Violência no Quirguistão e um arco de crise

The already grim situation in the central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan has, around the southwestern cities of Osh and Jalalabad in particular, become desperate. On 10 June 2010 and the subsequent days, members of the Uzbek minority in the area have been targeted by Kyrgyz gangs who burned their homes, killed at least 118 people and wounded 1,485, while forcing tens of thousands to flee towards the border with Uzbekistan - which around 75,000 of them (at the time of writing) have been allowed to cross (see “Kyrgyzstan: violence in the south escalates”, Irin, 14 June 2010).

This unfolding human catastrophe has political roots in the crisis of the Kyrgyz state itself. The complex and multifaceted ingredients of the crisis cast a dark shadow over Kyrgyzstan’s future. In the context of poverty, insecurity and dysfunctional politics in the unsettled Ferghana valley - whose territory and population of 11 million is distributed between Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - what is happening now in Kyrgyzstan has ominous implications for the wider region. For if Kyrgyzstan fails as a state, and inter-ethnic violence in the Ferghana valley is not contained, the resulting security vacuum in Kyrgyzstan could threaten the fragile stability of central Asia as a whole. [...]

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