Letter from Kyrgyzstan: Celebrations ring hollow for Uzbeks

Anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union shows divisions between city of Osh's Kyrgyz and Uzbek residents
Kyrgyzstan Uzbek and Kyrgyz elders pray
Elders from the Uzbek, left, and Kyrgyz, right, ethnic groups pray before a Dinner of Reconciliation in Osh, Kyrgyzstan in June 2010. Photograph: Igor Kovalenko/EPA

The mosaics beside the new city gate depict happy Kyrgyz on horseback. Wearing national dress, they gallop around a yurt-strewn summer pasture. The overall effect is very Kyrgyz, and that's the point. It's meant to distract from the gutted husks of Uzbek homes that line the gateway, destroyed last year in a pogrom against this wealthier minority. It's a lifting of the leg to mark Osh – the second-largest city in the country – as quite clearly Kyrgyz territory.

Thirty or 40 years ago, Osh was mainly Uzbek and being in a different Soviet state from other Uzbek cities in the Ferganah valley was immaterial. Now, with central Asians celebrating or commiserating 20 years of independence from the Soviet Union, Uzbeks in Osh are being airbrushed out of the picture. Until last year's pogrom, they dominated the private sector. Their neighbourhoods dominated the centre of the city around Solomon's Mountain.

Not so today. The smoke from grilled shashlik still permeates the air, but the restaurants that survived last year's violence are being appropriated by Kyrgyz and given new names. They used to play Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Russian pop music, but whoever the proprietor, he knows better than to play Uzbek music now. The bazaar has regained some of its life and many stalls have been rebuilt, but the stallholders are now largely Kyrgyz, as are the customers.

Uzbek neighbourhoods have banded together, recognising that they have no recourse to justice, and that police see Uzbek men as fair game for extortion. I walk into one neighbourhood where elderly women sit on mattresses outside, ostensibly studying the Qur'an. I find out that they are equipped with mobile phones and act as lookouts, alerting the neighbourhood if police vehicles enter.

"The Uzbeks did this to themselves to shame us" is a common response from Kyrgyz in Osh. Many feel the sting of international criticism at the same time as newfound confidence that the Uzbeks have been taught a lesson and taken down a peg or two. Nothing has been resolved.

The 20-year celebrations of independence from the Soviet Union will ring hollow for the Uzbeks of south Kyrgyzstan, as they watch the unravelling of Stalin's patchwork quilt of borders created to divide ethnic groups.
