Uzbek opposition sources are giving much higher totals of dead than the official 53 in the violence in the ethnically Uzbek city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan. Russia has refused the request to intervene from interim Kyrgyz leader Rosa Otunbayeva – a leader Putin would not be inclined to support. Rosa came to power after May’s revolution and is in the process of trying to organise democratic elections.
This documentary from Michael Andersen gives essential background to the conflict.
Craig: one cannot help wondering how much Western meddling has gone on here. There is so much trouble in the region which is not so far from Afghanistan, adjacent to China, and part of the soft southern border into Russia, and in Pipeline-istan.
Coincidentally. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7149104.ece
Stirrup and Jeffrey have got their marching orders, and we need some fresh ideas from the Coalition here other than unquestioningly enabling Washington and Israel in their ‘mad dog’ rampages in the Middle East. Everyone knows Iran will be next in the killing spree.
Please wake up David Cameron; wake up Nick Clegg. We voted for a change in politics, not this endless policy of meaningless meddling and macho driven bloodshed. If we cannot do something positive, we really should stay out of other people’s business.
According to Noam Chomsky the dead bodies of Indochinese and Middle East civilians for which U.S. leaders bear responsibility would, if laid end to end, stretch further than the distance from New York to California. The wickedness of Israel’s Lebensraum policies towards its neighbours, especially Palestine shows a similar contempt for the value of life in the cause of politics and greed.
How much longer will the British public pat the Americans and Israelis on the back, send our soldiers to die for their war games, and bankrupt us in the process. How much longer will the American public sleepwalk its way through history?
Something has to change – and soon.
Will Erdogan Blink?
Nope
http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney06112010.html
The New Face of Power in the Middle East
Erdogan
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick06102010.html
The thing is the ethnic differences between the nations of central Asia are very artificial. Kyrgyz and Kazakh are near enough the same language.
And all but Tajik are types of turkish.
This is divid and rule, and nothing more.
It’s interesting that one of the most important bits is at the end re. the US military base. Central Asia, it seems to me, is a proxy battleground b/w the USA/NATO, Russia and China.
The International Crisis Group, whose local director is featured in the clip, seems to be largely US-funded and its senior personnel are all/ most – including George Soros – intimately involved with disseminating the reach of corporate capitalism. So again, as in Eastern Europe, we have the transnational capitalists playing-off all sides. Yeah, in essence, it’s divide-and-rule.
http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/about.aspx
“This is divid and rule, and nothing more.”
You can thank the Soviet Union for that and you can throw in a bit of Ghengis Khan and a bit of Nader Shah while you’re at it too.
The Aljazeera report is decidedly skewed to give the impression that Russia is the main regional player.
There is no mention of the narco-traffic and the linked geo-political strategy of “managed chaos.” We are encouraged to think of the ICG as some sort of beneficent Western agency doing all in its power to seek peaceful resolution.
Get real! This is The Great Game for Crissakes! The mineral and geo-strategic stakes are immense.
On the managed chaos and narco-traffic strategy:
http://orientalreview.org/2010/02/25/chaos-as-instrument-of-control/
“Managed chaos” is now deemed by Anglo-US strategists to be a more effective than the previous preferred instrument of their control the installation of some corrupt dictator.That person could always “turn” like Stalin, Saddam or even as the venal Bakiyev when he had the temerity to raise the rent on the US airbase and entered “unauthorized” entering trade deals with China.
Configurations with a sequence of ersatz-democratic governments backed by centres of global media power (or phoney-dissident media sources like Aljazeera!) are the new ICG/Heritage Foundation/Freedom House/NED geo-strategic modus operandi.
Aljazeera is certainly not the best source to discover where Rosa Otunbayeva is coming from.
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2010/04/cia-put-roza-into-power-oil-heroin-air.html
Rick Rozoff is also a good source on Central Asian politics and the Afghan campaign.
Bill Engdahl is indispensable on the geo-political power play that is entirely absent from Aljazeera.
Both have their own sites and contribute regularly at globalresearch.
Steer clear of Aljazeera disinformation and use bona-fide independent sources like these.
In this sense, all empires operate along similar lines, whether Russian, Persian, American, Chinese. And they’ve all been there/ are still there. Right now, the US/ West is vying with Russia and China for dominance of the region; spheres of influence.
But Ghengis Khan and his descendents, while undoubtedly a major transformational (initially hugely destructive but as is often the way with old-style land-empire conquerors, and with the long-view ultimately Augean) force across Eurasia, was an awfully long time ago and there has been massive movement since the C13th (including that caused by Tamerlane – Timur-i-lung).
Nadir Shah (of Persia) was an C18th ruler – a soldier-emperor – who, among other things, sacked Delhi, stole the ‘Peacock Throne’ (the same one which, 200 years later, Reza Shah Pehlavi and his dad used to sit on) and the Koh-i-Noor diamond and essentially brought the already weakening Moghul Empire to the state of ‘Sick Man of Asia’ and this in turn paved the way for the British to make inroads just a few years later. Eventually, he became so unpredictably cruel that Nadir Shah was assassinated by his own officer cadre. Ahmed Shah Abdali, whose Afghan contingent had been the ‘imperial guard’, as it were, took the Koh-iNoor- diamond and his men and founded the state of Afghanistan from the eastern Khurasan provinces of the Persian Enpire. He also invaded India in a series of very blood campaigns, several times, and sacked Delhi more than once, I think, weakening the Moghul Empire even further and allowing further British inroads.
And so history goes on…
Right now, the region is subject to the after-effects of the Russian and Soviet Empires and the machinations of various corporate empires – Russian, Chinese, American and others. The local ordinary people – not the local elites, of course – tend to be fodder in such power struggles.
I agree with Steelback on this.
angrysoba
Soviets did divide up what was previously called Turkistan, including East Turkestan
now part of China.
And they did create Kyrgyz identity, to make Kazakhstan slightly smaller.
It wasn’t really about Ganghis Khan because before he invaded this Area wasn’t mostly Turkish, it was Iranian, or Tajik as it is called locally.
This stuff is taking place between Turks, and not between Turks and others.
It was the Soviats who created differences between these people to stop them uniting in to a Turkish country stretching from western china to Turkey.
As I have said before The differences are haphazard.
There really aren’t any concrete differences, everyone is mixed.
Even between the countries, it was just a case of a communist drawing lines on a map and saying these are different countries.
And even dividing words in to chapters and stating these are different languages.
Arsalan,
You are wrong. The Kirghiz, Turkmen, Kazakhs and Uzbeks are the same people only in the sense that the English, Germans and Dutch are the same people. While the Tajiks are persian.
Craig,
I am using second hand sources here because I can’t speak Turkish myself, But I have met turks(Turkish) who the languages are so similer that they understand Uzbeck/Uighurs, And I have met Uighurs who say the same thing about Turkish.
I’m taking there word for it.
Here’s an interesting article by the perceptive and erudite Michael James Barker about George Soros – topically, it’s about South Africa, but might apply elsewhere too.
http://www.swans.com/library/art16/barker51.html
good day .i witnessed the war in osh from the very beginnig.know people who suffered from the war.saw corpses on the streets.burned houses.worked fro CCN as a translator,helped to facilitate work of Wfo.know many details of pre -war after war events.about kyrgyz politicians .mentality.personally know commandant of osh city,many other people.if you are going to write about the war here in kyrgyzstan, will be glad to help you. Chyngyz Ametov,+996 (0)555 46 34 34 +996(0)773 11 55 67,:[email protected]