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Is Kyrgyzstan's "pink" revolution a harbinger of change for Central Asia's entrenched dictatorships? This is the foremost question in much of the analysis and media coverage of the popular uprising that has dislodged President Askar Akayev, sending him scurrying from power, and allegedly into the arms of his Russian patrons.
Central Asia has long been a wasteland of human rights and religious freedom; the fledgling states that emerged from the demise of the Soviet Union were in no rush to discard the brutality and repression that characterized the Soviet system and its vassal republics. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan; all feature prominently in the annals of human rights abuse, torture, and the repression of Islamic opposition, peaceful or otherwise. These were regimes who did not need a September 11 to justify wide-scale repression and brutality.
The Ukrainian and Georgian experiences seem to have inaugurated an age of transformation in the long-stagnant political lives of many countries, though not necessarily always successful or for the better.
Little is known about the forces shaping the tide of change that has swept Kyrgyzstan in the past few days, and it remains to be seen how fundamentally different the new government will, and how much distance it will put between itself and Akayev's entrenched cronyism, nepotism and corruption. Much remains to be done in Kyrgyzstan, and much hope rides on the success of the Kyrgyz revolution.
Many questions have yet to be answered: Has the time finally come for Central Asia's tyrants and despots to be swept aside, the horrors of their illegitimate regimes finally laid bare? What role if any, will Islamic revivalism and reform play in this epic struggle to uproot the brutal legacy of these governments and their Russian backers? Are we witnessing the birth of an "age of revolution"? If change should come to these benighted lands, will it be peaceful, or will the regimes, increasingly threatened by imminent change, react with their characteristic belligerence, spilling blood to maintain their grip on power? And finally, will the Islamic heritage common to most of these countries remerge, casting off the former colonizer's alien legacy—the hatred and distrust of Islam that has caused untold suffering among many devout believers in these countries?
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