A country on the knife edge between hope and despair

Forty days after a violent uprising that unseated the president, Kyrgyzstan's future is still uncertain. By Shaun Walker in Bishkek

(EPA)

After snipers fired into the crowds of rioters attempting to enter the White House, the seat of government in the heart of Bishkek, the city's expansive central square is calm. Families laze on benches in the sunshine, and locals take photographs of the twisted metal in the fencing that surrounds the White House. The day in early April, when bullets ripped through the fencing and into the crowds, propelling this small and little-known Central Asian country into the international headlines, seems like a distant memory.

But beneath the surface, tensions still simmer. The country's interim government, made up of over a dozen political leaders with diverging political backgrounds and ambitions, has taken control of the country until elections that are set for early October. The ousted president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has fled to Belarus, and most of the world has recognised the interim government as legitimate. How it fares over the next few months will determine whether Kyrgyzstan will become the first parliamentary democracy in the entire Central Asian region, or whether the current cycle of revolution, followed by consolidation of power and increasing authoritarianism, will continue. Passengers arriving at Manas International, the capital's airport, get a crash course in the dilemmas facing the country within a few minutes of landing. Commercial jets touching down at the airport taxi past dozens of sleek US Air Force cargo planes parked on the tarmac, part of the Manas Transit Centre used by US forces to transfer troops and cargo to nearby Afghanistan. The US determination for a foothold in Central Asia, combined with Russian insistence that the region should be a special zone of influence for Moscow, has destabilised the country for years.

On disembarking the plane, passengers arrive at the Foreign Ministry Consular Point in the airport, where visas are issued. The border officials wear sharp green uniforms, but carry out their work not under a Kyrgyz flag, or a photograph of the country's president, but a large photograph of Tutankhamun.

"Someone brought it back from Egypt and we all liked it," giggles the visa officer in explanation. In a part of the world where nation states have only sprung up in the past two decades from the rubble of the Soviet Union, power is usually personalised, and national symbols are ruthlessly exploited to promote unity. The blue-and-gold death mask of the Egyptian king, staring impassively at new arrivals from within a neat photo frame, is a telling symbol of the lack of real authority in the country. Everybody in Bishkek is united in hatred for Mr Bakiyev, but ask what comes next and opinion is divide.

"Bakiyev's people, they are idiots, they aren't even human," says Ondurush Toktonasyrov, a 52-year-old who leads the "7 April Movement", which unites over 500 people who took part in the initial riots and want to make sure that the dozens of deaths were not in vain. "Finally, we have a dream of a better state, and I think it will work out. There won't be any more revolutions." Then he pauses, and adds: "But if this government turns out to be the same as the others, then we will depose of them again!"

A group of friends in the Central Square discuss the situation. "We need a parliamentary democracy," one says earnestly. "No we don't!" interrupts his friend. "We need a Stalin! A Hitler! We need a strong leader who will stop all the thieving. The problem is that there was no accountability. We need a good dictator who will simply execute people if they commit crimes."

Amid the debates over the country's future, a requiem service was held yesterday to mark 40 days since the 7 April riots that left 86 dead. Pictures of the victims were played on a giant screen, to a soundtrack of a woman's throaty voice wailing a sob-filled lament. Local musicians sang to a crowd of thousands, many waving flags and holding banners calling for a new kind of politics.

The rhetoric of the interim government is impressive. In the coming days, the draft of a new constitution will be released that will envisage a parliamentary system with a more powerful prime minister and a president who has a more ceremonial role. The new constitution will be put to a referendum in a month's time, and if it is approved, October elections will produce what should be the first democratic parliament in a region otherwise run by eccentric despots.

Roza Otunbayeva, head of the interim government, is a diminutive, bespectacled woman, who was formerly ambassador to the UK and looks more like a friendly aunt than a political heavyweight. She spoke to the crowds yesterday, surrounded by beefy security guards wielding Kalashnikovs, and tried to assure them that the era of rule by dictatorial kleptocrats is over.

"We will hand over all the levers of power to the new government, as soon as the election forms new, democratic ruling structures," Ms Otunbayeva told the crowd. "The people will decide who will rule the country, and together we will build an enlightened and free country. We all want Kyrgyzstan to use its new chance... and that never again will the country by ruled by one family with corrupt and irresponsible hangers on."

It all sounds good in theory, but the path ahead will not be easy. Sporadic clashes between the new authorities and supporters of Mr Bakiyev in the south of the country seem to be dying down, but harder than regaining control will be introducing values of democracy and transparency in a region where they are new. "Many of these people have been in government before," says Medet Tiulegenov, a politics professor at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. "They didn't pay much attention to corruption before and it will be hard for them to win the trust of the people."

Any new government will also have to negotiate a tricky foreign policy path between the United States and Russia, both of which have airbases in the country. It was Mr Bakiyev's simplistic horse-trading over Manas Airbase that helped fan the flames of the riots in the first place. He accepted a vast loan from Russia on the understanding he would close the base down, and then took more money from the Americans to keep it open. It takes a foolish man to play Vladimir Putin like this, and Mr Bakiyev got his reward when Russian television, widely watched in Kyrgyzstan, fanned discontent in the country.

The Kremlin was quick to denounce him as a spent political force soon after the riots, and Mr Putin was the first leader to call Ms Otunbayeva and recognise her as the legitimate leader of the country. As Mr Putin remarked wryly, and with a hint of satisfaction in his voice, "he [Bakiyev] stepped on the same rake as his predecessor", referring to Askar Akayev, whom Mr Bakiyev ousted in the Tulip Revolution of 2005 amid allegations of corruption and misrule. For now, Manas remains open, but after elections the new government will hope to do a better job than Mr Bakiyev of keeping both major powers happy.

But those worried that any new government won't take long to slip into the same habits that did for the last two presidents already have evidence to back them up in the way that the provisional administration has dealt with remnants of Mr Bakiyev's regime.

While Bakiyev and his close family have fled, those lower down the food chain with links to the regime have been rounded up. One such case is that of Vugar Khalilov, a British citizen and former BBC journalist who ran a Bishkek public relations firm that had Mr Bakiyev's government as one of its clients. Mr Khalilov, who is of Azerbaijani origin, was detained on 12 April in Bishkek on charges of money laundering, and despite a deteriorating spinal hernia condition has been held in a basement cell ever since.

"They haven't even questioned or interrogated him yet," says Azer Khalilov, Vugar's brother and the head of the BBC Azerbaijani service, who has travelled to Bishkek in the hope of securing his brother's release. "He is innocent of all the charges, but there have been publications in the local press saying that he is an enemy of the Kyrgyz people. How could he have a free trial in these conditions?" The Foreign Office has said it is monitoring the case.

Edil Baisalov, the 33-year-old chief of staff of the administration, quotes Lenin when asked about the Khalilov case – "All revolutions have excesses". Mr Baisalov is a former rights activist and was a key opposition activist over the past decade of Kyrgyz politics. Now, he spends his days shuttling between meetings, fielding phone calls and desperately trying to make the coalition government live up to its ideals. There are rumours circulating in Bishkek, which he denies, that he is on the verge of quitting the government in protest at its current course.

"This was a popular uprising, but whether or not it turns out to be a democratic revolution remains to be seen," he says. "It would be naive to think that everyone in the interim government has an idea what a democratic government should look like. It's up to us to struggle, to be persistent. It's a struggle every day."

Months of turmoil

*March 17: Five years after Kurmanbek Bakiyev became president, thousands of protesters threaten to oust him

*April 6: Protesters take a government building in the town of Talas, and hold local governor hostage

*April 7: Bakiyev orders a state of emergency as clashes escalate. Protesters storm the White House and state television station. Bakiyev flees.

*April 8: Opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva takes over as president. Russian president Vladimir Putin recognises the government.

*April 15: Bakiyev flies to Kazakhstan. Later he goes on to Belarus. The new government demands his extradition.

*May 13: Bakiyev supporters seize government buildings in new fightback.