US Money And
Personnel Behind Kyrgyzstans Tulip Revolution
By Andrea Peters
31 March 2005
World
Socialist Web
The interim government
established in Kyrgyzstan in the aftermath of the overthrow of the regime
of President Askar Akayev is largely the product of US intervention
(See:
Kyrgyz president forced to flee as opposition seizes power).
Akayev, once hailed
by the West as one of the few democrats to emerge out of
the wreckage of the Soviet Union, fell out of favor with Washington
and is now being targeted for removal. In this, he joins the ranks of
a long list of former US assets, including such figures as Manuel Noriega,
Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Husseinand, within the former territories
of the Soviet Union, Georgias Eduard Shevardnadze and Ukraines
Leonid Kuchma.
Using methods similar
to those that proved successful in Georgias Rose Revolution,
and most recently Ukraines Orange Revolution, in an
effort to install a regime more amenable to its interests the Bush administration
provided political and financial support to rival sections of the Kyrgyz
ruling elite.
In Georgia in 2003
and Ukraine in 2004, the US was able to successfully orchestrate the
installation of Mikhail Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko, respectively.
The Bush administration financed opposition movements that manipulated
the legitimate discontent within sections of the population over the
undemocratic character of political rule in these countries in order
to place in power pro-American regimes. In both cases, the new democratic
leaders were former cronies of the displaced rulers and representatives
of dissident factions of the same corrupt and wealthy elites.
In Georgias
Rose Revolution and Ukraines Orange Revolution,
power was transferred to sections of the ruling elite more inclined
toward the free market policies of the US and more abjectly
subservient to Wall Street, but no less hostile to the political and
economic interests of the working class.
A similar situation
prevails in Kyrgyzstan, where the new interim prime minister, Kurmanbek
Bakiyev, the new head of national security, Feliks Kulov, and several
key interim cabinet appointees all once held leading government posts
under the Akayev regime. While many of these figures were in office,
the government in Bishek was implementing IMF policies, which today
are widely believed to be one of the main sources of the deepening poverty
gripping the country.
The extent of Washingtons
meddling in Kyrgyz affairs was documented in a February 25 article in
the Wall Street Journal. According to the report, Washingtons
support for the Kyrgyz opposition is largely funneled through pro-Western
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
One of the major
NGOs working with the opposition, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil
Society (CDCS), receives the bulk of its funding from the National Democratic
Institute in Washington, which is financed by the US government.
The head of CDCS,
Edil Baisalov, recently returned from Ukraine where he served as an
election observer in the disputed presidential contest. Yushchenko was
able to secure a victory over his rival, Viktor Yanukovich, an ally
of Kuchma, with the aid of mass protests staged by organizations financed
by Washington. Describing his time in Ukraine as a very formative
experience, Baisalov told the Journal, I saw what the results
of our work could be.
Until recently,
another Kyrgyz NGO, Civil Society Against Corruption (CSAC), received
funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US-government organization
with extensive ties to the AFL-CIO trade union bureaucracy that is well
known for its efforts to topple governments deemed unfriendly to Washington.
The head of CSAC, Tolekan Ismailova, recently translated a pamphlet
on the revolutionary methods used to bring down governments
in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. This pamphlet was printed on a press
in Kyrgyzstan owned by the US State Departments Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor.
The same press put
out several publications critical of Akayev, including the primary organ
of the opposition, the newspaper MSN. When government authorities
cut off the electricity at the publishing house just prior to the first
round of parliamentary voting on February 27, the US Embassy in Bishkek
had two generators delivered to the facility.
Directed by an American,
Mike Stone, the printing operations recently received an infusion of
funds from George Soross Open Society Institute (OSI). The OSI
played a major role in financing opposition activities during Georgias
US-backed Rose Revolution.
The connections
between the Kyrgyz opposition and the US extend beyond American funding
of pro-opposition NGOs and printing presses. Roza Otunbaeva, who is
the head of Ata Dzhurt and one of the leading spokespeople of the anti-Akayev
coalition, has extensive personal and political ties with the US, and
the West in general.
From 1991 to 1994,
she served as Kyrgyz ambassador to the US and Canada, and in 1997 she
served as Kyrgyz ambassador to the United Kingdom. As deputy special
representative of the UN secretary general on the Georgian-Abkhazian
border conflict, she lived in Georgia from 2002 until September 2004.
Otunbaeva was working for the UN in Tbilisi, Georgias capital,
at the height of the Rose Revolution. She routinely describes
events in that country as a model for change in Kyrgyzstan.
Initially elected
to office by the Supreme Soviet of the Kyrgyz Republic in 1990, Akayev,
a physicist and the former president of the Academy of Sciences in Kyrgyzstan,
was touted as a liberal leader with few political connections to the
countrys communist past. This was despite the fact that he owed
his political ascendancy to support from within the old Soviet elite.
Confirmed by popular vote in 1991, Akayevs backing from the West
had much more to do with his support for the breakup of the Soviet Union
and the restoration of capitalism than it did with any genuine allegiance
to democratic principles on his part.
Similarly, his recent
transformation into a pariah had little to do with the increasingly
autocratic character of his rule over the last several years, which
pales in comparison to the brutal methods used by such key US allies
as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Rather, US disfavor stemmed largely from
his governments efforts to cultivate and deepen its political
and economic ties with Russia, as well as China.