OSCE Unbound

What Kind of Investigation -- and Ongoing Monitors -- Does Kyrgyzstan Need?

Soviet tank in Prague on August 21, 1968. Photo by Dusan Neuman on america.gov

Kyrgyzstan is still in a crisis, with ethnic clashes occuring in which Russians and Meskhi Turks were reportedly attacked and five killed. Ex-president Bakiyev appears to have landed in Minsk, according to Belarusian dictator Lukashenka; while the Kazakh chair-in-office could engineer Bakiyev's departure, the prospect of hosting what might be an opposition-in-exile right next door was likely not one President Nazarbayev, who was trying to take credit for everything, wanted to live with for long. It *is* a problem where you put ex-dictators, so that they aren't lynch-mobbed but don't continue to harm others.

Human Rights Watch has admirably gotten a report out right away about what's happening, based on interviews with 30 people and review of videos and photos, which is a kind of first draft of human rights history with the basics of the events, the standards by which international inquiries should be held, and recommendations to the Kyrgyz government.

It's very important that Kyrgyz human rights groups, perhaps in a consortium with other regional groups like Russia's Memorial Human Rights Center, also document and publicize their findings, as it is their country and their future.

When you have a revolution with violence on both sides like this, as well as ongoing sporadic outbreaks of violence and vulnerability for worse to occur, investigations are important, and you shouldn't worry about redundancy. Other international impartial inquiries need to be made, and here we have to depart the world of abstract perfection contained in Human Rights Watch recommendations and footnotes, and ask what is politically possible, and what is doable.

The goal of human rights inquiries is not merely to produce reports that illustrate abstract international legal principles but to remedy a sense of impunity and injustice in a country, to validate what witnesses have seen, to tell right from wrong, and to create conditions for domestic institutions to be strengthened on that basis. The reports prepared by the U.S. attorney Sam Dash about the events of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland did not persuade judges at the time to carry out justice but they came in handy even 26 years later when the UK finally mounted a tribunal in 1998 to review the tragedy. The failure of British authorities to adequately deal with the shooting of 27 demonstrators in Derry back then, 14 of whom died, enabled the IRA to step up its recruitment and terrorist activity for years to come. Justice might seem optional for a government facing many other pressures, but the time and care spent on it generally pays off in the long term.

The UN has a certain amount of respect and credibility in this region, in part because the Soviet Union built up its credibility over the years (and for the wrong reasons -- it paralyzed the human rights agencies of this body for decades until the collapse of the USSR). The post-Soviet independent states have taken great care to sign all the relevant treaties and cooperate with the UN in a variety of ways and the treaty body review of the Central Asian countries have been an important adversarial process that they do not face in their own countries regarding their records. All to the good.

Even so, everyone who works in this region knows that the UN has not served this region when it comes to human rights. UNDP and UNICEF and other agencies actively cooperate with oppressive governments merely to keep access to perform basic programs; special rapporteur visits, while increasing over the years can be spotty, as those same rapporteurs visit the US 14 times or the UK or France numerous times. The old discredited UN Commission on Human Rights and the new Human Rights Council (HRC), barely distinguishable, are not venues where you will get countries in Russia's "sphere of influence" much scrutiny. Indeed, it is difficult these days to get *any* country except Israel reviewed by the HRC.

Ideally, if the world were a more perfect place, and the UN functioned as it was supposed to, some ambassadors at the HRC would call for a Commission of Inquiry to be launched to Kyrgyzstan. But even in an ideal world, which we don't have, this would be hard to justify, given that situations with many more killings and much more trouble, like Sri Lanka, did not reach the consensus to assure action. The High Commissioner could make a trip or send an envoy, which seems advisable; the various special rapporteurs could be issued invitations and travel, say the mandate on "summary executions".

The problem, again, even if some of the better rapporteurs deploy swiftly is that their reports, in the machinery of the UN, will take a fairly long time to surface, and may not have an immediate and effective outlet in the Human Rights Council. Much can depend on variables like staffing or language capacity or advocacy ability of various countries -- well, it's not going to happen. That is, by all means, the Kyrgyz government should show its good will and issue standing invitations to the special rapporteurs on relevant topics such as executions, torture, freedom of the media, violence against women, whatever fits. But that cannot be the only remedy.

There is no way that the Security Council will respond to this crisis, at least now at this stage, and if it were by some miracle, Russia's veto would knock out any actual response. Ditto the General Assembly or ECOSOC or the Third Committee (which meets only in October-November, so comes too late to this crisis). 

Ban Ki-Moon's visit to the region was likely as good as it gets for this part of the world, and it cannot and will not be sustained. Ban Ki-Moon did a lot more than was expected by departing from the usual UN script on issues like water and sustainable energy, and confronting authoritarian President Karimov of Uzbekistan to start delivering on his promises, but he stopped short of demanding, for example, an independent investigation of the Andijan massacre of 2005, a staple of all Western dealings with Uzbekistan until the EU dropped it with the end of sanctions earlier this year and the U.S. dropped it with rapprochment of relations in the quest to build the Northern Distribution Network to ferry supplies to the war in Afghanistan. If Ban could not raise a massacre that happened 5 years ago when hundreds of demonstrators protesting corruption and injustice were shot by police, how will he get involved with past and ongoing violence in Kyrgyzstan, where are events on a smaller scale but with some of the same dynamics?

OSCE then becomes the "indispensable organization" as Madeleine Albright once called it (although she tended to call the UN more "indispensable" and also to speak of America's role as "indispensable").

OSCE Dictator Pick-Up Service

Marshrutki -- fixed-route taxis -- in Kyrgyzstan. Photo by RFE/RL.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev fled the capital to his stronghold in the south" (as the newspapers breathlessly told us), is now evidently in Kazakhstan.

OSCE Chair-in-office Kazakh Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev announced yesterday that he had made a deal to get Bakiyev to leave his homeland to restore peace to Kyrgyzstan following days of revolution that at times turned violent and brought a new social democratic interrim government to power, including some of his once-comrade-at-arms from the last revolution.

The news was predicted (leaked?) at least 72 hours previously, as can be seen by twittering to the effect that Saudabayev himself was going to come and personally escort Bakiyev out of the ring. More likely the original Russian said that Bakiyev's departure would be  pod kontrol' (i.e. under his supervision) of the C-i-O. Of course, that would lower the prestige of office for the C-i-O himself to have done this in person.

Whilt the subject of effusive praise from CSCE and grudging admiration even from Kazakh C-i-O skeptics, Saudabayev was still careful to make this new dictator pick-up-service a definite collaborative group effort, as he noted:

"Today, on April 15, as a result of joint efforts of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russia's President Dmitriy Medvedev, as well as active mediation by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, along with the United Nations and the European Union, an agreement was reached with the Interim Government of Kyrgyzstan and President Kurmanbek Bakiyev on his departure from the country."

One marvels that it took all these world leaders and three big acronym organizations -- what my dad used to call "three men and a dog" -- to get one discredited dictator to depart his country. But it did take that, because it wasn't just about one guy, but his extended clan, and for other reasons, including the "Lenin log" phenomenon (whereby lots of people wanted credit for helping Lenin lift a log, way more than could have possibly fit under said log).

Naturally, there's a rising tide of expectations from some consumers of this new pick-up service. One wonders when they will be available to help Belarus dictator Lukashenka on his way to...Caracas, for example. Or Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov on his way to...Rio? Maybe he could take his expensive soccer coach back to sunnier climes. If OSCE doesn't have a budget for this sort of bag work, I think there would be some people who would kick in to cover expenses.

Joking aside, the Kazakh chair has achieved something that probably nobody else would have been able to, given Russia's interests and the U.S. interests and their conflict. Now, perhaps it was all the more easier to do because Russia was behind it all along and Kazakh tends to collaborate with Russia, as some have it, but I actually don't think so. I think the Kazakh chair saw that he was going to have to behave like any other chair would, and so something constructive about this OSCE region crisis, and it was a little too late for "peace talks".

Of course, we'll be able to tell the sincerity of this act by what comes next. If it turns out this new government flouders, even being recognized too early by Putin and rather late by Obama (time difference I guess *cough*), and then suddenly needs "help" by the CSTO base going in (a distinct possibility), or "advisers" in the form of trained U.S. special forces (less likely, in my view), well, I'll guess we'll see who is working for whom.

For now, I think we should bask in the glory of the much-discredited chair having finally done an unquestionable good deed, and take it for what it is.

As for this claim:

"This development is an important step towards the stabilization of the situation, a return to a framework providing for the rule of law, and the prevention of a civil war in Kyrgyzstan."'

Again, the appetite grows with the eating, as they say. Could we have something like this in Georgia -- and hey, why couldn't we have something like this in Georgia back then? Oh. You can imagine that a country's leader might start not wanting to take calls from OSCE C-i-Os, like they don't want to take calls from the UN special representive on genocide prevention.

CSCE also sees Bakiyev's departure as a sign of "stabilization":

“The fact all flights resumed today at Manas Transit Center is a sign of stabilization in Kyrgyzstan. The importance of U.S. engagement there goes beyond Manas, although the airport remains important to transporting U.S. military equipment and personnel to Afghanistan,” Cardin added. “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s dispatching of Assistant Secretary Robert O. Blake Jr. to the country this week for meetings with provisional government leaders further demonstrates the significance of U.S. engagement during this period.”

I'm among those who tend to see an American base supporting the war in Afghanistan as not necessarily a stabilizing factor for these fragile Central Asian countries, even if there is some kind of short-term benefit to sustaining the war effort. I think we're going to see a lot more Latin Americanization of Central Asia before all this is over. It's not really "stability" when the U.S. has not been able to win the war after nine years anyway, and when now, the U.S. can't mount its war from nearby Pakistan, its ally in said war, due to terrorists attacking its truck convoys -- also supported by elements of that ally's intelligence service -- and has to then find other routes in other places and make other friends with people who aren't exactly friends of democracy. It's sad that "stability" has been cast in terms not of an end to bloodshed and looting and a more legitimate set of rulers taking power (we hope), but whether or not a base gets to have flights to a war.

To be sure, CSCE has also put down the markers for legitimacy and participation of civil society:

“I hope Bakiev’s departure will help the provisional government to establish legitimacy within the rule of law,” Co-Chairman Hastings said. “Leaders of the provisional government now have the opportunity to build democracy and respect for human rights. We hope they will move forward transparently and with the participation of civil society, and we look forward to working with them and the people of Kyrgyzstan towards that end.”

As for Asst. Secretary Robert Blake taking on the Kygyz engagement account, I'm troubled given some of his wan and even evasive answers regarding Uzbekistan's appalling human rights record when visiting there last October and his fumble on Turkmenistan last September after Secretary Clinton met with President Berdymukhamedov, "Human rights is not as big an issue in Turkmenistan as it is in some of the other Central Asian countries."

As we know, human rights appear "not to be as big an issue" in Turkmenistan because, well, there are a lot less of them, and a lot of the suffering is out of sight and out of mind without any free press, as there is at least struggling to exist in Kyrgyzstan. Let's hope that when engaging with democrats in the new Kyrgyz government Mr. Blake himself will be more forthcoming.

OSCE van in the mountains of Kosovo. Photo by osce.org.

Yes, Kyrgyzstan's Red Blood Tulip Revolution is a Twitter Revolution

Of course, at the top level, there is no such thing as a "Twitter" Revolution; Twitter as a technology itself doesn't make revolutions for anybody except Robert Scoble, who can make or break i-pad sales in Silicon Valley through sheer massiveness of automated-API-followers, and for epi-phenomena like the very determined young African Americans fighting daily for funky hashtag primacy. But the real moral of every Twitter Revolution is that Twitter doesn't make revolutions; people do. Yet increasingly, they make them *with* Twitter that they are on more than they are off. As citizens' movements increasingly use Twitter, there's an interesting resistance they face, not only from authoritarians using the same tools, but from a concerted clique of academics and think-tank pundits developing a theory of non-Twitter relevance that is either a subset of debunking of techno-utopianism or a sub-set of statism -- or both.

I can never tell whether Evgeny Morozov's bitter and cynical jihad against "i-pod liberalism" like this piece utterly discounting use of Twitter in Kyrgyzstan this week is in fact a much-needed corrective to the outrageously inflated Singularist techno-utopianism from Silicon Valley and its works -- a crusade I myself readily take part in on my own blog -- or whether in fact it pours water on the mills of the authoritarians using social media in sinister ways, because it concedes their power, and becomes quiescent in leaving the low ground to them -- for some strange reason. I'm also seeing more and more that Morozov has at least an academic stake in keeping afloat his theory of lumpen proletarian non-twittering analog masses who always fail and always get beaten by sophisticated commie or post-commie smoothies who run the state telelevision broadcasting system, and can shut off the cell phones on the one or two state providers in one switch, and of course close the Live Journals and Youtubes with the next mouse click. The question is: why? Can't he keep an open mind?

When Morozov approaches each event in the world named "a Twitter Revolution," he brings not only a healthy debunking of the techno-utopianism I debunk even more heartily (and without the TED elitism), he brings a political message: don't believe in Twitter, and people's revolutions using Twitter, believe in authoritarians who gain the upperhand. "Work with the smart New Class of neo-perestroika liberals like me," he seems to say, "avoiding the excesses of technological populism that might actually empower a grassroots movement here and there, and let's keep the establishment in charge of the tools." Indeed, the New Class has to keep conceding the authoritarian Old Class of Bolsheviks that they are going to replace incrementally, because if they don't, there is no reason for their existence, and the grassroots sweep them away.

Let's start with the *facts* about Kyrgyzstan, as clearly Morozov was busy writing a book and not on Twitter watching what was happening. As linking tweets is very time-consuming, browse through my back pages in @catfitz on Twitter to get an idea. From the first minutes of the violence breaking out, there were indeed people sending tweets from Kyrgyzstan as a search of the system shows. They were Kyrgyz exiles in Europe who were getting calls or emails from people inside the country; they were Westerners who work as mainstream or freelance reporters within Kyrgyzstan; they were simply people who read Russian and could read the news sites of the existing Kyrgyz independent media on sites like akipress.org; they were Kyrgyz geeks who are the early adapters in each of these countries who mainly tweet about software issues, but who at times like this, if they happen to be in the area, will at least tweet, "I live in the center and I don't see a !@#$ thing" or "I see smoke coming out of the government building".  All this stuff *is* the Twitter Revolution. The Twitter Revolution isn't people at the barricades, with a club on their head, stopping to pull a sophisticated mobile phone from their pocket with a nifty Twitter API and tweet to the millions waiting to hear what's happening. Maybe a few did this; but that's not how it works. The Twitter Revolution is that some people who never used the media begin to use it; others who were on it use it for covering events previously of little interest; still others learn about the events and participate them. Because Twitter Revolutions are more meta and subtle in this way, those cynically taking only a literal and linear view of Twitter like Morozov can't see it.

And I don't mean to invoke magic circle woo woo here, that the Twitter devs are making a Better World. Long before Morozov found it fashionable, I was explaining that it wasn't Twitter that got the American student out of the Egyptian jail, it was decades of U.S. aid to Egypt. Even so, it became a social phenomenon and part of a social revolution.

In Kyrgyzstan, anyone who was part of the writing/thinking/observing intelligentsia would definitely go to the few more or less open news sites to get news, adding news or views in the comments perhaps (some of them were shut down on the eve of the turmoil); or on their mobiles -- people do have mobiles -- or on their emails (Kyrgyz human rights activists have sent out daily notices on email for years).

What Evgeny doesn't want to see, because of the prism through which he is looking at this now, is that a synapse jump takes place, as it did with the Moscow metro suicide bombing and Moldova and of course Iran. People who never heard of Twitter, but have a phone and have a computer, suddenly start a twitter account to see what's happening. They find it's a useful way to keep touch with friends and keep using it, but they tend to paste to each other not live accounts from real independent reporters at the scene, which might be scarce, but online news or even official news -- many people will feel comfortable and safe and trusting of Twittering the Minister of Health's report of 68 dead people, but they won't tweet speculative politicized comments for various reasons and even scold those who do.

There was a lot of twitter action, and a lot of *interesting* Twitter action, yet snarky Evgeny and his comrade Chris came on to sneer at it. First, Evgeny retweets Chris' cynical pronounciation on events only a few hours old, unburdened by any actual review of any actual twitter stream, because he likely didn't friend dozens of Kyrgyz who were on twitter, from geeks to opposition, as people like me did ages ago. So he had no stream. Your impression of Twitter in the window before the hashtag is agreed upon by the amorphous mob and becomes coherent literally depends on whether you thought to follow the right people. Evgeny tells Chris that he will name this revo "Bish-tech" -- a knock on the fact that people *thought* it involved Twitter when it didn't, as the technology wasn't there. Ha ha. Except it was.

There's no question that Twitter made it possible for exiles and opposition to come together and find sympathy from the international community, and for someone like me observing events in this part of the world and writing on them to instantly connect to someone trustworthy and knowledgeable in real time and then to expand to his contacts very quickly and find other links to other news and build up the holistic body of knowledge, opinion, and facts that makes a Twitter wave (better than a Google wave in a number of ways).

Soon there was the predictable rant about #CNN fail and #Time fail -- the belief that these old media outlets are slower than Twitter. This time, they weren't really; CNN had an i-reporter videotape up long before others even on the scene; while NGO media like EurasiaNet also had videos up, this wasn't so much "citizens' media" was it was independent NGO media organized to be on the scene and cover events professionally, not in an amateur and spontaneous manner.

One can only urge Evgeny to stop getting confused by the facts and go read the #freekg and #newkg and such hashtags and see the actual story. Of course Twitter, in combination with websites of online news and Youtube, was indeed used for organizing -- the druzhinniki put videos up on Youtube calling for volunteers; there were calls on Twitter with phones and places to meet.

As noted: Twitters don't make revolutions; people do. Twitter is a tool; it's not magic. The use of the tool may not be central to a revolution -- obviously with this particular round, bazookas as well as tulip-talk were vital to bashing in the gates of the corrupt leader's citadel and taking over. But Twitter mattered *too* and increasingly. You can't say "a few thousand twitterers don't affect the situation and talk to themselves" when it truly is a remarkable window into history in the making. If you are watching enough people and have the patience to sift you see all kinds of things -- opposition leaders that look pretty nasty who you aren't happy about taking charge because they are deflecting criticism of violence; calls of a lot of people on this opposition to do more and really restore order; pleas and begging from the new government to cut them some slack; resignation from Russians who feel this is a time to leave another stan as they may find themselves not welcome; westerners arguing whether the new government is a tool of Moscow or a tool of Washington. All pieces of the picture. All part of journalism and history to be looked at. Not the only or even the best way to cover a story, but unique and interesting and increasingly important.

OSCE Media Rep Calls for Media Freedom; Kyrgyz Opposition Leader Starts Twittering

I see the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media has a statement out now about allowing unimpeded media cover of the crisis in Kyrgyzstan.

The new Representative, Dunja Mijatovic, said:

"The media freedom situation has dramatically deteriorated - information Internet sites have been blocked, media outlets have been closed down and journalists have been attacked. Local and international media should be able to exercise their professional duty of reporting without any hindrances, so that citizens' right to information is respected." 

I'm glad some office of the OSCE has spoke out now besides the chair, who has made only a brief and vague staetment. The situation for media of course was already bad before the outbreak of violence with closure of sites, intimidation of reporters and even murder of journalists. And now sites are being blocked and it's not clear if Western reporters are able to function or arrive in larger numbers but we are seeing AP reports and of course EurasiaNet with reporters on the ground.

Interestingly, Rosa Otunbayeva has put out a message now that the opposition is in power and has taken the resignation of the previous government -- but with rumours that Bakiyev has fled to Osh in the south, events that pit the country's two disperate regions against each other may still be in the pike.

Nearly the first thing she did was get a Twitter account going at @otunbayeva and is putting out announcements of people's patrols (druzhinniki) in uniform and out. P.S. The People's Power is tweeting to you by Hootsuite at times.

So far, on Twitter, anyway, Rosa has 271 followers and is following 27 people. Let's hope there are more in real life. That 10 to one ratio isn't bad for a famous politician, but we'd look for those numbers to go up and for her to listen to more tweets from the peeps, too.

Her party's website doesn't seem to be functioning in either the Russian or Kyrgyz versions -- with Rosa's last tweet one hour ago I wonder how her mobile phone/social media connection is working, too.

Can OSCE Cope With Violence in Kyrgyzstan?

No one following events in Central Asia could say they did not see this coming -- according to the AP, there are already 40 dead and 400 wounded in anti-government demonstrations in Kyrgyzstan today. Troops are firing on unarmed demonstrators as well as apparently some armed instigators -- it appears that some protesters have incited and used violence in encountering brutal suppression by government troops already long known for their brutality.

The short answer to my question of whether OSCE can cope with this crisis is: no. If OSCE were the sort of body that could cope with events spiralling out of control like this in the first place, it would have successfully prevented them (the Zen of international peace-keeping). The long answer is: it will have to. There is no one else. The UN is crippled by Russia's veto and American interests in the war in Afghanistan. NATO isn't a disinterested party. Kyrgyzstan is not a member of the Council of Europe.The regional bodies of the ineffectual CIS and Russian-dominated CSTO cannot change anything -- Russia is already meddling in this crisis and its customs duties causing energy price hikes is the immediate cause of the riots.

The Kazakh chair of OSCE is the worst possible actor to intervene in this scene, with little credibility given both Central Asian rivalries and the tendency of Astana to take the side of brutal governments in power rather than demonstrators who aren't always careful to suppress violence in their midst. Even so, Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev has to step up now briskly and effectively to what may be the worst challenge of the Kazakh chairmanship, and not only quell violence and help start effective peace talks with all stakeholders but commission a credible and impartial investigation that will ultimately lead to prosecution for those perpetrating violence. He's unlikely to do those last two things very well or at all, but here he should try not to go below past OSCE standards that set the bar high -- attempts at monitoring and promoting talks in Georgia; a report on violence in Kosovo in the 1990s.

Indeed, using the Moscow mechanism and any other mechanisms that are available, the Kazakh chair should try to get OSCE monitors into position quickly and not let Kyrgyzstan or Russia block them.

The violence is even worse than reported on the wires as we can see from EurasiaNet reports, and among the disturbing developments, this sign of weakness:

The violence in Bishkek began after police began arresting a peaceful group of protesters outside the opposition Social Democratic Party headquarters on the morning of April 7, the EurasiaNet.org correspondent reported.

The arrests started after the departure of German Ambassador Holger Green and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe mission head Ambassador Andrew Tesoriere from the scene. A representative of the US embassy also left immediately before riot police began arresting demonstrators.

No one expects lone German ambassadors or OSCE mission heads to stand in harm's way when clubs start swinging, or to mount lonely vigils 24/7 to try to prevent the clubs from arriving. Still, they need more company from all the members of the OSCE -- led by its chair -- and right now.

While a sudden surge of violence in "one of the stans" might come as a suprise to the Twitter news junkies, it was brewing for a long time as the Tulip Revolution went south and some of the leaders who had once come to power on rhetoric of democracy began to roll it back when it didn't suit them.

You couldn't say you didn't know this was coming if you subscribed to Ramazan Dyryldaev's news service -- or indeed, if you had ever once even given a business card to Ramazan or come into his field of view, because he'd subscribe you to his daily emails anyway. Each day for the last year -- the last decades, really -- Ramazan has steadily and persistently told the other narrative of Kyrgyzstan outside the happy OSCE workshops, the unlawful arrests, the police beatings, the families of relatives of suspects harassed, the murder of journalists, the unemployment and price hikes, the unrest, the extremists and the extreme response to them. Day after day -- sometimes even two or three times a day, people whose names might seem difficult to spell to foreigners or whose cases might seem complicated to understand or remember have been reported as beaten, even tortured in large numbers, suppressed, without demonstration permits, or demonstrating anyway over economic issues like price hikes.

Until this moment, when finally so many are killed and wounded that the world pays attention -- and the opposition uses force to take over a building, consciously following the Leninist revolutionary instructive meme well known in this region of "first taking over the telegraph station":

The crowds took control of the state TV building and looted it, then marched toward the Interior Ministry, according to Associated Press reporters on the scene, before changing direction and attacking a national security building nearby. They were repelled by security forces loyal to President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

The UN has generally tacitly let mainly Russia take care of this region, although this week, UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon toured the region to address both making the area a nuclear-weapons-free zone and solving water disputes and security concerns. Indeed, his trip to these usually overlooked countries inside the Russian-veto zone on the UN Security Council may have even sparked more demonstrations and appeals as people hoped desperately the international community might pay attention to them now.

Those only tuning in now about "the U.S. base" here without studying its pre-history are rapidly firing up the cynical tweets and blogs and Facebooks, rolling their eyes with web world-weariness about American oil interests. Of course, those who tuned in earlier would know that this base was evicted by the Bakiyev government under clear pressure from the Russians, who even induced the Kyrgyz to go back on the base agreement by offering to foot the bill for a controversial hydropower station -- and the U.S. has only recently gingerly eased back in. The World Bank has only recently tried to broker an arrangement among Central Asian nations to solve their water and energy disputes amicably to reflect all their interests, without Russian meddling to incite one against the other. The U.S. base is more about the war in Afghanistan than it is about oil and gas which are more present in neighbouring countries (not in Kyrgyzstan) and not so easy to get out, especially with Russia and China already controlling pipeline routes.

How can violence like this be prevented, or how can such situations not spiral so out of control? Literally millions of OSCE funds have been spent on this country for years on every thing from training police to become sensitive to gender issues and women's rights to training border guards how to be more effective and less abusive, and training journalist show to report stories more professionally and protect itself. Just this month, there was news of cross-border environmental cooperation -- all good, but typical of the soft-option topics OSCE grabs hold of while Rome is burning.

Why doesn't all that stuff come in handy at a time like this, when you want police not to shoot even at people who have taken over a building, but you'd also would like to see a social movement that doesn't violently take over buildings, either? And for extra credit, you want the state not to silence the media so that no one knows what is really going on inside the country. (The OSCE representative on media freedom should be protesting this.)

There are many complex reasons and I could not address them here, but I would have to say that after the failure of Kyrgyz democracy -- for which one must above all blame the Kyrgyz in power -- the failures of OSCE, the UN, the international civic movements also play a role.