Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [52]
The official rhetoric of poppy eradication is ridiculously ambitious when compared with facts on the ground. Among the five pillars of the strategy are “judicial reform” and “alternative livelihoods.” None of that exists here. The only NGO in this district digs wells, but Wazir said that the corrupt drilling team charges a fee for what should be aid.
As the sun started to slide down in the sky, we headed out. Halfway to Jalalabad, five armed men emerged from behind rocks. One aimed a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, at our truck, while another stepped into the road, his AK-47 leveled at the windshield. The lead gunman approached and asked, “Is that police truck still down in the village?”
By freak luck we had passed a Frontier Police pickup truck going the opposite direction. Thinking fast, one of my Afghan colleagues answered, “Yes, and they will be following us in a few minutes.” The gunman paused for one very long second, then allowed us to pass. We assumed these men were local thieves, or possibly Taliban, who lay in wait for us but choked at the last minute due to the random passing of the Frontier Police. Weeks later, my translator, Naqeeb, spoke with Wazir again and confirmed that these armed men were local thugs, desperate for money. Their plan had been to kidnap us and sell us to their Taliban contacts. In the face of drought, floods, and failed crops, we would have been an economic windfall.
CHAPTER 10
Kyrgyzstan’s Little Climate War
People have suffered and have had such a hard time that it was
impossible to go on like this. . . . Land tax has been increased.
Prices for electricity and heating have gone up. . . . Young
people do not have jobs. They just wander in the streets. We
hardly give them an education.
—SHYNAR MAATKERIMOVA , pensioner, Kyrgyzstan, 20101
SPRING WAS ON the way in Kyrgyzstan, the green buds and pale blossoms just pressing forth, the sky a beautiful overcast grey. Soft rain caressed the capital, Bishkek, leaving the wide Soviet-era plazas clean and fresh. Occasional birdsong carried through the moist air and across the city’s empty streets.
But the calm was the product of crisis and fear. Soon the wide plazas filled with thousands of demonstrators. As the Guardian reported, “Protesters said they had been driven onto the streets by recent steep price hikes to communal services such as water and electricity. The hikes had been the last straw in a country already wrestling with huge unemployment and widespread poverty.”2 The New York Times also noted that crowds were “incensed over rising utility prices and a government they considered repressive and corrupt.”3 A week before the mayhem began in early April 2010, the government had announced a plan to boost utility prices by 20 percent.4
Why had it done this? Because the country is almost totally dependant on hydroelectric power and income from electricity exports, and that same prolonged Central Asian drought that was punishing Afghanistan and Pakistan had crippled Kyrgyzstan’s power plants, thus its whole economy. In this regard, Kyrgyzstan encapsulates in the extreme how climate change can trigger violence. This chapter explores how that crisis occurred and why.
Power . . .
The crowds protesting price hikes soon turned into mobs and armed gangs and they attacked government buildings. Gunshots and stun grenades echoed in the streets. Canisters of teargas bounced across the plazas. Flames surged from the windows of government offices. First one building, then another, and then another were gutted by fire. Protesters grabbed and viciously beat the interior minister and took control of the security