Why Kyrgyzstan?

Why Kyrgyzstan? 

I’ve been traveling in and around Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, for the past 14 days (!!!). I’ve been getting this question a lot. Many people I talk to have never heard of Kyrgyzstan or Bishkek. If they have, they often could not tell you where these places are located on a map. 

(By the way, for the purposes of simplicity, I’m going to abbreviate Kyrgyzstan as KGZ for the rest of this blog series.) 

Map of Kyrgyzstan. The capital, Bishkek, is located in the central north of the country. 

So, why KGZ? I was immediately enchanted by KGZ from the first time I crossed into its territory while hitchhiking on a semi-truck in 2015. (I wrote about that trip across the China-Kyrgyz border).

The views on the Torugart Pass, the mountain pass between China and KGZ, were like nothing I had ever seen before; they made Colorado’s mountains seem small in comparison. While I rode next to the trucker, I stared out the window in awe. We crossed the mountain pass from China into KGZ, driving up and down mountains and through valleys, with snow-capped mountains with glaciers in the background and rolling grassy hills in the foreground. 

In 2015, I was in KGZ to explore. I was on a summer trip doing research on the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and scoping out the ethnic minority conflicts and border issues in this dynamic and diverse region along the ancient Silk Road. I visited Osh, KGZ’s second largest city, and was hosted by the family of a contact I had made through jiujitsu. They never let me train, since I was female, but the wife spoke some English and hosted me at their home and cooked me meals my entire stay in Osh. During the trip, I was pleased to be able to communicate with the locals in Uyghur. I was also fascinated by the recently independent country’s nationalism and ethnic diversity. From that moment on, I knew that even if KGZ was outside of my current scope of dissertation research, I would return at some point to do research in this fascinating and beautiful place. 

Fast forward to 2018 with the ongoing Uyghur humanitarian crisis unfolding. I knew I couldn’t stay silent and knew I would be writing controversial articles about the atrocities. I knew I could not go back to China as long as the current regime under Xi Jinping was in power for fear of being arrested due to my research and publications. I couldn’t go back unless some major political and liberalizing changes took place in China. It was time to re-think my research agenda and plan an alternative field site. Meanwhile, I was applying for postdoctoral fellowships at a number of universities--Princeton, Yale, Harvard--and they all wanted a research proposal. 

Here is what I wrote:

“Chinese development projects along the “New Silk Road” carry implications for the escalation of the Chinese political-economic model of authoritarian-capitalism outside of China. Chinese-funded roads and oil pipelines involve negotiations of territorial sovereignty in post-Soviet space. While Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have relatively strong authoritarian governments, in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan local governments are comparatively weaker. I hypothesize that the threat of Chinese authority undermining local governments will be more prevalent where the central state government appears weaker. 

Using these preliminary results, I will examine the human and political impacts of Chinese New Silk Road economic development on local attitudes of xenophobia in Central Asia, especially in Kyrgyzstan. Growing hostility towards Chinese migrant workers may reflect a global trend toward xenophobia. Investigating this phenomenon will measure the feelings of locals toward Chinese development projects as a potential threat to their territorial sovereignty.

I will use my Uyghur language skills, and employ a local interpreter when necessary, to conduct field research in Central Asia to investigate how local communities view and respond to Chinese development projects along the New Silk Road.” 

I never did get offered those prestigious postdocs (and thank god I didn’t). But I did use a similar proposal to apply for the Research Fellow position at the Czech Academy of Sciences two years later, and my proposal was accepted in October 2020. Part of my job right now is to conduct field research in Central Asia and they are paying me to do so. 

And so, here I am. 

KGZ is a popular place for US graduate students and other researchers of Central Asia to conduct ethnographic research because the government is relatively weaker and poorer than the other Central Asian countries. KGZ’s state security and surveillance is not as developed, and freedom of speech is somewhat tolerated. Conducting research in the other Central Asian countries could be risky--I could get arrested if found out that I was “stealing state secrets.” But KGZ does not have this kind of totalitarian government, nor the capacity to monitor random esoteric social science research. KGZ is also relatively more open and liberal, considered the most “democratic” of the Central Asian countries. KGZ has relatively free and fair elections and a large presence of Western-funded and independent NGOs and organizations, such as USAID and the UN. 

Being that KGZ borders the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, there is also a large Uyghur population--both those Uyghurs who were born in KGZ (Uyghurs are a recognized ethnicity minority in KGZ), as well as Uyghur refugees from China. I had also done some preliminary research on the queer scene in KGZ (see Bagdasarova 2018; Suyarkulova 2019), and knew it was a potential site for more research on that front as well. 

In short, I’m here to look at Chinese economic development, Chinese migration (and hostility towards it), Uyghur diaspora, and LGBT issues. 

Finally, I have recently realized that KGZ is not even on the map for most people. People’s mental maps of the world have a big blank space in this region--some people have heard of Kazakhstan (maybe from Borat?), but not Kyrgyzstan. In this sense, for a lot of Westerners, KGZ does not even exist. An entire country, an entire people, and a long, rich history--from the Silk Road to the Mongol Empire to Soviet occupation--that people don’t even see. That area of the world is a blank spot in most people’s minds. People know of China, they know of Turkey, they know of Europe, but the space in-between is basically a blank spot. 

And that blank spot in-between China and Turkey are the post-Soviet countries--the countries, including Afghanistan, that were ravaged by years of colonization and war. These countries are some of the strongest authoritarian (some say totalitarian, some say kleptocracy) countries in the world now with shocking and atrocious human rights abuses that rival China’s (e.g., killing, arrests, and disappearances of activists and political opponents).

Western countries are complicit in these human rights abuses because a lot of the money--money mostly from oil, gas and mining--from resource extraction by these governments is held in German, Dutch, and Swiss banks. While the people are starving and lack water, the governments are funneling large amounts of money abroad.

But how can people in other parts of the world care about what is happening in this region if they don’t even know that these countries exist? And if they don’t know that these countries exist, then they don’t know that the people and cultures in them exist. And if they don’t know that the people in them exist, how can they care? How can advocates move forward an agenda of freedom in these countries among so much ignorance? 

The first step toward healing the world--from climate change to poverty--is about understanding that WE ARE ALL CONNECTED. This theory is something that I like to call “integral geography,” inspired by Ken Wilbur’s “integral theory.” 

Integral geography is about understanding how everything is connected--the oil and gas of Central Asia fuel climate change, while European banks benefits from the cash flows. We are all connected, whether we realize it or not. But we cannot start to heal the major and most pressing problems of our world based on these inter-connections unless we are aware of where those connections flow from and to. If the Earth is like an interconnected and interdependent organism, KGZ is one of the many sprained ankles. How can we heal a sprained ankle if we don’t even know that the ankle exists? First, we must become aware of the ankle. Second, we must feel and understand the pain that is emanating from the injury. Third, we can start to send resources to heal the ankle. 

I am feeling inspired to spread awareness about this place, putting this place onto people’s mental maps as a first step toward creating a more integral geography. In my utopian vision, we as world citizens will be aware of all the countries and people of the world so we can slowly start healing together. 

So, in conclusion, I was captivated by the beauty and culture of KGZ. It was the perfect research site, since the Kyrgyz language is similar to Uyghur and borders China with lots of Chinese and Uyghur migrants, refugees and immigrants. It is also a field site with possibilities to investigate the relationship between authoritarianism, colonialism, Islam and LGBT rights.

In an effort to contribute to integral geography, KGZ is one step along a longer journey to address human rights abuses around the world and heal together as an interconnected world, not separated by nations and ethnicities but united in our shared humanity.