The Uzbek Holocaust

[haplotype]

So we have a classic case of a country whose dictator was overthrown by rebels, but the weak provisional government lacks the power or will to stop ethnic killings. The army has gone into Uzbek neighborhoods to shoot them. The provisional government demands an international peacekeeping force, so peacekeepers can "shoot unarmed civilians" throwing rocks at soldiers, and the Kyrgyz can blame all their problems on the peacekeepers instead. And of course, Kyrgyz are blaming Uzbeks or "Tajik agitators" for starting the violence.

Do the -stan countries have an incentive to start a wider war? All are suffering from great poverty, and this would be their opportunity to get more attention, get help from rich countries, and blame outsiders for their problems.


www.rferl.org/content/Tajikistan_Asks_Kyrgyz_Officials_To_Explain_Tajik_Involvement_In_Unrest/2074209.html

www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/17/world/asia/AP-AS-Kyrgyzstan.html?ref=asia

www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/world/asia/17kyrgyz.html?ref=asia

[betahat]

I know nothing about the conflict but I have a running joke with my wife that the only place I'll get a job is in Tashkent. Now I see that region of the world is getting pretty violent, and that ethnic groups that I would have no hope of distinguishing from each other are ethnically cleansing. Aren't they all muslims anyway? It looks like religion isn't even at the heart of this conflict - just different ethnicities (and I guess languages). I wonder if you can trace this conflict back to the attempt at forced unification and integration in the USSR (much as people have done with the former Yugoslavia - an ideology of unity that minimizes differences leaves a lot of tension beneath the surface, and this gets easily exploited when the central power diminishes)?

[haplotype]

The Kyrgyz are recently civilized nomads who resent the more wealthy Uzbeks. Depending on which expert you believe, the conflict is primarily economic and political, rather than ethnic.

www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/world/asia/15ethnic.html?scp=9&sq=kyrgyz&st=cse

It's popular to blame Stalin, though conflicts would have arisen no matter how he drew boundaries; it's in the nature of ethnic warfare to claim overlapping "historic territories".

In the 1990s, the Yugoslav civil war was prevented from escalating into a larger regional war because of the economic incentive of joining the EU. In Asia, there are no such incentives; the winner takes all.

Of course, if the Euro fails, then there will no longer be incentive for regional cooperation. Europeans will elect more fascist politicians into office, Eastern European countries will have more wars, and Muslims in Europe will be sent to extermination camps, so the next generation of schoolchildren have newer museums to visit and newer diaries to read.