Wild-west approach to personal security gains adherents in Kyrgyzstan

Daniel Sershen 1/19/07

The January 18 shooting of Yrysbek Zhooshbekov, director of the massive Kara Suu market in southern Kyrgyzstan, is the latest in a series of high-profile murders that have placed Kyrgyzstan's political and business communities on edge. Experts say a surge in gun-related crime and a loosening of firearm regulations is promoting a Wild-West approach to security.

On December 14 the Kyrgyz parliament overrode a presidential veto of a law authorizing legislators to carry firearms. The measure sailed through parliament in light of the killings of three MPs since the Tulip Revolution of 2005. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Legislation passed last November, meanwhile, gives private citizens the right to use weapons in defense of property. That move was widely seen as a reaction to the looting that accompanied the revolution that ousted former president Askar Akayev. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"If the state cannot provide for the protection of personal property, the private businessman must do it, as in any democratic country," lawmaker Kubatbek Baibolov said during a parliamentary debate on the issue, according to state news agency Kabar.

Given its Soviet history of strict gun control and relatively limited access to firearms, Kyrgyzstan can hardly be considered a hotbed of proliferation. A 2004 report by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey contrasted Kyrgyzstan's low levels of gun possession and related crime with post-conflict states such as Georgia and Tajikistan, which experienced a spike in the availability and use of weapons.

However, the experience of the Tulip Revolution encouraged a growing number of Kyrgyz to take safety into their own hands. "The situation has changed quite profoundly. I would say that following the March events in 2005, there is this underlying sense of the government losing, or partially losing, its monopoly of violence," said Stina Torjesen, co-author of the Small Arms Survey report, which is being reissued in the coming weeks to account for the shift since Akayev's departure.

The report's authors gained access to Interior Ministry data outlining a "very significant increase" in both gun crime and the number of licenses issued since March 2005, according to Torjesen. Although her team did not repeat the extensive household survey that was done for the 2004 edition, additional research and interviews indicate that a lack of public confidence in law enforcement is fueling the trend, she said.

"Demand [for weapons] has increased, but there's also a normative change, which I think the new legislation is proof of. Whereas the Kyrgyz elite before was very averse to the idea of legitimizing weapons possession by ordinary civilians," she said, now officials are signaling that it is acceptable.

Viktor Yartsev, manager of Bishkek's main gun shop, said gun sales jumped during the period immediately after March 2005, but he denied that it had become a trend. "There was a tendency of growth, but not such that one could say there were avalanches of demand," he said. "The peak has already passed."

Yartsev, whose shop shares space with the hunter's association that approves the vast majority of private gun licenses, said the firearm registration process in Kyrgyzstan remains quite strict. Based on the association's membership of approximately 12,000, he estimated that the number of registered personal firearms in Kyrgyzstan did not exceed 20,000.

Torjesen also felt that it was too early to interpret the rise in firearm ownership and related crime as a drastic shift toward a more permissive gun culture. Rather, she said, certain segments of society seemed increasingly willing to use guns as a way to ensure safety or solve disputes.

If the trend continues, she said, gun violence may become increasingly common, despite cultural and historical factors to the contrary. "Perhaps you more get into a Latin American scenario, where you have strong elements of crime and, again, a very problematic functioning of the police force," she suggested, but not "full-scale mobilization and full-scale proliferation."

Torjesen saw the largely nonviolent opposition protests at the end of 2006 as positive from a gun control perspective. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. "The voicing of grievance by the Kyrgyz citizen has not yet resulted in more gun use, and I think that's a really important and positive aspect to emphasize in the case of Kyrgyzstan," she said.

Editor's Note: Daniel Sershen is a freelance journalist based in Bishkek.

Posted January 19, 2007 © Eurasianet