Kyrgyzstan 1999

Yearbook 1999

Kyrgyzstan. Visit Countryaah official website to get information about the capital city of Kyrgyzstan. Prime Minister Jumabek Ibraimov passed away in cancer in April, after holding his post for just four months. President Askar Akajev formerly appointed Finance Minister Amangeldij Muralijev as new head of government.

• Also see Abbreviationfinder.org to see the acronym of KYR which stands for Kyrgyzstan and other definitions of this 3-letter abbreviation.

Economy

In August, militant Islamists kidnapped four officials in the Osh region in the south. The hostage was released since the authorities paid the ransom. But then three villages in the same area were besieged by hundreds of Islamists, who probably crossed the border from Tajikistan. The Islamists kidnapped a group including four Japanese geologists, and the hostage crisis forced the Secretary of Defense to resign. Struggles broke out between Kyrgyzstan’s army and the Islamists, demanding the release of prisoners in Uzbekistan. Foreign ministers from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan met for a crisis meeting, and in October the four former Soviet republics held military exercise together with Russian troops to train actions against the Islamist guerrilla. The separatists released the Japanese geologists and retreated to Tajikistan. Japan announced that it was moving its gold exploration to quieter areas in the north. Kyrgyzstan is believed to have large gold reserves.

In November, the United States Senate decided to give Kyrgyzstan improved trade conditions in response to what it considered to be progress toward democracy and the market economy. However, the opposition in Kyrgyzstan reported repeated harassment by the authorities. President Akajev visited Denmark in the same month, where he expressed support for Russia’s war in Chechnya. According to Akayev, Islamist separatists who had infiltrated his country had been trained in Chechnya.

Kyrgyzstan Geopolitics

Kyrgyzstan is a former federated Soviet republic, independent from the USSR since 1991. Its significant geographical location, in the center of the Asian continent – the so-called Heartland as defined by the British geographer Halford John Mackinder – makes the country an important geostrategic hinge between Central Asia and China. After the Baltic republics, Kyrgyzstan was the first ex-Soviet country to abandon the presidential form of government in favor of a parliamentarian, following the popular uprisings that in April 2010 forced ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiev into exile in Belarus.. The overthrow of Bakiev – accused of corruption and authoritarian drifts – represented the end of the parable that began in 2005 with the Kyrgyz ‘Tulip Revolution’, the last of the ‘color revolutions’ that have affected the post-Soviet space since 2003. Precisely in Bakiev the Kyrgyz people had placed, with the presidential elections of July 2005, the hopes of renewal after fifteen years characterized by the authoritarian power of Askar Akaev, the first president since independence in 1991. However, the wounds of the 2010 revolution still remain open. Despite the approval of a new Constitution (June 2010), the parliament elected in October 2015 remains weak and highly fragmented. The majority of the seats were won by the Atambaev Social Democratic Party. The ruling coalition consists of four parties: the Social Democratic Party, the Kyrgyzstan Party, Onuguu-Progress and Ata Meken. The presidential elections of October 2011, won by the Social Democrats of Almazbek Atambaev, although flawed by irregularities, marked a step forward towards democratization. However, the political climate remains unstable, also for the continuous scandals linked to corruption. The unrest of 2010 also had serious repercussions on the Kyrgyz economy, the smallest in size among those of the former Soviet states. After a good recovery in 2011, development has suffered a further severe slowdown, the result of the contraction in mining and agricultural production, as well as the analogous trend economies of partner countries and regional neighbors. This contraction also had a negative impact on the flow of remittances, a central item of the national budget (around 20% of GDP). Although Kyrgyzstan does not have significant natural resources, gold makes up more than a third of exports, while abundant water resources have enabled major hydroelectric projects to be launched and constitute an energy bargaining chip with coal and gas from Kazakhstan and from Uzbekistan. In terms of international relations, Russia and China aim to attract the former Soviet republic into their respective sphere of influence in order to strengthen their security and protect their strategic interests in the area. However, Moscow remains clearly ahead of Beijing also by virtue of important historical-cultural and energy ties. However, China has established itself as a very influential player in Kyrgyz international relations. Recently, Bishkek closed some border disputes with Beijing and strengthened trade ties. At the regional level, the borders inherited from the Soviet Union and, in particular, the tripartite division of the fertile and populated Fergana valley are a constant source of tension with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.