Kyrgyz, Uzbek Tensions Rooted in Class, Not Ethnicity, Experts Say

The violence that has claimed scores of lives in Kyrgyzstan is frequently ascribed to ethnic tensions, but regional experts say the causes are more complex.

“I don’t believe in a narrative of long-simmering ethnic tension,” Alexander A. Cooley, a professor at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and an authority on Central Asia, said in a telephone interview.

Indeed, ethnic distinctions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz are so slight as to be hardly distinguishable, Professor Cooley and others say.

The violence that has claimed scores of lives in Kyrgyzstan is frequently ascribed to ethnic tensions, but regional experts say the causes are more complex.

“I don’t believe in a narrative of long-simmering ethnic tension,” Alexander A. Cooley, a professor at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and an authority on Central Asia, said in a telephone interview.

Indeed, ethnic distinctions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz are so slight as to be hardly distinguishable, Professor Cooley and others say.

Both are predominantly Muslim and they speak a mutually comprehensible Turkic language.

The most notable distinction, the one that is most responsible for the animosities that led to the recent violence,

Central Asian experts say, is economic: Kyrgyz are traditional nomads, while Uzbeks are farmers.

That divide has translated today into a wide class distinction, as Uzbeks have prospered and now own many of the businesses in southern Kyrgyzstan, which has engendered resentment.

Among the first buildings to burn in rioting over the weekend was the “People’s Friendship University,” singled out apparently because it was built with donations by wealthy Uzbek businessmen.

Ethnic Kyrgyz in the south have remained largely loyal to a president deposed in April, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev,

while ethnic Uzbeks have supported the new interim government.

Mr. Bakiyev, now in exile, has denied any role in the rioting, according to this brief but provocative article in the New York Times.

Uzbeks make up about 15 percent of the population of Kyrgyzstan, but they constitute a sizable portion of the population in the south,

and had made up about half of the residents of the country’s second largest city, Osh, before the violence depopulated Uzbek neighborhoods.

Sergei Mikheyev, a Central Asia expert at the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow research group, said the basic divide between the groups was still not sufficient to explain the rioting. Mr. Mikheyev instead blamed the recent political turmoil.