Ten years ago today, on 10 June 2010, what seemingly started as a nighttime brawl between Kyrgyz and Uzbek youths at a casino in southern Kyrgyzstan escalated into violent clashes. It quickly spread.
The violence rapidly engulfed other cities in this ethnically mixed area of the country, such as Osh and Jalal-Abad. The most reliable estimates speak of 500 killed, several thousand injured, and 400,000 displaced, including 100,000 refugees who fled into neighbouring Uzbekistan. Approximately 2,000 properties were destroyed. By the scale and speed of destruction, this was the deadliest communal conflict since Kyrgyzstan's independence in 1991. It remains so to this day.
By the scale and speed of destruction, this was the deadliest communal conflict since Kyrgyzstan's independence. It remains so to this day.
The country appeared to be descending into a full-scale civil war, yet it did not. Largely, this wasn’t thanks to the authorities. In fact, the actions of the law enforcement agencies at times contributed to fanning the flames of conflict. In several cases, the military unjustifiably removed barricades erected by residents of various neighbourhoods without taking further measures to protect them. On some occasions, when raging crowds of assaulted military barracks, the armed forces offered little resistance, allowing them to take possession of APCs, firearms, and ammunition that were later used in the conflict.
Most analyses of what became known as the 2010 Osh ‘events’ focused on the broader picture, such as power struggles among politicians and regional elites, economic inequality, grievances between ethnic groups, and the uneven social and economic development between the country’s north and south. These factors provide an insight into the context in which the violence flared up, but fewer experts have asked why so many towns and villages with mixed Kyrgyz and Uzbek populations were largely spared from the conflict.
