BACKGROUND: On Thursday, March 27, a long distance passenger bus owned by a travel company from Xinjiang was attacked 60 km outside the town of Kochkorka in the Naryn region of eastern Kyrgyzstan on the road from Bishkek to Torugart. The bus, which was carrying 17 passengers and at least two drivers, was travelling to Kashgar to collect goods for resale in Kyrgyzstan and the passengers were carrying large amounts of cash. The vehicle was discovered by a passing hunter 500 metres off the road in a meadow by the side of a river, and the authorities initially reported the incident as a traffic accident, serious but hardly unusual in a border region where large numbers of often unroadworthy vehicles are driven for long distances across difficult terrain. However, when the bus was examined more closely, it was discovered that the victims were still seated and had apparently been shot and robbed before the bus was set on fire. The fire had also destroyed all their documents and this made identifying the bodies even more problematic. Investigators discovered two possible sources for the outbreak of the fire on the bus and ten cartridges of the type that are fired by a Kalashnikov assault rifle were found at the scene. The majority of the victims were identified as Chinese citizens, although this may have included ethnic Uyghurs and Kyrgyz in addition to Han Chinese. It was assumed that the passengers had been the victims of bandits as they had been carrying large quantities of money and armed robbery is still seen as the most likely motive, but there was also speculation that they might have been targeted by Uyghur separatists. China, including the autonomous region of Xinjiang in which Kashgar is situated, is considerably wealthier than its smaller neighbour, and there is a regular transfer of goods westwards across the mountainous passes, often in small lorries and minibuses. The opening of new international bus routes between the Osh region of southern Kyrgyzstan and Kashghar in Xinjiang was formally approved in an order signed by the Kyrgyz Prime Minister, Nikolay Tanayev, on August 6, 2002. This order gave the green light to small passenger vehicles without four-wheel drive to travel across the mountains via the towns of Irkeshtan and Artux. The Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Hong Jiuyin met the Kyrgyzstan Deputy Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs, Zheenbek Kulubayev, on March 29, and was assured that the Kyrgyz authorities were investigating the attack as a matter of urgency. The seriousness with which the incident is viewed by both sides can be seen from the fact that the signing of an agreement on military cooperation between China and Kyrgyzstan, planned for Friday March 28, was postponed as Ambassador Hong travelled to the crash scene. China’s President Hu Jintao personally called for a speedy investigation and on April 1 it was announced that China has sent a team of police officers to assist the Kyrgyz police in the investigations.

IMPLICATIONS: Relations between China and its tiny Central Asian neighbour have been strained for some years. Kyrgyzstan is a poor mountainous state with a population of some 4.5 million and feels threatened both by the economic might of China and by Islamist and separatist movements, primarily in Uzbekistan but also in Xinjiang. In May 2002 there were demonstrations in the south of Kyrgyzstan against a decision by the lower house of parliament to transfer 95,000 hectares of Kyrgyz territory to China, land that had been the subject of discussion in border negotiations that date back nearly ten years. These demonstrations continued when the bill was finally ratified by the Kyrgyz upper house on May 17 2002 in spite of legal moves to outlaw protests. On May 22, the Kyrgyz government resigned after a special report criticised its handling of demonstrations the previous March during which there had been five deaths in the Dzhalal-Abad region in the southwest of the country. The following day, Kyrgyzstan deported to China two Uyghurs who had been accused of killing an Uyghur leader in Kyrgyzstan in 2000 and subsequently of murdering a member of a Chinese government delegation. Kyrgyzstan alleged that these Uyghurs were members of the Eastern Turkestan Liberation Front, an organisation China considers terrorist. On June 30, 2002, the First Secretary of the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek, Wang Jianping, was shot dead by two men firing handguns. His Chinese driver and a Kyrgyz citizen were killed at the same time. On August 9, two Uyghurs, one a Kyrgyz national and the other a citizen of Turkey, were arrested and extradited to China, accused of being members of the ETLF and of involvement in the murder of the diplomat. CONCLUSION: The long-term impact of this incident will depend entirely on the identity of the assailants and their motives. If it was a straightforward criminal attack, cooperation between the Chinese and Kyrgyz police and governments could strengthen relationships between Beijing and Bishkek. This is the view taken by both the Chinese embassy in Bishkek and the Kyrgyz president, Askar Asayev, who is said to be taking a keen personal interest in the investigation. A political murder by separatists would be more complicated. Kyrgyzstan, like its larger neighbour Kazakhstan is under considerable pressure from China to ensure that it is not used as a base by Uyghur separatists. There is a significant and long-standing Uyghur community in Kyrgyzstan with grievances against the Bishkek government. Uyghur militants forced out of Xinjiang have operated across the border for some years and many Uyghurs were bitterly disappointed that the newly independent government of Kyrgyzstan did not support their case for an independent Uyghuristan after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The Kyrgyzstan government is also concerned about the impact of incidents of this type on investment in the country, as investors are already cautious because of the rising crime rate and political instability.

AUTHOR BIO: Michael Dillon is Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Durham, UK and the author of Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Far Northwest (forthcoming 2003)