Osh, he said,
“The training center is guarded by the troops night and day. Students of military departments of civilian colleges and universities are trained there as well. All claims that extremists could be trained there are actually a laugh,” Isakov said.
Isakov is convinced that the Uzbek leadership is but trying to pin the blame for the events in Andizhan on someone else (on Kyrgyzstan in this particular case) and therefore shed responsibility.
“I repeat, there is no extremist training base in Kyrgyzstan. There are no foreign instructors here either – never have been and never will be,” Isakov added.
Of course, the Uzbeks probably take this as a sign that Kyrgyzstan’s government was in on the whole thing.
Others, including Feliks Kulov, had a different reaction.
But Kyrgyz Prime Minister Feliks Kulov’s reaction was different. He said the accusations were not groundless “to some degree” due to the weakness of border protection and the ease of acquiring fake documents.
“Regarding the accusations that some militants who took part in the Andijon events were Kyrgyz citizens, my answer is that, to some degree, this claim is justified because there have been cases when citizens of our country, as well as noncitizens, have acquired Kyrgyz passports by paying bribes. There have been such cases in the past,” Kulov said.
Kulov, who was speaking to the BBC’s Kyrgyz Service, did not clarify whether such cases occurred in recent past, as Ortiqova claimed, or a few years ago when the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan raided southern regions of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the summers of 1999 and 2000.
Kyrgyz Deputy Foreign Minister Erkin Mamkulov said yesterday that “Kyrgyzstan has never been a base for terrorists” and that Uzbek authorities should look for the reasons for the Andijon unrest in Uzbekistan itself.
He also said Kulov’s statements to the BBC were misinterpreted.
Both Kulov and Mamkulov make valid points. On the one hand, Kyrgyzstan has never had extremely tight control over its borders or its southern regions. On the other, Mamkulov’s response to the Uzbeks is against the implied charge that Kyrgyzstan tacitly supported the training of militants on its territory.
I cannot help but think that these overstated charges against Kyrgyzstan (about which there is much more in the RFE/RL story) are designed to pressure Kyrgyz authorities to allow Uzbek investigators a free hand to investigate/more openly pursue whomever they wish in southern Kyrgyzstan much like they did in Kazakhstan last year.
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The position of the German government is indeeed interesting. I am German and I have been in Kokand on 13 May, so the whole load of events are quite close to me. The German government is popular for its “critical dialogue” created by the former conservative government and continued now with the still acting mid-left government. After the events the foreign minister was quick in condemning the events but Germany fell quite quite fast. Now it is easy for Germany to hide behind EU activities (which are indeed exisiting as some budget lines for UZ are reviewed right now). What is my point? Mainly that Germany is not doing too bad but that in the competetive world market of interests and money, this silent strategy will be continued but I don’t know where this will lead.
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