Scholar-soldier-statesman of unmatched distinction, the late Jaswant Singh, wrote a hauntingly riveting travelogue, Travels to Transoxiana ~ In lands over the Hindu Kush and Across the Amu Darya. In it, he lives his childhood dream of wanderlust in the Central Asian Region of the erstwhile Soviet Union (now, modern day countries like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan et al) to discover the land that he insists “altered the course of our history”. Jaswant vividly describes the relative rawness of Kyrgyzstan within the region by describing, “The bazaar of Frunze bustles with activity but it lacks the colour, the originality and native vitality of the bazaars of Uzbekistan.

The Kirghiz, strangely for a horse-loving mountain people are far less friendly”. The coldness of the Kirghiz in particular is captured by noting, “As a nomadic people, the Kirghiz have neither had any script nor any written history of their own. They do, have legends and lifestyle that has evolved over the centuries, but none of the other outer manifestations of nationhood” After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, fifteen countries emerged and the erstwhile Khanates of the Central Asian Region themselves accounted for five of those breakaway countries.

Largely isolated from the world with primitive exposure and understanding of the world outside, Kyrgyzstan still shadowed the Kremlin initially to ensure a modicum of continuity and order in the affairs of state. The newly signed Alma-Ata Protocol of expanding the formulation of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) ensured the same. Only after many illiberal stutters, governance challenges and coup attempts, did Kyrgyzstan come into its own beyond the looming shadows of Moscow. Kyrgyzstan warmed up to the ‘West’ and went as far as allowing a US-run Manas Air Base or Transit Center to support US military operations in Afghanistan ~ it was only closed down as the US was practically outbid by the Russians in terms of financial support.

However, the Kyrgyz economy was always predicated on the basic agricultural sector as the once-thriving industrial infrastructure of Soviet times suffered due to breakdown in supply chains and disruptions owing to the newly created countries. The agriculture sector was subsistence based. Basically, Kyrgyzstan had inherited the industrial investments, infrastructure, and know-how of the once-mighty Soviet state and those assets had to be squeezed in order to survive. One such relatively developed and potentially leverageable sector was the medical education infrastructure, as it had sufficient capacity to accommodate a large number of foreigners.

Commercially, It was a no-brainer opportunity to open up the universities and colleges to the financially attractive proposition of attracting foreign students ~ almost all the Central Asian Republics did so. Foreign students pursued the latent opportunity of education (especially medicine) in hordes ~ some from sub-Saharan countries partook educational opportunities that did not exist in their own countries, as did others from countries in the Indian sub-continent or Egypt which had quality infrastructure in their own countries, but where the competition was so steep that many who could not make it but could afford to pursue a foreign degree took to enrolling in Central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan. Importantly, the cost of pursuing medical education in Central Asian countries also worked out to be cheaper as opposed to pursuing medical education in private colleges within countries like India. It took the tragic Russia-Ukraine war to showcase the huge scale of Indian students in such countries who risked various socio-cultural differences (and costs) to pursue medical education in these lands.

Ukraine is believed to have hosted over 80,000 foreign students (nearly a quarter from Africa) and about 19,000 from India. But the recent unrest in Kyrgyzstan is starkly different from Ukraine. For one, there is no ‘war’ in Kyrgyzstan unlike in Ukraine, and only internal tensions that have pitted the locals against the nationality-agnostic group of ‘foreigners.’ Also, unlike Ukraine, which was more decidedly westernized, integrated with the outside world, and developed (till recently) ~ Kyrgyzstan is still emerging, raw, and poorly connected with the rest of the world. This underlying setting challenges its own ability to welcome, accommodate and accept new sensibilities that are inherent with the advent of foreigners.

The lay of the land is decidedly rougher, cruder, and unaccepting of anything that could be construed as ‘alien’ to its own traditional sensibilities. While the recent fracas owes its genesis to some initial issues (viral videos) of local students versus Egyptian students, the tensions soon exacerbated and spiraled to a generic ‘localsversus-foreigners’ narrative. The ability or the will to differentiate between nationalities did not seem to exist and the unfortunate inclusion of the naturally large number of Pakistani and Indian students who fill up these universities as ‘foreign students’ became collateral damage. The prevailing socio-economic morass in such countries with high unemployment, polarising politics, and resultant xenophobia did not help matters either.

The concept of vigilantism is well established in Kyrgyzstan and the same had reared its head with internal strifes in 2005 (Tulip Revolution), 2010 (April Revolution) and 2020 (October Revolution) causing much unrest, instability and lawlessness in society. The ability of the Kyrgyz state to firmly deal with unruly mobs is also tested as the government does not want to be seen to be taking on its ‘own’ especially in times when ‘othering’ is the global norm, and ‘foreigners’ are easy targets. Accepting the larger national tensions and issues that beset such incidents, the Kyrgyz President contextualised the incident by saying, “The demands of our patriotic youth to stop the illegal migration of foreign citizens and take tough measures against those who allow such activities are certainly justified”. He also alluded to domestic politics with opposition leaders who ostensibly instigated the dissonance, “those who were unable to come to power, do not approve the fight against corruption, those in prisons specifically created WhatsApp groups and fake accounts to spread provocative information”.

While this makes for typical reasons and reactions that afflict similar unrest with ‘foreigners’ in almost all countries, the hapless students get invariably caught in the crossfire. In today’s age of social media, it is also important to not end up earning a sovereign perception as exclusivist, majoritarian or supremacist as those suggestions could also put our own students in harm’s way, with implied attributions. Clearly in this unfortunate incident, the Indian students were the inadvertent and unintended target who got lumped together as part and parcel of the ‘foreigner’ denomination. Their safety is as important to the Kyrgyz authorities if they want to retain their country as a preferred destination for foreigners, for pursuing education,

(The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)