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THE KYRGYSTANI TUMULT  Protestors in Kyrgystan hoot and holler over rising utility prices, something that rarely happens in Isaacstan, where there aren't many utilities anyway. |
Isaacstanis Worry Over
Troubles in Kyrgyzstan
of TheColumnists.com
and official scribe of the
Republic of Isaacstan
Once again I must declare that I am more than a bit perturbed by some of the happenings in the Middle East. In the wake of the current tumultuous developments in Kyrgyzstan, I hasten again to reassure followers of the newly-discovered republic of Isaacstan that all is still calm, peaceful-and boring--in Isaacstan.
Some people call Isaacstan a legend in my own mind. I choose to ignore that. I prefer to declare that I conjured up this country one fanciful day and have continued to extol this nation that lives up to the ideals of Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine and Groucho Marx.
Isaacstan is always keenly aware of what is happening among the group I choose to refer to as the 8-Stans. They are AfghaniSTAN, KazakhaSTAN, PakiSTAN, TajikiSTAN, TurkmeniSTAN, UzbekiSTAN, KyrgyzSTAN, and, of course, IsaacSTAN.
Kyrgyzstan is in the news now because of an uprising on April 7 that deposed president Kurmanbek Baklyev. He was driven from the capital, Bishkek, after troops opened fire on protestors. Almost 100 people were killed and more than 400 wounded.
The thousands of opposition protestors were infuriated by rising
utility costs and a government they saw as repressive and corrupt.
They seized control of important government buildings including
the television stations. Bakiyev fled to the south, soon went
to neighboring Kazakhastan and then to Minsk, the capital of
Belarus--another one of the former Russian republics, but one
that didn’t hang a Stan onto its name.
Any hopes by western reporters that the new leader would have a much easier name to spell and pronounce were quickly dashed. The president of the interim government is Roza Otumbayeva, a former diplomat. She reportedly taught Marxist-Leninist theory before embracing western mores. One insider said she speaks better Russian and English than Kyrgyz.
Kyrgyzstan, aka Kyrgyz Republic, is a country of almost five-and-a-half million people that lies south of Kazakhastan, east of Uzbekistan and west of China. Isaacstan, which is ignored on too many maps of the area, is in the vicinity.
Unlike many of its Stan neighbors, Kyrgyzstan does not have rich gas deposits. According to the World Almanac its leading industries include textiles, cement, sawn logs, refrigerators--and shoes. That makes it only a tad richer than Isaacstan, whose chief industries are yogurt processing, farming and the production of goatskin clothing. Isaacstan disapproves of the surfeit of vodka shops in Kyrgyzstan.
The Kyrgyz monetary unit is the som. This leads to some confusion when people take money from a bank account, saying, “I’ll have some Soms.” As of the last count there were 35 soms to the American dollar.
In order to convert soms to the Isaacstan monetary unit, the brick, it is important to correct an early outrageous report that there are 100 million bricks to the American dollar. Wrong. There are 105 bricks to the American dollar. So that means, if we know our arithmetic, there are three bricks to one som.
Isaacstan has avoided the kind of alliances that currently bedevil Kyrgyzstan, which is the only country in the world that has both American and Russian military bases. The United States paid big bucks to use the Manas air base to fly troops into Afghanistan. This has bothered the hell out of the Russians, who regard the region as part of its zone of influence.
Bakiyev (the deposed leader in case you lost count) repeatedly sought to pit the United States and Russia against each other in order to extract more financial aid from both. Last year he upset the Kremlin when he agreed to evict the Americans from the Manas base, then changed his mind after the Obama administration agreed to a steep increase in the rent and other favors.
These developments worried the Isaacstan administration for fear that an opposition party could arise that would demand that Isaacstan take advantage of the Russian-U.S. rivalry to carve out a good deal for itself. Fortunately, most Isaacstanis are too busy contemplating their navel. And many are trying to make sense out of the Torahn, a combination of the Torah and the Koran, which is left in all Isaacstan hotels.
Isaacstan tries to stay clear of the policies that have brought down some of the governments in the other Stans. It looks with favor, however, on Kazakhstan for its move toward a nuclear weapons free world. In a large advertisement in The New York Times recently, President Nursultan Nazarbayev (no Joe Smith he, either) reminded the world that the Kazakhs had got rid of their nuclear arsenal in 1991. And he called on the world to follow its example for a nuclear weapons-free world.
Isaacstan has no nuclear arsenal; it doesn’t even have Fourth of July firecrackers. But it is delighted to throw all its psychological backing to its neighbor.
Isaacstan has nothing in its history to match the founding national myth of Kyrgyzstan--the Epic of Manas. This is a 500,000 line poem that is 12 times the size of The Odyssey. It tells of a heroic warrior, Manas, who united the Kyrgyz by smoting enemy invaders upon the steppe. Yes, the air base, Manas, coveted by the Americans, is named after this legendary warrior.
An interesting development in the forced departure of Bakiyev (yes, that’s him again) was the talk that he might be hiding out in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden once eluded American forces. Isaacstan’s leading newspaper, The Bleat, loves to mention Tora Bora, because at the height of the early search to find Bin Laden in that region, The Bleat won a journalistic prize for its headline, “They Don’t Do the Hora in Tora Bora.”
There’s a new development that has titillated the 8-Stans group. It is the unsubstantiated report there is another nation in their midst that has been overlooked until now. It is the country: MusialSTAN. There is no confirmation yet of its existence, so all the Stans are awaiting further developments.
©2010 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted April 26, 2010.
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