Askar Akayev

Askar Akayev rules over the Celestial Mountains. He also runs a land with twice as many sheep as people, a country where nomads breeding yaks and horses still roam the steppes, where the national culture is based on a folklore tale dating back a millennium, and where the capital, Bishkek, is named after the national drink--mare’s milk.

But Akayev, a physicist lured into politics during Soviet perestroika, also now leads the most democratic of the former 15 Soviet republics, a regional trendsetter with importance far disproportionate to its small size or population of 4.5 million. Kyrgyzstan, once famed as a key section of the legendary Silk Road trade route linking Asia with Europe, is again gaining importance as part of the new frontier between East and West.

A soft-spoken man with an impish sense of humor, Akayev, 52, is an unlikely politician. For almost two decades, he taught laser physics in the obscurity of Leningrad’s Institute of Precise Mechanics and Optics. But he was greatly influenced by a fellow physicist, Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei D. Sakharov, whome he considers his spiritual mentor. Akayev won election to the Supreme Soviet, and he rose so quickly and to such acclaim that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 offered him the Soviet vice-presidency, which he turned down to focus instead on what he called the “silk revolution.” in Kyrgyzstan. He went home and won the presidency unopposed. Two years later, President Bill Clinton heralded Akayev’s radical political and economic reforms as courageous and a model for the new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). He and his wife, Mayram, a mechanical engineer, have four children.

Under Akayev, Kyrgyzstan is unique among the four other predominantly Muslim Central Asian republics. It is increasingly referred to as the Switzerland of Central Asia because of its spectacular snow-capped mountains, its comparative political tranquility and the use of referendums as the most frequent means of deciding national issues. In 1995, he was reelected in the region’s first multi-party elections.

He has broken the mold in other areas too. In search of technology and expertise to help develop Kyrgyzstan in 1993, he became the first Muslim head-of-state to visit Israel since Egypt’s Anwar Sadat historic trip in 1977. His contacts worldwide are now so pervasive that Kyrgyzstan has received more aid per capita from the United States, Europe and Asia than any other Soviet republic, including Russia.

But Akayev and his country, nestled along the Chinese border, have also lately become the litmus test of problems for post-communist societies--and the difficulty of dealing with the slow pace of progress. “If Kyrgyzstan is unable to make progress,” said one Central Asian specialist, “it will resonate throughout the former Soviet Union.”

Question: The 15 former Soviet republics have now been on their own for almost six years. What have been the highs and lows of breaking with the Soviet system and becoming an independent state?

Answer: Among the lessons of the transformation is what I call the collapse of illusions. The essence of this lesson is that both the West and the post-communist nations naively expected too much in too short a time. The ruling elites in post-communist nations, including Kyrgyzstan, obviously had an exaggerated and simplistic idea about the kind of support they could receive from the West, including some kind of expanded Marshall Plan. And the West underestimated the systemic complexity of change and the degree of resistance from old and still powerful quarters.

American aid programs first assumed that this transition period would last five years. Today [former U.S. National Security Advisor] Zbigniew Brzezinski writes about 10 years of transition for post-communist countries. In fact, longer periods may be required.

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Q: Do you think the Kirghiz, as well as people in other Soviet republics, really understand what democracy is? Are they yet engaged?

A: In Kyrgyzstan the politically active population does not exceed 5% . . . . Our range of 12 political parties is very broad. But the role of these parties is exceedingly weak because of their vague social base. Many are elitist and are made up mainly of city intelligentsia. Their weak position in parliament does not allow them to exert tangible influence on economic, political and other decisions.

The political elites in our country are also still primarily made up of the second echelon of the former Communist Party and the state nomenklatura. Their aspirations and power have limited the reform potential. Their dream is to try one way or another to concentrate power and property in their hands.

Yet our democracy has been rooted. Now I think most people understand democracy is the best way of organizing the state.

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Q: Kyrgyzstan has been heralded as the most democratic of the former Soviet republics--in large part because of your leadership. But there is growing concern about a drift toward a more autocratic rule. Two years ago, for example, you dismissed the Soviet-era Parliament of 350 members, shrank it to 105 members and divided it into two chambers. The opposition charged you wanted a small Parliament that you could more easily control.

A: I really had to dismiss Parliament as it was made up of Soviet nomenklatura. I couldn’t pass a single law to get reform. When I introduced a privatization law, for example, they said Akayev wants to sell out Kyrgyzstan but we won’t allow him to do it. But that wasn’t the real issue. At that time, property was in their hands. It was a big source of power and income and they didn’t want to lose it or share it with the people. At the time, people still did not have a clear idea of democracy and they trusted Parliament. So either I had to leave office or dismiss Parliament. So I held a referendum to decide my destiny. The people supported me, and so I dismissed Parliament.

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Q: What about the crackdown on the press, specifically closing down two newspapers in Bishkek that were critical of you?

A: Democracy is like a rose. In order to allow the rose to bloom, you must tolerate the pinch of the thorns. Our democracy has granted freedom of the press but journalists are pricking me a lot of the time. I tolerate it in order to establish freedom. . . . I’m in favor of a free press because it’s my main means of explaining and implementing reforms. I’ve introduced two bills in Parliament to guarantee access to information and the professional activity of the press. . . .

One newspaper was closed through a court proceeding because it was involved in anti-Semitic propaganda. My legal advisor was Jewish and this paper said that the country is being governed not by the president but by Jewish advisors. I said this was a disgrace. The Jewish minority made a big contribution to the economic and cultural development of Kyrgyzstan . . . .

If my image has suffered because of these things, then I am proud of it. Some of this dates back to my trip to Jerusalem. I regret to say that the advisor has moved to Germany.

The second paper was closed by the minister of justice as it engaged in pornography. Although 70% of Kirghiz are Muslim, women have equal status with men and six of 16 members of Cabinet are women. We are the only country in the world where the head of the highest constitutional court is a woman. But this is still not a culture that accepts pictures of naked women.

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Q: For the first five years, you followed Western advice and introduced the most ambitious economic reforms of the 15 republics. You even introduced your own currency, the som, independent of the Russian ruble. Yet the World Bank recently said, “The economy has not yet generated a supply response.” What went wrong?

A: Our CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] partners originally criticized our radical reforms and predicted Kyrgyzstan would collapse. Yet today every macro-economic indicator shows that we look better than any of the other 14 republics. And of all post-communist countries, our progress is third only to Poland and the Czech republic.

We still have three problems but we are making progress on each. The first is a considerable budget deficit, but it is steadily coming down from a high of 15% during the Soviet era to an estimated 6% this year. The second is inflation, which over the past two years was as high as 32% to 35%, but we expect it to decrease to 17% this year. The third is a negative balance of payments in trade. But we now have a favorable investment climate and many foreign companies are coming in, including American companies that specialize in gold mining, telecommunications and agriculture. Our tobacco is such a fine quality that [Josef] Stalin used to send [Winston] Churchill Kirghiz tobacco and Armenian cognac.

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Q: But in many countries in transition, macro-economic trends don’t always translate into better standards of living. In fact, since 1991 the Kirghiz standard of living has dropped from 31st to 99th by U.N. criteria. Drug smuggling has increased. Unemployment is officially 20% but some analysts say it is as high as 50%. Many enterprises are reportedly only working at 25% capacity. What does the average Kirghiz have to show for abandoning socialism?

A: You’re right. We’ve had a real shock in Kyrgyzstan. But we did this on purpose because we do not have large resources such as oil and gas like other countries do. . . . . In reaction to their economic situation, quite a few of our compatriots started longing for socialism, blaming capitalism and market reforms in general. Many of them said that what the communists claimed about the virtues of socialism were half true, but what they claimed about the shortcomings of capitalism were wholly true.

The gap between rich and poor, however, is not as wide as in Russia, where wealth is monopolized by a small group of people. And people more often than not realize that current difficulties in their lives are overwhelmingly temporary.

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Q: Is there not the long-term danger that disillusionment with the lack of rapid or significant economic progress will in turn lead to disillusionment with democracy?

A: We have received more financial help per capita from the world--the United States, Europe and Asia--than any other former Soviet republic. But we know we can’t live forever on humanitarian aid so we have used this period to take the hard steps. After the Soviet collapse, all of our big industrial enterprises stopped because there were no more orders for their products, which laid off hundreds of thousands of qualified workers. So we took a World Bank loan for reconstruction and identified 30 large industries--in microelectronics, mining, agriculture, textiles and others--for reorganization and modernization. Now our industries are beginning to work again.

As a former university professor, I also believe in the importance of education. I took big loans from the Asian Bank and a grant from the European Union to reform education. Before we had nine universities. Today we have 36, with branches in every region. In Kyrgyzstan, 25% of high school graduates go on to universities--not far behind the United States.

Today, we have quite a different country. We have successfully implemented market reforms and since 1996 our economy has been on the rise. Last year our economic growth was 6% and this year we hope to get to 8% or 9%. Now people can see hope in the economy. And most important, people can express freely their thoughts and participate in elections and be owners of their own destiny. This is a big achievement. Both the country and the people have changed.

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Q: You live in a dangerous neighborhood: Afghanistan is nearby, as is Iran. What do you see as the main national security threats?

A: Afghanistan is a big problem for our region. We’ve proposed to the United Nations to hold peace talks in Bishkek because it’s suitable for both sides as well as all neighboring parties that have been involved in Afghanistan. Afghanistan won’t be unified even if the Taliban conquer [the last major holdout region] in the north because of ethnic divisions. To achieve peace, all ethnic groups must be included.

But the big threat for us is [narcotics] traffic, which is a problem we never expected. It is a great danger because there are many people in business and becoming addicts. Most of it comes from Afghanistan, where it is the main source of income to support the conflict. It comes through Kyrgyzstan to get to European markets. We’ve asked the U.S. and the European Union to help us because we can’t cope with the problem on our own.

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Q: Where will Kyrgyzstan’s identity and ties be strongest in a decade--with the West or the East?

A: Now, as in the past, we’ve been on the frontier of East and West, which is why we’re Eurasian. That’s why you find elements of both Oriental and Western mentality among the Kirghiz. From the West we adopted liberal democracy and from the East we get help preserving our traditions. In the past, the Great Silk Road through Kyrgyzstan connected the two; today we hope to be a modern bridge.