I thank Ben who has edited this post and published at Global Voices Online and Neweurasia (Originally published at Global Voices and Neweurasia). It was nice to collect opinions of people through the kyrgyz blogs.

The citizens of Kyrgyzstan, a nominally Muslim country, have an interesting history with Islam: While the nomadic Kyrgyz haven’t really been introduced to the religion before the 18th century, Kyrgyzstani Uzbeks from the Ferghana Valley practice a more traditional form of Islam. During the Soviet era, religion was pushed to the sidelines of society, but Islam has seen some revival since Kyrgyzstan’s independence in 1991, again mostly in the southern rural parts of the country. Read the rest of this entry »

The Shanghai Summit went off without a bang or even a fizzling noise of the Central Asian republics frying under the massive heat of their fellow members from Russia and China. Putin is an honest man according to many here. When pressed, people don’t have a good reason for how honest he is other than the “lack of corruption in Russia.” I’ll leave that out with no comment, this ain’t no political blog!, writes James, the another Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan.

I see my blog is also specified on linking the posts of foreighners, live or came to Kyrgyzstan by travel. For today, I’ve found another interesting post of Lauren and Martin, Peace Corps Volunteers in Bishkek, about “konoks” (quests). They are here from July 2007. In the Kyrgyz Republic, Lauren will be serving as a secondary school English teacher. Martin will be working as a sustainable NGO developer.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Kyrgyz societies is the tradition of konok, or guesting. Konok (gosti in Russian) is the process in which you go over and visit a neighbor. It generally involves tea and a lot of food. Usually, the person hosting offers their best food and sits the guests in the seat of honor, which is usually a raised seat at the end of the table. For Lauren, it is a little similar to the once tradition in Chile, except there is a lot more pressure to eat. Families invite others for konok for special occasions or just to make someone feel welcome in the neighborhood. So far, Lauren and I have gone on konok three times each and they are the times that we feel most welcome within our neighberhood.

I wanted to write something for round-up from Kyrgyzstan, but I see that there is no any interesting theme to discuss at the Kyrgyz Blogosphere…

Ben Maritz, who is travelling in Central Asia now, has written another post about the Water Policy of Kyrgyzstan and aggrevated relations of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan on this issue:

Kyrgyzstan’s greatest natural resource is its water, which flows down from its Tian Shan and Pamir mountains into the Syr Darya and Amu Darya (also known as the Oxus) rivers that lead to its neighbors. During the soviet era, this water was used mainly for the thirsty production of cotton in the valleys of Uzbekistan. Since independance in 1991, as the various central asian countries struggled to make the transition to market-based economies, each has been trying to monetize whatever assets the Stalin era gerrymandering left them with. For most countries, this is mostly natural gas. Kyrgyzstan, however, has no gas, and so has taken to trying to sell their water to their neighbors: threatening to dam up the rivers for power production if Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan do not provide cut-rate shipments of natural gas.

The predictable result of this has been a very tense relationship between the two countries, which has led to occasional border skirmishes and vastly restricted regioal commerce, hobbling Kyrgyztans economy, and making border crossings very difficult. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the regional politicial club, has made resolving water disputes a top priority, and some progress has been made, but still the main borders between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are closed — the two countries’ capitals are can be passed only thorugh Khazakstan.

Another tourist-blogger writes about the Kyrgyz Hospitality:

They Kyrygz people we met in the mountains were invariably sweet. They welcomed our “Community based tourism” with genuine hospitality. Having come from China, I was shocked that they didn’t try to sell us anything along the way. I saw in them the same patience and kindness that I think can be found in the people of the sierra around the world.

Just sitting in the computer-room of the Kyrgyz Service of the Radio of Liberty in Bishkek, as I was invited for their round-table on SCO summit results. So, everyone, who is in Bishkek can listen my speech at this the radio. I cannot remember what the FM is this. But you can also listen the podcasting through their web-site: www.azattyk.kg

Another news, yesterday Ben has suggested to write round-ups from Kyrgyz blogosphere for the Global Voices Online. As my english is not well to be more professional my stuff, he suggested his help on reediting them. So, I’ll write to them as soon as possible, if there is any interesting stuff from the KG Blogosphere :).

Another one is we are in a process of writing a new appeal on SCO summit held in Bishkek. I mean that Youth liberal Platform I take part at. That appeal will not be as support of the summit results or just critics. We’ll say we would not like to turn off the way forward to West and the United States. i think it is relevant for today’s situation as every western authoritative media has called the summit as “anti-western”. I also think it is built to stand against the west and USA, therefore I don’t support the idea of beeing with China, Russia and other Central Asian countirs in a one military block!!!

Yes, one more news. That is I will attend American Courses in Bishkek to improve my English forehead. So, see my English after three months to be more professional. And i hope I can begin writing for Neweurasia too…

Is there any interested bloggers?

BlogCamp CIS and the Baltics 2007 is the first (BarCamp)in the post-Soviet space that we are aware of. We aim to gather 300 bloggers, new media professionals, and other types of geeks for a week-end in Kyiv in mid-October. Our objective is not only to discuss the wider new media and Web2.0 developments in the region, but also to test if BarCamps have a (bright) future as a peer-learning platform in this region.

We expect to secure enough funding to invite bloggers who would not otherwise be able to attend. More information on this is forthcoming in late August. If you want to attend–at your own expense or with financial assistance from us–please register on the Wiki. Please note that we will be able to help only those residing in the CIS and the Baltics. We are also considering charging a small fee (5-10 USD) to help offset the costs of some meals.

Although we expect that the majority of the presentations at BlogCamp CIS and the Baltics would be in Russian, we are open to hosting presentations in any languages, as long as you are sure that you would have an audience. By our rough estimate, 1/4 of all presentations will be in English–we’ll aim to have at least one English-language presentation during each session.

True to the peer-production spirit of BarCamps, everybody is supposed to contribute. If it’s your first BarCamp, we’d advise you to give a talk/present. If you don’t feel comfortable doing it, there are plenty of other opportunities to get involved and help us organize a better event:

• sign-up as a volunteer to help during the event
• if you are from Kyiv, host our international guests at your house (here is a link to the sign-up sheet)
• bring your camera to record some sessions and post them online later
• help us promote BlogCamp by putting our event badge on your blog/LiveJournal and writing a post about us
• if all of this seems complicated, be so kind as to spell-check this Wiki and insert whatever commas are missing!

If you want to help in any other way, please leave a comment somewhere on the Wiki–we’ll get in touch.

Please sign-up in ‘Registration’ section, add your event in ‘Expected presentations’, and demand one in ‘Demanded presentations’!

Official web-site: http://blogcamp.com.ua/index.php?title=Main_Page

Let me introduce to you the newest kyrgyzstani blogger, Almurad, who already works on creating a new information agency “Today.KG”. His blog can be found at http://blog.today.kg.

When we were in Prague, Tolkun was telling about the idea of his friend of creating a new weblog, called as “The Oshington Times” (not Washington). The name “Oshington” is taken from the name of Kyrgyzstan city “Osh”, it is in south part of country. So, at this moment this blog is created and it’s author is writing different kind of posts, which are interesting for me too. For instance, one of the last was about the people, who are leaving our country, and he also gave some advise to managers of the State on what to do.

It was interesting to hear from him “putting together a favorable taxation system, making sure small and medium enterprises grow?”, as a recommendation for the Kyrgyz Government.

Asel, my colleague at Neweurasia, wrote an interesting post called as “Prostitution: Legalize or fight it?“:

Some make an argument for legalizing the prostitution, even though it goes against Islamic rules and eastern mentality. With legalization, they believe, the rights of sex-workers will be protected; they will go through regular medical check and receive any essential treatment in case if they get ill. It would also protect them from physical violence and mistreatment both from those who use their service and militia as well. It is said that militia workers use the services for free any time they want.

Other believe that legalizing is not right, what we need to do is to fight against prostitution. However, fighting means different to militia, it means making money on the growth and spread of such dirty places. So, how do we really fight it? Or do we indeed have to fight it? What could and should the government’s role be in it? It would be interesting to hear what you think about this issue.

My comment: Hey Asel, you took a key issue where traditional and modern view of points in Kyrgyzstan fight with each other. Regretfully, Sex-workers (or, so called “Workers of commercial sex”) have a difficult life, and as you mentioned in your post, their service is used by policemen for free, and they suffer from criminal groups too, as they work illegally.

What I think about this issue is legalizing the prostitution. It is really indeed, and you were writing about here “With legalization, they believe, the rights of sex-workers will be protected; they will go through regular medical check and receive any essential treatment in case if they get ill. It would also protect them from physical violence and mistreatment both from those who use their service and militia as well”.

But another problemathic case is will anyone support this idea from MPs, or, politicians? I fear lest that - not, as our traditional society will understand it differently. And noone want to lose their political dividents.

So, regretfully, I think, we will go for legalizing the prostitution not so soon.

I wasn’t able to write a round-up yesterday. Some problems were with money transferring from Osh to Bishkek, therefore I spent all my time for that till 5:30 p.m., then at 6:00 p.m. I went to meet my friend, and we were talking about “everything” till night. So, today I am combining two day’s round-up into one. Let’s read it?!

The main issue for these two days was again SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) summit. People were discussing things of the preparation for SCO summit in Bishkek.

kosmoslkl, blogger www.mylivepage.ru platform, quotes the link about SCO summit preparation in Bishkek. There is written there will be 140 cars and buses working for summit service. The is going to be policemen in each 7-10 meters and helicopters in air.

zigeunerin_kgz publishes exclusive photos from the road over the Philharmonic in Bishkek. I just… recommend you to look at photos of this girl. They say about the post of kosmoslkl, particularly about policemen, helicopters and etc.

A little before khaan and morrire were telling (Morrire, Khaan) to their readers about this, particularly, khaan was telling about the car over the road, which was taken by policemen away, morrire has been telling about the general preparation for SCO summit.

antipodean_wor, blogger from Bishkek, reports, Bakiev has stolen the quote of Confucius and publishes the photo of this slogan.

Ben translated this into English at Neweurasia, ”…perhaps the visiting Chinese delegation could raise some intellectual property rights issues with the hosts”.

diykanov, kyrgyzstani, currently lives in istanbul, published in kyrgyz language a list of SCO summit participants. He also included the information about the place of the participant-countries on population amount.

Djigit, Neweurasia contributor on Kyrgyzstan, made the same, but in Russian language. He says: “Kyrgyzstan has never seen such amount of Dictators in it’s own area”.

These posts were the part of the main issue for last 2 days. There are a lot of other issues, like, kyrgyz bloggers are “simpsonizing”, writing personal stories of a different adventures are not so interesting, I think.

Nevertheless, there were two things I was interested: (1) I’ve found the blog of a Fulbright Fellow in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, called as “One year in Kyrgyzstan“. She is, as she says, “keeping this blog updated for all those interested in my adventures in Central Asia during the the 2007-2008 academic year”. Another one (2) a diary on one russian alpinist, who reports on their trip through the Kyrgyz Rocky and Icy Mountains. As he mentioned, “there were 5 alpinists, who couldn’t come back”, as they are not alive any more…

Photo of antipodean_wor

Azia.us: Mirsulzhan Namazaliev on Russian neweurasia emphasizes that the crisis of 2005 was continued in 2006. He is less optimistic and is slightly ironical about the prospects of 2007 which, according to the Chinese zodiac, will be a year ruled by a Pig. In his post Mirsulzhan points out :

We can face another political crisis in 2007 if the president and the government of the country don t choose to be proactive in terms of defining the future of Kyrgyzstan. Though we can also expect some breakthroughs and positive developments in case new political strategy is implemented.

Here is going an interesting discussion on the theme “will the new generation able to do better, build more democratic and developed Kyrgyzstan?’.

Author of www.kyrgyzreport.com is more optimistic to say, that there are a lot of young people from kyrgyzstan, who have studied and still studying abroad. And they can do something better after 10 years for Kyrgyzstan.

Nevertheless, another commentator, Dan Fick says, that it is hard to say. “Many young people in Bishkek are focused on making money and will enter politics only later - after they’ve got enough money to buy protection and be comfortable”.

Describing the current political situation, Dan adds, “The current generation of political leaders - to include both the government and opposition - is incapable of moving the country forward at all. They are, for the most part, greedy and corrupt, and have no desire to move the country towards real democratic and economic reform”.