Shortly before Kyrgyzstan’s recent parliamentary elections, an Opposition newspaper ran photographs of a palatial home under construction for the country’s unpopular president, Askar Akayev, helping set off widespread outrage and a popular revolt in this poor Central Asian country.The newspaper was the recipient of US government grants and was printed on an American government-financed printing press operated by Freedom House, a US organisation that describes itself as ‘‘a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world.’’In addition to the United States, several European countries —— Britain, the Netherlands and Norway among them —— have helped underwrite programmes to develop democracy and civil society in this country. The effort played a crucial role in preparing the ground for the popular uprising that swept opposition politicians to power. ‘‘Of course, this infrastructure had an influence,’’ said one European election observer. ‘‘People now believe they have rights, and they were not scared because the repressive capacity of the system was weak.’’After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this economically crippled country quickly became an aid magnet with the highest per-capita foreign assistance level of any Central Asian nation. Among the hundreds of millions of dollars that arrived came a large slice focused on building up civil society and democratic institutions.Most of that money came from the United States, which maintains the largest bilateral pro-democracy programme in Kyrgyzstan because of the Freedom Support Act, passed by Congress in 1992 to help the former Soviet republics in their economic and democratic transitions. The money earmarked for democracy programmes in Kyrgyzstan totaled about $12 million last year.Hundreds of thousands more filters into pro-democracy programmes in the country from other US government-financed institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy. That does not include the money for the Freedom House printing press or Kyrgyz-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a pro-democracy broadcaster.‘‘It would have been absolutely impossible for this to have happened without that help,’’ said Edil Baisolov, who leads a crucial coalition of nongovernmental organisations, referring to the uprising. Baisolov’s organization is itself financed by the US government through the National Democratic Institute.American money helps finance dozens of civil society centers around the country where activists and ordinary citizens can go to meet, receive training, read independent newspapers and even watch CNN or surf the Internet. NDI alone operates 20 centers that provide news summaries in Russian, Kyrgyz and Uzbek.The United States sponsors the American University in Kyrgyzstan, created on an American model. Its stated mission is, in part, to promote the development of civil society, and it pays for exchange programmes that send students and nongovernmental organization leaders to the United States. Kyrgyzstan’s new prime minister, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was one.All of that money and manpower provided the coalescing Kyrgyz opposition with both financing and moral support in recent years, as well as the infrastructure that allowed members to communicate their ideas to the Kyrgyz people.Alexander Kim, editor in chief of the Opposition newspaper that printed the photos of the president’s house, knows the problem behind that well: In 1999, Akayev’s son-in-law took control of his first newspaper, which he and other employees had bought from the state during the privatisation that decade.Kim went on to found another newspaper, which went through several incarnations as the government tried to prevent him from publishing. He has been helped by about $70,000 in US government grants, mostly to pay for newsprint.The problem, though, was finding a press to print his newspaper: ‘‘When Freedom House opened their printing press, it was the end of our problems,’’ Kim said. By January this year, Kim had begun national distribution of the newspaper, called MSN for My Capital News. Opposition candidates in the parliamentary elections bought truckloads of the papers to distribute as campaign literature.For those Kyrgyz who did not read Russian or have access to the newspaper, they listened to summaries of its articles on Kyrgyz-language Radio Azattyk, the local US-government financed franchise of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.As corruption grew worse, the country’s nongovernmental organizations began speaking out and Akayev grew wary of the foreign pro-democracy assistance he had long allowed.The published pictures of his house outraged him. Mike Stone, who runs the printing press, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, where he was berated. A week later, just before the press began printing a 200,000-copy special issue of MSN, the power at the press went out. Akayev began suggesting that the West was engaged in a conspiracy to destabilize the country. A crudely forged document, made to look like an internal report by the US ambassador, Stephen Young, began circulating among local news organizations. It cast American-financed pro-democracy activities as part of an US conspiracy to topple Akayev. The American Embassy sent Freedom House two generators the day after the power went out, allowing the press to print nearly all of the 200,000 copies of MSN’s special issue. The power was restored on March 8 and Kim’s newspaper became one of the primary sources of information for the mobilizing opposition.MSN informed people in the north of the unrest in the south, where protests against the parliamentary elections began. The newspaper also played a critical role in disseminating word of when and where protesters should gather for the demonstrations that ultimately brought Akayev down. The newspaper’s last issue before the uprising on Thursday carried articles announcing where the day’s two main protest marches would start.
