Category Archives: Ethnicity/Race/Nationality

I haven’t done an update on Kyrgyzstan in several days.  While things seemed to have calmed in the southern part of the country, tensions are high, the humanitarian crisis is deep, and the political outcomes are uncertain.

Two questions have been occupying most commentators:  Why the violence, or, specifically why didn’t we see it coming? and What are the international ramifications, particularly for the US and Russia?  I’m personally less interested in the second question, and for the most part discussion on this has ranged from the ludicrous (for how ludicrous see Michael Hancock’s undressing on Registan), the paranoiac and uninformed, the all too typical, to the regurgitated.  Basically, I’ll leave it to the foreign policy wоnks to untangle this mess.  I just hope to hear something new as they do.

The “why” question, however, is the thing that seems ..read more

From Ferghana.ru.

h/t Lyndon.

The more I educate myself about events in Kyrgyzstan, it’s becoming apparent that people who actually know something about the place are skeptical of the “longstanding ethnic strife” narrative.  Michael Anderson, a Dutch journalist who covers the region, put it this way in an interview with Ferghana.ru., “Unfortunately, Western media fall back on stereotypes, describing events in Osh such as “interethnic violence” and “interethnic problems”, although you and I know that that is not really what is happening.’  He went on to add this: “I am ashamed that western media pay so little attention and produce such poor coverage. This is bad. Another bad thing is the constant use of stereotypes – often wrong.”  For an example, see this piece on Slate which goes with the deep seeded ethnic strife thesis.

Not all are taken with the marketable stereotypes ..read more

Kyrgyzstan, the small Central Asian country which sprung onto the global scene in April, boggling the minds of American news anchors, has returned.  What I then called the “red revolution” has turned redder as ethnic violence swept through the southern city of Osh and Jalal-Abad this weekend.  On Thursday, marauding gangs began rampaging, attacking Uzbeks, burning government buildings, banks, cafes, and even an Uzbek theater first in Osh and then in Jalal-Abad.  Uzbeks locked themselves in their homes as rumors spread they would be killed on the street.  Uzbeks, being the minority, fled over the border in the tens of thousands into Uzbekistan.  Interim president Roza Otunbayeva declared a state of emergency and countrywide curfew, dispatched troops with shoot-to-kill orders, pleaded to Russia for help, and blamed supporters of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiev for the violence.  President ..read more

What follows is basically an incomplete rundown of some of the commentary coming out of Russia.  It’s mostly based on the Russian language media since, frankly, much of the English language media is worthless with some exceptions.

The Western Party line, as gleaned from Owen Mathews’ piece in Newsweek, seems to be a simple, yet predictable one:

Unlike Israel, though, Putin does not have the option of building a wall across the North Caucasus to keep out bombers. The likely reaction will expanded surveillance powers for the FSB and stop-and-search powers for the police—thereby cutting off a fledgling civil-society movement to crack down on corruption and institute wholesale reforms of both those institutions. Most worryingly of all for the Kremlin, if the state continues to fail to provide security to its citizens, popular protests will only grow—putting opposition groups on ..read more

Joachim Crima was surely mistaken if he thought he would coast into Russian history as the first Afro-Russian to run for public office.  Enter Fillip Kondratev, 34, technical director at the Volgograd construction company “Pyramid,” Afro-Russian, and newly declared candidate for mayor of the Srednaya Akhbuta.  But being black in Russia is pretty much were the similarities between Kondratev and Crima end.  Unlike the latter, Kondratev was born in Moscow province, Russia.  His father was a high level diplomat from Ghana (who he’s never met) and his mother Russian.  Moreover, while Crima may have been dubbed the “Volgograd Obama,” the title might be better suited for Kondratev.  As Trud explains, “Fillip looks very much like Barack Obama: He’s tall, 6’3″ and fairly light skin.”  Besides that, not much more is known about Kondratev.

Kondratev’s entry into the race certainly raises more suspicion as to the political veracity of the two Afro-Russian ..read more