Briefing on property issues in southern Kyrgyzstan

TN reader ‘Kaigyluu’ has kindly provided this blog with an updated overview of the complicated and politically charged property question in Osh and Jalalabad, the towns in southern Kyrgyzstan most affected by the June 2010 violence between the Kyrgyz majority population and the Uzbek minority. The briefing, which is posted on the resources page of TN, describes the manner in which attempts to provide durable solutions for Uzbek displaced persons by rebuilding their destroyed neighborhoods are complicated by both the legacy of Soviet social engineering and the burden of contemporary nationalist politics.

Week in links – week 42/2011: land disputes in Bolivia, India, Kyrgyzstan and the UK

This week, we have a few updates on recent stories covered in TN:

First, the indigenous protesters marching against the construction of a road through the Tipnis national park in Bolivia have reached the capital La Paz and are settling in to force the Government to negotiate on the issue. Nicholas Fromherz of Foreign Affairs provides an analysis of the tremendous damage the mishandling of this issue has done to President Evo Morales’ credibility.

Having recently taken China to task for its stereotypically stilted response to public outrage over crooked land takings, as well as its stereotypically draconian response to community resistance to being evicted, I am now presented with the classic counter-stereotype in India, where public acquisition of rural land to facilitate large-scale investment is also a pressing issue. Having adopted a new ‘light footprint’ policy on facilitating purchases of land for industrial use after protests last spring and summer, the government of the Uttar Pradesh province now faces a court decision ordering the return of previously acquired land and compensation for parcels investors already built on. Without taking a position on the actual case, it is a classic instance of the great BRIC dichotomy, with India a trickier business environment than China, but frequently for the right reasons.

More dispiriting follow-up to the ethnic mayhem in Kyrgyzstan last year, this time in OpenDemocracy. First, Bruno de Cordier gives a bleak overview of structural violence in Central Asia in the form of rentier politics and patronage societies. Then Elmira Satybaldieva portrays how these patterns are reflected in the fragmented and untransparent politicking in the leadup to Kyrgyzstan’s 30 October elections. With the land disputes and other grievances underlying last year’s violence still unresolved, the prognosis is worrisome.

FAO has described how Sweden, notwithstanding its past ambiguity on the right to water, is funding a highly innovative scheme to help farmers in eastern Kenya develop greater resilience in the face of climate instability, in part through better water management techniques. IRIN, for its part, reports on how poorly Kenya fares in general in advance mitigation of disasters, whether of the natural variety or man-made examples such as last month’s appalling pipeline fire.

And just to recall that housing and land issues remain relevant in the Global North, the New York Times reports on the messy beginnings of the eviction of a traveler community from the Dale Farm encampment they have occupied for years in Essex, UK – while the Guardian documents the surprisingly peaceful end of the process. On OpenDemocracy, Justin Baidoo-Hackman explores the issue of whether the evictions qualify as ethnic cleansing (my take: forced evictions are already plenty bad).

Week in Links – Week 33/2011: Ethnic engineering in Osh, privatization in Havana

I should begin by noting that my NRC report on urban displacement in Liberia has now been published in the Journal of Internal Displacement, vol. 1, no. 2. Other articles in the same edition cover the plight of the Sahrawi people in Morocco and provide an assessment of development-induced displacement in the Narmada Valley in India.

A bit of follow-up in the meantime on some stories TN has been following:

- First, the latest Economist (Aug. 13) gives some insights into just how bad things have gotten for the Uzbek minority in southern Kyrgyzstan since the appalling violence last summer that killed hundreds. According to the article (“Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbeks: Weak fences, bad neighbours”), all signs of moderation are now gone.

At the national level, Kyrgyz nationalism is “surging” in advance of October’s presidential elections and the head of the International Commission of Inquiry that found evidence of crimes against humanity undertaken during the pogrom (see TN post here) has been PNG’ed by Parliament.

However, events in Osh, the epicenter of last summer’s violence, are most disturbing. As discussed previously in TN, the Kyrgyz major still appears to have no qualms about using an antiquated master plan as the device for cleansing Uzbek survivors of the violence from their homes and communities in the center of the city:

Week in links – Week 30/2011

Discerning TN readers will have noted that the blog has now clearly gone into summer mode (even if its slightly workaholic administrator has, regrettably, not entirely managed the same trick). In any case, I’ve tried to keep track of a few interesting items, below, for what should now properly be called the ‘month in links’.

It’s also my pleasure to announce an upcoming guest-posting by Veronica P. Fynn, the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Internal Displacement. Veronica will introduce the journal and highlight some of the property issues covered in its first edition (full disclosure: my recent NRC report on Liberia is under consideration for reprinting in a forthcoming edition).

And now, some HLP highlights from July 2011:

- Beginning with UN Special Mechanisms, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter has published an article in the Harvard International Law Journal on “The Green Rush: The Global Race for Farmland and the Rights of Land Users“.  Mr. De Schutter introduces the piece with a nice summary in Opinio Juris, in which he suggests the need to move beyond decrying the global land rush phenomenon to seeking ways to minimize its negative impact on local communities. However, Katharina Pistor’s response in OJ highlights significant obstacles to such approaches, both at the level of politics and of theory.

- Meanwhile, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing Raquel Rolnik recently followed up on her report on the right to housing in the wake of conflict and disasters (posted on here) with a trip to Haiti in which she appealed for an end to forced evictions and endorsed a proposal by UN-HABITAT for a “comprehensive strategy for reconstruction and return”. A further report on post-disaster housing issues is said to be shortly forthcoming.

- UNHCR recently called for the creation of “new tools” to address the effect of climate change-induced displacement. The agency also released a report noting the 80% of the world’s refugees now find themselves in developing countries and that protracted displacement is becoming the rule rather than the exception.

- Although the most recent coverage of Kyrgyzstan on TN related to the defensive and unconstructive reaction of the national government to a critical report by an international Commission of Inquiry on last summer’s violence in the country’s south, the local response apparently continues to deteriorate as well. EurasiaNet now reports that the authorities of the city of Osh, where the violence against ethnic Uzbeks reached its peak, have rediscovered their infatuation with an urban master plan from 1978. The failure of the authorities to stop a heavily armed mob from demolishing centrally located Uzbek neighborhoods, while regrettable, now presents an opportunity to build  high-rise housing, and reconstruction – even with the prospect of Asian Development Bank funding – is not on the agenda.

- Keeping on the theme of bad behavior, Israel gets the latest award for innovations in forced evictions (previous honors went to Cambodia for the use of dredging machines). BBC reports that Bedouins in the Negev Desert now not only face regular demolition of their homes but will also be expected to foot the bill for this important public service.

- On a more positive note, BBC has also reported on a recent decision by the Cuban government to allow open sales of homes and cars in Cuba. In a follow-up piece, the BBC described the pressing need for such reforms in a setting where the previous system of exchanges with government approval and without money changing hands fostered informality and corruption. As noted previously on TN, BBC coverage has not addressed the issue of historical claims by exile Cubans that may exist against some of the properties involved. Thus, it is only possible to speculate on whether Cuban privatization now may serve a similar dual purpose to Cambodian privatization in the late 198os, where investing current users with greater rights also served to dilute the claims of exiled historical owners.

Week in links – Week 19/2011

- ToL provides a lucid analysis of the Kyrgyzstan authorities’ opaque and defensive response to the allegations raised by the Commission of Inquiry appointed to report on last summer’s ethnic violence in the south of the country (blogged on here). The comment notes that the Kyrgyz authorities raise valid points related to their own lack of capacity and preparedness for such violence, as well as the fact that they ultimately handled the situation without significant outside help. However, the fact that the response continues a government tendency to both blame the (Uzbek) victims and deny ethnic divisions in the country seems almost calculated to deepen them. As ToL gloomily concludes, “[i]f a lasting peace comes to Kyrgyzstan’s south, we fear it will be only after the last of a demoralized Uzbek community has left town.”

- UNHCR reports on the desperate situation of those displaced by the fighting last month in Cote d’Ivoire, which saw the belated installation of the winner of last year’s Presidential election, Alessane Ouattara. Even during its peak, the fighting in Cote d’Ivoire only barely emerged from the shadow of the ongoing drama in Libya and the lack of subsequent news has probably come as a relief to many in the overtaxed world of international diplomacy. However, according to UNHCR, the current obstacles to return and normalization are primarily related to relatively manageable phenomena such as security concerns and destruction, rather than the type of macro-level political blockages that can result in protracted displacement situations.

The New York Times provided some analysis on the UN’s recent upward revision of global population growth (to 10.1 billion and rising rather than 9 billion and stabilizing by mid-century). The report focuses on the fact that this is still not a Malthusian collapse scenario at the global level, but that the results could be devastating locally in places such as Yemen (with runaway population growth and the looming prospect of running completely out of water).

Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission – Osh riots resulted in crimes against humanity

by Rhodri C. Williams

The Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission set up to examine the violence between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz that killed nearly 500 people last June in the country’s south has just released its report. Most media attention has been devoted to the fact that the Commission identified the minority Uzbek community as the overwhelming victims of the attack, found evidence of official complicity, and alleged that some of the acts committed may amount to crimes against humanity. However, a number of the Commission’s less prominent findings confirm both the role of property destruction in consolidating the victimization of the Uzbek minority and the need for reparations to address these and other crimes.

Managing pastureland in Central Asia: the importance of locally legitimate law reform

by Elisa Scalise
This guest post was originally posted on Landesa’s Field Focus blog, which provides expert insight on the issues surrounding land rights and international development. Elisa Scalise is a Landesa attorney & land tenure specialist.

I was recently reminded of the importance, and the potency, of locally legitimate law reform (law reform which is based on what is feasible in practice and which can serve the dual purpose of satisfying a national agenda and reflect local needs).

Landesa recently concluded a project in Kyrgyzstan, which sought to develop and then test a community-driven model for managing conflict over pastureland resources. The pilot ayil okmotus, or municipalities, are located along the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border of southern Kyrgyzstan, and contain two Tajik enclaves of Chorkhu and Vorukh.

A bit of background: Relations between ethnic groups in the Kyrgyzstan (and Central Asia) area can be tense, and have erupted into violence on more than one occasion (you might recall the events of June, 2010, in the nearby Jalalabad oblast).

Pastureland is the nexus of interdependence and (sometimes violent) tension between Tajiks and Kyrgyz.  Every Kyrgyz and Tajik household owns livestock, yet there are no pastures in the Tajik enclaves of Vorukh and Chorkhu.  Tajiks rely on Kyrgyz pastures to feed their livestock during the grazing season, and Kyrgyz must cross the Tajik enclaves to access their pastureland.

To address pasture use needs, the Tajiks and Kyrgyz in the pilot area make arrangements for Tajik animals to be grazed on Kyrgyz land.  Yet those arrangements are informal, lack transparency, are not enforceable when breached, and are conducted without the knowledge of national policy-makers and without support of a legal framework at the national level.

Week in links – Week 2/2011

This week picks up a few interesting items from the end of last year as well as some more updated texts:

- Now that the referendum on South Sudan’s separation appears to have gone off peacefully, attention is turning to the contested territory of Abyei. As described in this NYT article, Abyei represents a microcosm of the North-South conflict but one which has, alarmingly, been left on the sidelines of last week’s putative solution. Here’s a sample:

“We will go to war over this,” said Rou Minyiel Rou, a veterinarian in Abyei. “This is about land, and we can’t compromise on land.”

- Anyone remember Osh? Fortunately Transitions OnLine does, and they released a series of reports last week on the aftermath of last June’s orchestrated attacks on Uzbek minority communities in this town in southern Kyrgyzstan. The first two reports focus squarely on land and property issues, including the plight of women left behind to safeguard destroyed family homes, and ongoing ethnic tensions over land access in the region. Against a chilling backdrop of arbitrary arrests of Uzbek men, the latter report notes that the reconstruction of Uzbek neighborhoods may not take place according to the victims’ preferences:

Other unsubstantiated claims center around the urban plan under discussion by city authorities. Few details have been released, but the plan is said to include building apartment blocks in place of the traditional family compounds where many Uzbeks live. Uzbek neighborhoods take up large areas of the city, particularly in central districts and around the famous Suleiman Mountain.

- Carl Soderbergh of Minority Rights Group International (MRG) wrote a two part report in the MRG Blog late last year on the threatened land rights of the Maasai in Tanzania. The first part of the report analogizes latter day practices of removing this indigenous group from the environs of a wildlife park with the colonial doctrine of terra nullius (sound familiar?) used to justify earlier annexations. The second part examines the violent expulsion of another group of Maasai from a wildlife sanctuary acquired on disputed legal grounds by the American tour operator Thomson Safaris. Fully 37 years after the facts that triggered the Endorois decision by the ACHPR in neighboring Kenya, this must be only one of many more such cases in the making.

Marcus Cox letter from Kyrgyzstan – Why the referendum should go forward

by Marcus Cox

I’m just back from Kyrgyzstan, where I just happened to be when the country went south (spent an interesting evening watching the opening of the World Cup in a pub with the door barricaded and a riot outside.)

The question of whether to proceed with the referendum is actually a rather tricky one.  The previous Kyrgyz government, which was about as venal as they come, was toppled unexpectedly in April in a popular/Moscow-backed uprising.  The current interim government is in limbo, unable to receive the emergency budget support from the World Bank and other donors that it desperately needs due to its unclear legitimacy.  The draft constitution up for approval in the referendum is, by the standards of the region, remarkably democratic and progressive.  I don’t think it’s passage will in any way disenfranchise the Uzbeks.  It will provide the interim government with constitutional status, pending elections in October.

Against that background, there is clear evidence that the violence in Osh was instigated by the previous regime (now in exile in Belarus) to prevent the referendum going ahead, plunge the country into instability and either engineer a return to power or protect their many dubious economic interests.  The previous president and his family had stolen US$300 million from the country’s Development Fund, which you buys you a lot of trouble in Kyrgyzstan.  In the early days of the conflict, there were reports of unmarked vehicles driving into Uzbek neighbourhoods and shooting people at random, and then going into Kyrgyz neighbourhoods and telling people to flee before the Uzbeks retaliated.  Alas, despite some encouraging stories of Kyrgyz sheltering Uzbek neighbours, the provocation has proved all too successful, as the region’s many criminal elements, plus the mass of impoverished and undereducated young Kyrgyz men, have taken advantage of the ensuing chaos.

Against that background, cancelling the referendum would hand victory to those most responsible for this crisis, and in all likelihood cause the collapse of the current regime.  It’s hard to be sure, but my gut feeling is that this is the scenario most likely to lead to an escalation of conflict across the entire country.

I don’t believe the interim government has an anti-Uzbek agenda at all, but it has almost no capacity to intervene to stop the violence.  The army is small, under-equipped, unprofessional and poorly motivated.  The police were totally discredited in last April’s rebellion, when they failed to intervene in any useful way.  I don’t know whether elements of the army have been involved in violence in Osh – the consensus in international circles in Bishkek was that they have not, but nobody really knows – or if they are, whether they have been paid off by the previous regime or gone into business in their own right.  They are certainly not following orders from Bishkek.  But of course, it is characteristic of weak states that have lost the monopoly on force that, when they do intervene, they do so very badly.

The priorities now are to restore law and order in Osh and Jalabad, clear the way for humanitarian assistance and hope that, when the Uzbeks return home, the traditions of good neighbourliness among ordinary people have not been totally destroyed.  This calls for international support to the interim government to survive and regain control of the situation.  But special envoys and humanitarian supplies are not going to achieve this, and short of Russian military intervention, I don’t think anything else is on offer.

Update on Kyrgyzstan

by Rhodri C. Williams

Following up on yesterday’s post on displacement of ethnic Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, the news coming in today has been pretty grim. On one hand, the dime appears to have dropped, with prominent EU foreign ministers expressing serious concerns. The Local reports this morning that Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt and his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle, urged international intervention yesterday in recognition of the situation’s potential to bog down into an ethnic stalemate:

“The situation is alarming,” Bildt said at a joint press conference with Westerwelle in Stockholm on Monday.

Bildt emphasised the need for rapid action “in order to contribute to the confidence that is a necessity for people to start returning home.”

“If you don’t get people to start moving home fairly rapidly, you easily create a situation that sort of breeds resentment for years to come, and then there could be a very volatile and explosive situation,” he cautioned.

However, new NYT reports from Kyrgyzstan and refugee camps in Uzbekistan do not give rise to a great deal of optimism. In Kyrgyzstan, the interim authorities appear bent on proceeding with a referendum this Sunday on a new constitution virtually as if the clashes had not taken place. How internally displaced Uzbek citizens are expected to vote and whether the 70-100,000 that fled to Uzbekistan will be disenfranchised does not appear to be a priority issue.

Meanwhile at the local level, Kyrgyz authorities seem to be getting it entirely wrong, asserting their power in ways calculated solely to demonstrate that they are in charge and driving beleaguered Uzbek citizens further into a corner. The more the authorities insist on asserting power without acknowledging the wrongs done to innocent Uzbek civilians, the more acute the entirely predictable security dilemma that results.