The 'Tulip Revolution' meets the 'Arab Spring'
>From Jill Dougherty, CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent
April 22, 2011 -- Updated 0034 GMT (0834 HKT)
Kyrgyz President Rosa Otunbayeva said her country is traveling "a difficult,
thorny road" after its revolution last year.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Kyrgyzstan's president received a "Women of Courage" award in Washington
* In an interview, Rosa Otunbayeva discusses her country's revolution
* She's disappointed violence in her country did not spark international
outrace
* She is making history in Kyrgyzstan and "proud to say that we've done
this job"
Washington (CNN) -- As the "Arab Spring" revolutions dominate the news,
Kyrgyzstan's "Tulip Revolution" marks its one-year anniversary. That uprising
overthrew the authoritarian regime of President Askar Akayev, who resigned last
April.
Now, the woman who replaced him, Rosa Otunbayeva, follows developments in the
Mideast and North Africa as she grapples with the aftermath of revolution in
her own country.
"It's quite a difficult, thorny road," she said during a visit to Washington,
to accept a "Women of Courage" award from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The nonstop media coverage of the Arab revolutions is a sharp contrast to the
limited news of the Tulip Revolution, and Otunbayeva is disappointed that the
violence in Kyrgyzstan did not spark the international outrage that violence in
Mideast countries has.
"On April 7th (of last year) a crowd of people came to the central square in
front of our White House," she said. "They were shot straight from the roof.
Eighty-seven people died, hundreds were wounded. Yet nobody defined this as
unacceptable or outrageous."
In July of last year, after President Akayev fled the country, Otunbayeva was
sworn in. Acting as interim leader, she pledged to serve for 18 months until
new elections. And she made history, becoming central Asia's first female head
of state and head of government in a traditional, majority-Muslim country.
But making history has not solved the mountain of problems she faces. The
Kyrgyz government is faltering. There are other major challenges, Otunbayeva
says, including sharp increases in food prices and a budget shortfall. There
are security problems: the central Asian nation borders Tajikistan, a neighbor
of Afghanistan.
One of the first tasks Otunbayeva and her fellow revolutionaries worked on,
after years of presidential rule, was introducing a new constitution with a
parliamentary system.
"As head of provisional government, I was everything: speaker, head of the
government, interim president. We steadily reached what we had promised. And
today power is not any more in the hands of any one person."
Asked what is the biggest danger for a country after a revolution, she pointed
out that the Kyrgyz revolution was led by young people, just as the uprisings
in many of the Arab and North African countries have been.
"They said enough is enough, all this bribery and corruption."
But the Kyrgyz revolution was followed by violent ethnic fighting in south
Kyrgyzstan. "We lost people there, a lot of victims," Otunbayeva recalled.
In any country undergoing revolution it's critically important, she said, that
whoever ends up holding power be very attentive to longstanding issues like
ethnic rivalries.
"You should have an exact plan of action, how you'll fix it," she said.
"Otherwise it will put you in danger."
Kyrgyzstan had some advantages over a few Mideast and North African nations:
after the fall of the Soviet Union it introduced freedom of speech and
assembly. It has a strong civil society and trade unions. Many young Kyrgyz
study in the United States.
Otunbayeva said events of last year were some of the toughest and most dramatic
in Kyrgyz history. It wasn't just an issue of survival, she said, but an issue
"of sovereignty, of independence, of unity of the nation."
"We are an ancient nation in central Asia on the Silk Road, quite famous. We
have a rich history and traditions," she said. It was a test for her country
and for herself.
Otunbayeva said it's important to be a role model for young women. "The
situation is not as good as it was before," she said. Fundamentalist religion,
she said, is on the rise and, as a result, the situation of women has
deteriorated in her region.
"In such a circumstances, to be a leader of the nation, this is really, I
guess, a good impetus for thousands and thousands of women to be in the
forefront of the nation. And I hope I will be a really good example."
Receiving the Women of Courage award from Hillary Clinton, Otunbayeva was cited
for "courageous leadership...binding together a historically fractious
opposition into a provisional government structure able to check the struggles
for power from stirring up wider divisions in society."
"That's really a very conscious goal of hers," said central Asia expert Martha
Brill Olcott of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "to be this
example of the first woman in office in the region.
"She has a strong sense of historic mission about what she's doing. She wants
to make a revolution that's successful, that makes Kyrgyzstan a sustainable
democracy, and even more than being the first woman, she really wants to be the
first person who leaves (office)...She sees it not only as making a revolution
but creating a model that somebody could walk out the door."
Otunbayeva explained it this way: "As it happened, I was the person around whom
other parties, political leaders, rallied. I'm one of many millions of women in
my country. And I'm proud to say that we've done this job. We didn't lose our
sovereignty. We did it."
Smiling broadly, she said: "So, women can do something in Kyrgyzstan."
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