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KYRGYZSTAN: A PIECE IN CENTRAL ASIAN GAME OF DOMINO

RIA Novosti

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov) - The political elite of Kyrgyzstan is nursing the idea of returning Askar Akayev to the country. His opponents want him to make an official statement on his resignation personally and to surrender power in accordance with the established procedure. His supporters hope to restore him in power. Moscow is in the best position: by accepting the fugitive, it has greatly strengthened its role as an international mediator, without which Bishkek will hardly solve this constitutional problem.

There is one more reason why the absence of the president does not suit the new figures in Kyrgyz politics. Rejection of Akayev and his family control of the republican economy and neglect for the southern clans was a crucial unification factor of the multicolored opposition. Without him, the opponents are quietly retreating to their corners of the political ring.

This concerns above all two politicians, who have made a claim to the June presidential election. Kurmanbek Bakiyev, appointed premier and acting president of Kyrgyzstan, and Felix Kulov, the coordinator of the law enforcement and security ministries, cannot agree which format of the Kyrgyz parliament should be viewed as legitimate. Bakiyev and the republican Supreme Court recognized the powers of the former parliament, while Kulov and the Central Election Commission uphold the parliament that was elected in February.

This confrontation reflects the clash between the group of politicians now standing at the helm and the new elite that has won the parliamentary mandates in February. If attempts were made to push the new elite from the political scene, the Kyrgyz business would have found the money to push the country into still greater chaos. Happily, the problem of duality of the legislative power was quickly solved in favor of the February parliament, the allegedly unfair election of which provoked the "tulip revolution."

Russia has learned its lesson from the events in Georgia and Ukraine and is acting much wiser and with greater restraint in the story with Kyrgyzstan. Despite friendly relations with Akayev, the Kremlin also maintained contacts with the republican opposition. In the past few days, all of its leaders, from Bakiyev to Kulov, said they had no phobias about Russia and, unlike their predecessors in the series of color revolutions, did not plan to play the anti-Russian card for nationalist reasons.

President Putin instructed government officials to help Kyrgyzstan with spring sowing and with restoring infrastructure facilities in Bishkek at the request of the new Kyrgyz authorities. Kyrgyzstan will take part in the planned military exercise with the armies of Russia, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.

This encouraged Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Federation Council's committee for international affairs, to say that the events in Kyrgyzstan cannot be interpreted as "a defeat of Russia." Kurmanbek Bakiyev gave a good answer to a question about Bishkek's future relations with Moscow: "The relations we have had are so deep and strong that the current situation can have no effect on them."

Kyrgyzstan was not one of the former Soviet republics that kicked Russia to invite the approval of the West. The influence of RAO UES in the republic is promoting general respect for Moscow. Russian business would like to grow deeper roots in Kyrgyzstan, and the lively trade in military items, the two large electric power plans (the 1st and 2nd Kambaratinsk Hydro) which Russian companies are building, and a factory that makes the kumys drink from fermented mare's milk for all Central Asian republics look like a good investment start.

But the voice of Russian pessimists sounds loudly enough. They fear that Islamic radicalism may grow stronger in the mid-term, as Kyrgyzstan's immunity to extremist clerics has been greatly weakened by the March 24 events. A second Taliban-ruled Afghanistan would make nobody happy, especially Russia, with its grim Afghan experience.

Another possible danger comes from the Ferghana Valley, which may become a highway for the drug traffic to Russia via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Pessimists fear that developments in Jalalabad and Osh can inflame Ferghana. And this is fraught with a more formidable threat, called the Central Asian domino effect. The regimes bordering on Kyrgyzstan are sufficiently realistic to see the danger to themselves.

The staunchest of them, Nursultan Nazabayev of Kazakhstan, came to power in the Soviet era and has been the republic's president since 1991. Kazakhstan is one of the most stable and economically prosperous countries of the region thanks to its oil deposits, but this can play a bad joke on the ruling regime. Oil is instrumental in forming and enriching the business elite, which cannot resist the temptation of seizing political power.

Emomali Rakhmonov has been in power in Tajikistan since 1994 and witnessed a national catastrophe. The civil war of 1992-1997 claimed at least 50,000 lives and forced a third of the republican population into exile. The consequences of the five bloody years demoralized the opposition, but it can still come to its senses, look around and see visible signs of imminent detonation: the poverty of the people and the authoritarianism of the powers that be.

Saparmurat Niyazov keeps Turkmenistan in a grip of iron. He was proclaimed president for life in 1999, and, as a rule, no more than a dozen opposition members turn up for a demonstration there. But this personality cult of "the father of all Turkmens" and the absence of a political successor may be fraught with surprises.

The situation is similar in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, where presidents Islam Karimov and Ilkham Aliyev justify their harsh rule by the Islamic threat.

The traditions of "the friendship of nations" during the Soviet era and the intertwined republican economies predetermined close relations between these Central Asian capitals and Moscow. The slightest change in the regional status quo provokes concern in the Kremlin, and the most nationalist-minded Russian politicians warn that the final result of the Central Asian domino effect will be the strategic isolation of Russia.

These groups are advocating the "soft power" theory, according to which domino pieces fall not of their own volition but after a push by the US and the EU. The theory can be complemented with substantial facts in the case of Georgia and Ukraine, but the "hand of the West" is not obvious in the events in Kyrgyzstan. However, we should not underestimate the influence of more than 15,000 offices of various Western non-governmental companies, funds and organizations, such as NATO, the OSCE, PACE and Freedom House, in Bishkek and other Kyrgyz cities.

It would be naive to think that this powerful network is controlled from Washington. But it has an internal logic and dynamics, which prompt it to support the opposition in the post-Soviet countries irrespective of its democratic (or undemocratic) nature, to prepare political ground for "color" revolutions and wait for the next election to encourage the opponents of the regime to denounce the election as invalid, with predictable consequences.

The domino effect, if it continues to strike countries adjacent to Russia, can be explained not only by external political influence but also by the internal features of regimes. In this situation, Condoleezza Rice and Sergei Lavrov can find common language in calling for restoring constitutional legality in Kyrgyzstan. Preventing its dissolution in line with the Yugoslavian scenario or transformation into a new Taliban-ruled Afghanistan meets the mutual interests of Russia and the US. But these common interests camouflage specific details of the clashing aspirations of the main observers of the drama in the post-Soviet republics. And the devil is in the details.