Abstinence Over Absence
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Abstinence over absence The 2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes and the OSCE’s ability to predict and prevent conflict MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Author: Ieke Noyon Student number: 11933267 Main supervisor: Dr. A.M. Kalinovsky Second supervisor: Dr. A.K. Bustanov June, 2019 2 Table of contents 3 LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................... 5 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 6 1.1 Spontaneous, but not unexpected: the 2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes ........................... 6 1.2 The OSCE… ............................................................................................................................... 7 1.3 … and its crisis management abilities ........................................................................................ 8 1.4 The OSCE’s role in the 2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes ............................................... 10 2. A COMPREHENSIVE ANSWER TO A NARROWED-DOWN SECURITY ............................... 13 2.1 The framework of international security organisations ............................................................ 13 2.1.1 International institutions in International Relations .......................................................... 13 2.1.2 Historical approaches to security ...................................................................................... 16 2.1.3 Definitions of Security ...................................................................................................... 18 2.2 The OSCE’s security ................................................................................................................ 22 2.2.1 The OSCE’s main aim: What is meant by security? ......................................................... 22 2.2.2 From states to societies: Whose security are we talking about? ....................................... 23 2.2.3 The three dimensions: What counts as a security issue? .................................................. 25 2.2.4 Combining the political and the practical: How can security be achieved? ..................... 27 2.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 30 3. The field presences’ activities ........................................................................................................... 31 3.1 Background on monthly reports and method ............................................................................ 31 3.2 First dimension: the politico-military, and cross-dimensional matters ..................................... 32 Political reforms ................................................................................................................................ 33 Inter-ethnic issues ............................................................................................................................. 34 Media-related issues ......................................................................................................................... 36 3.3 Second dimension: the economic-environmental ..................................................................... 37 Economic issues ................................................................................................................................ 38 Environmental issues ........................................................................................................................ 40 Good governance .............................................................................................................................. 41 3.4 Third dimension: the human ..................................................................................................... 42 Rule of Law ...................................................................................................................................... 42 3.5 The Police Assistance Programme, Interim Police Assistance Programme, and Police Reform Programme ............................................................................................................................................ 44 Contents of the police programmes .................................................................................................. 45 Influence of and on the field presences’ work .................................................................................. 47 3.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 48 4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 51 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................................... 53 3 LIST OF ANNEXES ................................................................................................................................ 64 Annex 1: Schematic overview of events ............................................................................................... 64 Annex 2: Mandate OSCE Centre Bishkek ............................................................................................ 65 Annex 3: Mandate OSCE Field Office Osh .......................................................................................... 67 4 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Kyrgyzstan ethnicity map, showing distribution of Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, and 'other' nationalities. Source: Interethnic Tensions in Kyrgyzstan: A Political Geographic Perspective. ........................ 7 Figure 2: "How we work", schematic overview of OSCE Source: “How we work”. www.osce.org/whatistheosce ................................................................ 28 5 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Spontaneous, but not unexpected: the 2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes In June 2010, in the aftermath of the ousting of president Bakiev, the Kyrgyz Republic faced one of its heaviest interethnic conflicts in recent history. It is estimated to have killed between 400 and 500 people in the course of two weeks, and left an estimated 400,000 people internally displaced – mostly Uzbeks.1 Within a matter of only days, a dispute between Kyrgyz and Uzbek youths at a local casino escalated into mass slaughter, wide-spread physical assaults, and gang rapes, throughout the southern provinces of Osh and Jalalabad.2 Armed gangs of young Kyrgyz men destroyed Uzbek houses, supermarkets, and a cinema, and witnesses reported that “Osh is burning, and bodies are lying on the streets”3.4 Many local security forces appeared either incompetent or complacent in the violence, and some were even caught actively assisting the raiding Kyrgyz gangs by handing out their arms, or opening up security checkpoints at the entrance of Uzbek neighbourhoods.5 The secretive circumstances surrounding the outburst of the conflict, rumours about possible (financial) involvement of either Russia or president Bakiev and his trustees, as well as the inability of both the interim government and the local security forces to adequately counter the violence, make the 2010 events a highly controversial topic within Kyrgyz society and politics.6 The escalation of the violence in 2010 might have seemed spontaneous, however, there are reasons to assume that the interethnic clashes themselves were unexpected to the very least (see annex 1). Although both Kyrgyz and Uzbeks are Turkic Muslims, an ethnic difference between the Kyrgyz nomads and the sedentary Uzbeks was already institutionalised hierarchically by the Soviet Union.7 In 1990, this distinction came to the surface during the so-called Osh Riots, a land dispute between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks over a former collective farm, costing approximately 300 lives.8 The tension had been high ever since, and it was constantly fuelled by claims of inequality from both sides, concerning land, energy resources, and borders, most notably in the ethnically diverse Fergana valley in the southern region (see figure 1).9 In 2007, politician Bermet Akaeva, the daughter of the in 2005 ousted president Akaev, openly feared that the rise of nationalism would cause “huge problems” between the Uzbek and Kyrgyz population in the 1 “UN Reports at Least 400,000 Refugees in Kyrgyzstan,” AsiaNews, June 18, 2010, http://www.asianews.it/news-en/UN- reports-at-least-400,000-refugees-in-Kyrgyzstan-18711.html. 2 I.a. Lawrence Markowitz, “The Resource Curse Reconsidered: Cash Crops and Local Violence in Kyrgyzstan,” Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 2 (2017): 342-58. 3 Luke Harding, “Kyrgyzstan Calls for Russian Help to End Ethnic Riots," The Guardian, June 12, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/12/kyrgyzstan-russia-help-ethnic-riots. 4 Harding, “Kyrgyzstan calls.”; “Kreml': besporjadki v Kirgizii - vnutrennij konflikt" InoSMI.Ru, June 12, 2010, https://inosmi.ru/middle_asia/20100612/160553623.html; Alexander Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules : The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia, (New York, NY [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 2012); Erica Marat, "‘We Disputed Every Word’: How Kyrgyzstan's Moderates Tame Ethnic Nationalism," Nations and Nationalism 22, no. 2 (2016): 305. 5 Reuel R. Hanks, “Crisis in Kyrgyzstan: Conundrums of Ethnic Conflict,