Questions linger over Kyrgyz unrest

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — Two weeks after thousands are thought to have died in ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, the interim Kyrgyz government has yet to provide an explanation of why it occurred - a reflection, experts and former officials say, of the leadership’s inner turmoil and a possible portent of further troubles.

Survivors of the violence, mostly minority Uzbeks, say they were attacked by the Kyrgyz military and the police, and their accounts have been backed up by independent observers.

Yet the loose coalition of political figures who took power in Kyrgyzstan in April after a popular uprising is so weak, experts and former officials say, that it could be toppled if it acknowledges that it lacks control over the police and the army.

The government has offered a variety of explanations blaming groups and people from outside the country - particularly the ousted former president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who is in exile in Belarus. The government has denied that its soldiers were involved.

“It is very useful for them to say it was caused by people outside of Kyrgyzstan,” said Mars Sariyev, a political analyst with the Institute of SocialPolicy, a think tank in Bishkek, the capital. It is far more convenient than admitting the reality, he said, which is that “when the interethnic violence began,the police and army took part on the side of the Kyrgyz.”

In the meantime, continued persecution of Uzbeks in the south by the police has suggested a lack of control or even an acquiescence to rising Kyrgyz nationalism - perhaps in an effort to win passage of the constitutional referendum scheduled for today, which would keep the interim president, Roza Otunbayeva, in power.

Speaking on Friday in Washington, where he is visiting, President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia said Kyrgyzstan was facing “degradation and, unfortunately and very likely, disintegration” if the referendum should fail to solidify the government’s control.

“Then we will be forced to tackle the same problems that are being tackled in other regions, for instance in Afghanistan,” Medvedev said.

Otunbayeva said Saturday in Bishkek that the referendum would stabilize the country, and she denied that she had lost control of the army or thepolice, or that they had taken part in the killing.

However, she reiterated an appeal for international police intervention from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “Because we have such monoethnic law enforcement, we badly need a third party that would help look after them,” she said.

Many Uzbeks said they were attacked by the Kyrgyz army and the police, riding armored personnel carriers and firing automatic weapons at civilians. Armored military vehicles pushed aside makeshift barricades at the entrances to Uzbek neighborhoods, witnesses said, allowing Kyrgyz mobs to storm in.

But the first detailed government account, from a police commander, placed blame for the violence on Tajik mercenary snipers, hired by Bakiyev’s family.

Later, to explain why so many victims died of gunshot wounds, the authorities said rioters stole hundreds of rifles from military arsenals, and that some had worn stolen police and military uniforms, an explanation reiterated by Otunbayeva on Saturday. Of the military’s armored vehicles, she said, “They were taken by very aggressive young people.”

Last week, the head of the country’s national security agency issued a statement saying that the younger son of Bakiyev, Maksim Bakiyev, had hired Islamic radicals from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group with ties to the Taliban, to infiltrate Uzbek neighborhoods and stoke conflict. The statement said the Islamic radicals fired rifles at civilians and then hid, only to reappear in other areas.

Reinforcing the message of external instigation, on Thursday an airplane flew over Bishkek dropping leaflets warning that “provocateurs” could foment ethnic violence in the capital, too, though the streets remained calm.

Sariyev and former government officials said the new leaders stumbled early in their rule by failing to quickly win over the police or oust commanders appointed by the former president.

Bolot Sherniyazov, the interior minister, acknowledged difficulties assuming command of the police, but he asserted in an interview Saturday that he was now largely in control. “I am in command of 80 percent of the Ministry of Interior,” he said. “The other 20 percent is still waffling.”