Extremism feared as Uzbeks flee

 The Australian

Amanda Hodge, South Asia Correspondent

DAYS of brutal ethnic pogroms in Kyrgyzstan have forced 400,000 people to flee their homes.
It has left the central Asian state more vulnerable to Islamic extremism, the UN has warned.

Close to one-12th of Kyrgyzstan's population -- almost all ethnic Uzbeks -- has been displaced by bloody clashes in the south. About 300,000 were in refugee camps within their own country yesterday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.

About 100,000 more have sought refuge over the border in Uzbekistan, prompting a humanitarian crisis in both countries.

The UN, Red Cross and the US sent emergency aid into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan this week and more airlifts were scheduled for the weekend. In camps on both sides of the border, a grim picture is emerging of mass rape and murder by Kyrgyz gangs loyal to former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, ousted in a popular uprising in April.

The official death toll stood at 223 yesterday but interim president Roza Otunbayeva admitted that the figure could be dramatically higher. "I would multiply by 10 times the official figures because there were very many deaths in the countryside, and our (Muslim) customs dictate that we bury our dead right away, before sunset," she said.

Human Rights Watch said it had documented evidence of rapes in the southern city of Osh, but had not determined the scale of sexual assaults.

However, Uzbeks in the city of Osh, where violence began eight days ago, said on one street alone ethnic Kyrgyz men sexually assaulted and beat more than 10 Uzbek women and girls, some as young as 12.

Kyrgyz community leaders have denied such allegations and accused Uzbeks of raping Kyrgyz women. Many refugees say they are too scared to return to Kyrgyzstan, where the state security forces have been accused of firing on Uzbek neighbourhoods and inciting violence among marauding Kyrgyz gangs.

Kyrgyz military chief Colonel Iskander Ikramov yesterday rejected the allegations, but conceded the army failed to stop the violence because its role was not that of a police force.

Large numbers of soldiers were finally visible in the southern cities of Jalal-Abad and Osh yesterday, however, as Kyrgyz authorities faced intense pressure to restore order.

While Russia and the US both have airbases in Kyrgyzstan -- the US Manas airfield is a crucial supply base for troops in Afghanistan -- both countries have ruled out military intervention.

But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev yesterday warned that Kyrgyzstan was in danger of being Balkanised and overtaken by extremists if the interim government could not restore order, pointing to the Taliban's rise in Afghanistan.

Southern Kyrgyzstan is home to the al-Qa'ida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, as well as elements of the radical Sunni Muslim Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a group committed to the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.

UN special envoy in Bishkek, Miroslav Jenca, also warned that the country's unrest provided fertile ground for extremism and predicted "big problems" if the 100,000 ethnic Uzbeks who fled across the border were denied a vote in the interim government's constitutional referendum scheduled for later this month.