The Skeptic الشكاك

194 Back in the USSR

I’d promised myself not to make this a personal blog, but friends and family have been curious about Kyrgyzstan, so I’m including a link to some photos, and to a New York Times story that, coincidentally, ran while I was there. Also some scattered notes, adapted from an email to a friend:

The first thing a traveller landing in Bishkek sees are the American military planes on the runway. Since the Uzbeks kicked the Americans out, the U.S. government has paid Kyrgyzstan $1.5 million a year to maintain a base here. Military planes stop in Bishkek on their way to Afghanistan, usually from Germany, to stock up on cheap, subsidized Kyrgyz fuel. The Kyrgyz-U.S. agreement stipulates that the base in Bishkek should not be used for sorties to Iraq, but nobody believes that plays out in practice.

The Kyrgyz people seem irritated by the base’s existence. They make snide comments and sarcastically say the base has nothing to do with Iraq. Indeed, just before I arrived, a couple U.S. diplomats were PNG’d—declared persona non grata, or kicked out for spying [Actually, tuns out they weren’t spies, but well-intentioned, and, as far as anyone I know knows, straight diplomats who’d spoken out about Kyrgyzstan’s worsening human-rights record]—in a move that suggests the relationship between the two countries is not always easy. One might imagine a new country emerging from the Soviet Union wanting to hitch up to the distant empire rather than the near empire. But many people are sentimental about the Soviet era and would like to see it return.

Given the air base’s usefulness to the Americans, $1.5 million seems like a small price to pay. The Kyrgyz government could probably hold out for more, particularly if it exaggerates the threat posed by Islamist militants. Kyrgyzstan is nominally Muslim, but more Soviet in culture. People like to drink, and they don’t know any Arabic beyond “ensh’allah” and “salam aleykum.” But the Saudis have been building mosques, and every now and again there are gunfights at border posts. The government attributes these to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), but the consensus seems to be that smugglers are really to blame. Still, the government could play up the danger posed by “Wahabi Islam” spreading via the Saudi mosques and spill-over militants from Afghanistan and Tajikstan to milk more money out of the Americans. One and a half million dollars is a toilet seat requisition order to the U.S. military.

Kyrgyzstan, though friendly and hospitable, also doesn’t know quite what to make of foreigners. They weren’t allowed into the country until the collapse of the Soviet Union because Kyrgyzstan housed a lot of the Soviet Union’s weapons factories, testing facilities, and uranium mines.

I liked Bishkek. It’s a sleepy little town with lots of trees and lots of decaying Soviet kitsch. And wherever you look, you see these breathtaking mountains. An ancient Chinese writer said that travelers to these mountains were beset by dragons.

Bishkek is small, but gangs of teenagers have divided it into cantons with names like London, Bangkok, and USA. A young man from Bangkok, Bishkek, venturing into USA, Bishkek, to pick up a girl for a date risks sparking a gang brawl. Hundreds of people can participate, and—unlike in Egypt where fights usually consist of two men shouting “Somebody hold me back! I’m really going to smack him!” until a crowd forms and holds them back—people do get hurt.

Most of the Russians in Kyrgyzstan live in Bishkek. There are also Chechens and people from elsewhere in the Soviet Union. The Chechens are unpopular: they don’t work, they’re mafiosi. There is little sympathy for their war of independence.

The morning’s drive up to the mountains was beautiful. Bishkek is in a perfectly flat valley. Little villages, fields of sunflowers, and everywhere, the spectacular mountains rising up in the background. We stayed the first night in a little farm run by two families of third-generation Germans who came to Kyrgyzstan by way of Russia after World War II. They originally lived on a Soviet collective farm, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they moved to this little valley, where they live what seems to be a perfect life. One family farms horses (for their milk, which is drunk fermented as the national beverage), and the other family farms honeybees. They live in a secluded nook in the mountains. It was spectacularly beautiful. The mountains are covered in wildflowers.

It’s a horse culture. People in the mountains ride from the time they’re 2 to the day they die. A new friend told me his grandfather never came down from the mountains, lived till he was 110, and rode horses until the end. I also went riding across the mountains and even got to see a match of the traditional Central Asian game of Kok Beru. Kok beru means “grey wolf.” The game’s like “capture the flag,” on horseback, and the flag, in this case, is a goat carcass. The object is to grab the carcass by the leg or the chest cavity (the head’s cut off) and bring it back to your side of the field, which sort of moves across the side of the mountain.

Morning was beautiful there: the flowers, the clean air, the spectacular mountains, the cows, the horses, the sheep grazing on the mountainside in the morning, the particularly opinionated cow who seemed aggrieved every time someone passed out of her pasture through the gate and shut it behind him, leaving the cow trapped inside. We were supposed to go for another ride, to another little valley covered in pines, but the horses had been put to pasture (this means set free to roam the mountains, eating wildflowers — there are no fences). So we had a leisurely breakfast of pastries and strong tea and chatted with the farmer (our NGO host had provided us with a translator), then drove to the valley, which was very nice, but infested with poisonous spiders (a sign at the entrance to the nearest village warned of them, or I think it did…there was a lot of cyrillic writing, an exclamation point, and a picture of scary spider).

The people here are nice, if reserved. In the mountains, they look fierce and weather-beaten. In the city, they have pleasant faces. Everyone looks midway between Chinese and Uzbek, which makes sense, and everyone has sunburns because the air is thinner at this altitude. I’ve never seen so many sunburned Asian faces. People greet each other with a silent slap of the hand. It’s important to do, I think. As work colleagues and I swam in a mountain lake, this little boy swam through our group and shook everyone’s hand.

I was attending a conference on electronic security and surveillance in the CIS. There were people from each of the former Soviet states, except Uzbekistan. The Uzbeks were turned away at the border, then detained in the middle of the night.

We stayed on Lake Issy Kul, an enormous mountain lake fed by underground springs and ice melting from the mountaintops. The scenery was amazing from Bishkek to Issy Kul. The kind of mountains I’d imagined in Central Asia: rocky, barren, cows and sheep picking over a few scrubby shrubs, yurts, picturesque locals selling things by the side of the road… and every now and again, some more Soviet kitsch.

Volcanic activity under the lake (or radiation left over from the days when it was a Soviet torpedo testing facility?) make it good temperature for swimming. The water has a high mineral content, which means that it’s unusually clear and easy to float in it. You can see the bottom from the surface at 50 meters. The minerals are also supposed to be good for you. Soviets used to, and still do, come here to convalesce, suntan, drink vodka, and dance.

I liked hanging out with the Soviets, to watch them circle dancing. Nights were spent at the little “disco” on the beach, drinking vodka. I got some good Russian jokes and ridiculous toasts. A Kyrgyz woman and a Russian man entertained the tourists by singing along to a karaoke machine every night. The songs ranged from Lionel Richie to synthesizer versions of traditional Azeri dance numbers and Kyrgyz nationalist ballads. When the due played a song from a guest’s republic, the guest would get up and wow the crowd with a traditional dance.

One couple formed over the course of the conference. They were irritating — an Azeri boy and a Kazakh girl. They were constantly pawing each other and posing for each other, and she sang along to her walkman’s cheesy American pop love ballads on the long bus ride from Bishkek to Issy Kul. She had an irritating laugh. I was particularly annoyed, I’m sure, because the air conditioning wasn’t working on the bus, the widows didn’t open, and it was hot and smelled of vodka… crazy Soviets drink all the time.

I mostly ate Russian food. Generally pretty mediocre, but we had a nice white borscht at the farm. I haven’t had a proper Kyrgyz meal, but from what I can tell, people eat nothing but lamb and like sour, fermented tastes. Sour, fermented horse’s milk and sour, fermented grain beverages. They make a decent, fatty pilaf, cooked slowly over a fire, and good lamb dumplings.

I passed on the final marathon vodka session, opting to nap for an hour in front of Russian MTV before the midnight bus ride back to Bishkek instead. Policemen in enormous green hats with red stars wave vehicles traveling at night over to the side of the road to check their documents. I think you need a traveler’s manifest to pass through the roads.

The flight out was almost completely full of U.S. National Guardsmen and well-muscled “environmental consultants” ostensibly working on improbable development projects in Kyrgyzstan. One pair continued on to Cairo. Others were going on to Nairobi. The airline, which specializes in travel to places like Damascus, Khartoum, and Bishkek, seems to cater to these types. One radio channel on the in-flight entertainment featured nonstop redneck jokes. The videos were wholesome American sitcoms and movies with military themes. I drifted in and out of sleep 30,000 feet above Turkmenistan while the guy next to me heehawed at a West Tennessee comedian’s jokes about guns and the differences between men and women.
[tags]Kyrgyzstan[/tags]

2 Comments »

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1. It sounds beautiful and very interesting! I didn’t realize Kyrgyzstan was another one of those shadowy American military base places. Forget the big bucks for the use of the air base, if the Americans really want to establish their influence and counter that of the Wahhabis, they’ll ship in free booze. Better, smoother stuff than that fiery Russian vodka.

   I was going to ask if you thought they were culturally closer to Afghanistan/Iran than Russia, but the lamb and pilaf preference seems to settle it in favour of the former – ?

   Comment by SP — July 31, 2006 #

2. I dunno, SP, I’d actually say ‘neither.’ They’re culturally and linguistically close to the Kazakhs, the Mongols, the Uzbeks, and the Turkmen. The borders between the states are really stupid. There are islands of Kyrgyzstan in Uzbekistan and vice-versa to accomodate Kyrgyz people living in a valley in what’s now Uzbekistan and Uzbeks living in Kyrgzstan. From what I gather, tribes used to move around and blend into each other.

   Comment by Administrator — August 1, 2006 #

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