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Trapped between Borders: Notes on Identity of Osh Dungans

In Kyrgyzstan where Dungan diaspora could preserve their identity without mixing with Kyrgyz majority through intermarriages has an ethnic enclave in Osh, Southern Kyrgyzstan whose members engaged in agriculture and neither speak Dungan, Russian, nor Kyrgyz languages. They only know Uzbek. Because of this, children of more than 1000 Dungans cannot get higher education since the language of instruction at universities in Kyrgyzstan are either Kyrgyz or Russian. At the same time, they cannot get access to the higher education in Uzbekistan since they are Kyrgyz citizens. Their identity is also problematic for the local people: for Uzbek people, they are Dungan, for Kyrgyz people they are Uzbeks. So the question that this paper would like to address is how this linguistic affiliation came about and why after 25 years of independence kids were unable to learn neither Kyrgyz nor Russian. In order to do so, this paper will rely on historical method and interviews with community leaders. After outlining the scale of the problem, it will proceed to sets of policy recommendations.

Existing literature points to two primary hypotheses: 1. Unlike the other Dungan communities in Central Asia, Uzbek was chosen because at the period of Dungan migration in the end of XIX century Osh Dungans were unable to form their own community because of the lack of free land since Fergana valley which was densely populated while other groups of Dungans who migrated to Kazakhstan and other parts of Kyrgyzstan got land for agriculture and formed their own area of the compact residence.

2. Alternative hypothesis states that high percent of intermarriages among Dungans mainly with Uzbek people resulted in their loss of ethnic language and assimilation. Intermarriage was a survival strategy since Dungans intentionally mixed with the local population in the first years of the migration due to the fear of persecution from the side of Chinese authorities.

The paper will proceed with historical outline of Dungan enclave in Osh. It will then trace reasons for linguistic affiliation and finish with sets of recommendations.

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While a full definition of populism remains contested, there is near consensus that one of the core components of a minimal definition involves a bifurcation between "the elite" and "the people", in which the former are critiqued for their treatment and/or neglect of the latter. Most of the flowering literature on populism has focused on national level dynamics, whereby populist leaders seek to displace national leaders in the name of "the people." In this paper, we explore the utility of the populist concept to account for substate dynamics in which populist speech is used to critique the interference of national elites in local politics for harming the interests of the rightful local "people." Specifically, we investigate the concept of substate populism through a comparison of the frames used in both Central and South Asian contexts. Specifically, we compare the post-crisis survival frames utilized by Narendra Modi while the chief minister of the state of Gujarat in India and Melis Myrzakmatov while the mayor of the independent city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan. During Modi's and Myrzakmatov's respective tenures, Gujarat and Osh experienced deadly ethnic riots resulting in national and international scrutiny of their pre-riot provocations as well as their post-riot development plans. We demonstrate that in both cases Modi and Myrzakmatov utilized substate populist rhetoric to articulate local resentments and maintain popular support, promote sweeping development programs, and delegitimize external efforts to promote post-conflict reconciliation. In other words, Modi and Myrzakmatov utilized populist discourse to reinforce local claims of sovereignty in the face of challenges from the center. In order to gain a fuller appreciation of the various dimensions of substate populism, we then compare these post-crisis frames to those utilized by local elites during quotidian periods. We argue that scholars and policymakers alike should account for the potential for substate populism to exacerbate centrifugal dynamics, especially in post-crisis moments, such as ethnic riots.

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Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the Spring of 2018 (and more generally over the past two decades), the paper interrogates the state of the relations between Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in the city of Osh.

Post-2010 Osh has been rebuilt, partly with the intent of redesigning urban city-scape. Old markets are less buzzing than in the past, and a whole range of new high rises have appeared, including a rather unusual 16-storey apartment bloc. Has Osh's social fabric been restored and wounds healed or are old and new grievances simply hidden under a veneer of stability and brand new building and infrastructure?

The paper revisits developments at local level, paying special attention to local initiatives aimed at conflict prevention and the re-integration of communities. Yet, the two communities, a few exceptions aside, remain segregated.

Overall, the paper advances the following claims: One, despite some progress, tensions between communities remain. Grievances have not been addressed and tensions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz continue to linger beneath the surface. Two, Osh is now visibly more Kyrgyz. By contrast, Uzbeks have withdrawn from public life.

Crucially, mutual distrust across communities, the distrust by one community in the law enforcement system and the absence of a shared narrative of the 2010 conflict all suggest that the situation on the ground is volatile. Order in Osh remains vulnerable eight years after the bloody conflict of 2010.

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Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on urban transformation and the making of urban identities in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Osh is often described as an ethnically divided city and as a tinderbox. Indeed, several parts of the Fergana Valley, including Osh, have seen deadly episodes of violence in the last 25 years. Riots in Osh in 2010 echoed similar patterns of violence in the city in 1990, leading many to conclude that underlying ethnic tensions are the primary problem. Since the late 1990s the region has also seen significant amounts of foreign aid for peace building and conflict prevention, which also take ethnicity as the central issue around which to intervene. Such programs promote Western liberal principles of equality and tolerance across ethnic lines—principles that are ill suited to the spatial history of ethnic difference in Osh. In this paper, I suggest that ineffective peace-building projects have more to do with the limited set of "tools" available to the outside expert than they do with the real causes of violence, such as uneven development. I make this argument through textual analysis of influential public reports about the 2010 riots, which privilege a version of Osh's recent history that is primarily focused on ethnic difference. To counter that dominant narrative I draw on data collected in 2015-16 from mobile and participant-led interviews that draw attention to the multiple trajectories of Osh's residents and infrastructures since the 1970s. As the quote in the title suggests, the riots in 2010 had a profound impact on the city's large youth population. While some have permanently left, many others are pursuing new futures in a new urban landscape. A focus on these stories complicates the teleological use of history by mainstream development actors. It also highlights the multiple, mobile and mutable identities that, together, are producing urban space in Osh. As the late geographer Doreen Massey (2005) warns, when one dominant narrative exists about a place, geography is turned into history and space is reduced simply to time. I heed Massey's call for greater attention to the political possibilities that attend a spatialized representation of the world by seeking to recover a multidimensional sense of urban space in Osh. Ultimately, to understand contemporary urban life in Osh beyond the narrow focus on ethnicity is to come back around to understanding peace and conflict in new ways.

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Paper long abstract:

Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) play a salient role in settings of intergroup violence, especially where sovereign-state governance is ineffective or approaching nonexistence. This describes the situation in southern Kyrgyzstan, particularly in the "southern capital" of Osh, during and in the months following June 2010. Following the April ouster of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Kyrgyzstan was governed by a provisional government with contested legitimacy and limited capacity. The June 2010 violence along ethnic Uzbek and Kyrgyz lines in the city of Osh resulted in hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of internal and external refugees. Given these conditions, southern Kyrgyzstan was a prime candidate for peacekeeping assistance from regional and intergovernmental organizations. A particularly well-positioned force to take on this role was the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which had a presence in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Interim President of Kyrgyzstan Roza Otunbaeva called on outside assistance to quell the violence from a very early point. Despite direct calls for foreign intervention, no aid in limiting the violence was forthcoming. I examine the nonintervention of the OSCE in southern Kyrgyzstan through the lens of "organized hypocrisy." Multi-member organizations such as the OSCE often contain countervailing preferences and values. The difficulty of coordinating actors within such international organizations predictably leads to situations in which the available material resources are insufficient to match up to the expressed, constitutive norms and goals of an organization. This appears to outside actors as a failure of the organization to meet its expressed mandates and, consequently, a failure of governance. In many cases, rhetoric is consistent with organizational ideals, yet no action is taken. This is particularly the case in the area of international peacekeeping and intervention due to highly-valued—yet often contradictory—norms, such as respect for sovereignty and the so called "responsibility to protect." I employ primary source, documentary and interview materials with key decision makers, both in the Kyrgyzstani political elite and the OSCE, to illuminate this theme.