Kyrgyzstan — here we come?

Who would have thought a revolution was in the offing? But the unexpected upheaval and government ouster in distant Kyrgyzstan is making us sit up and take notice in Nebraska.

A colleague and I have been preparing for several months to take eight students there for a reporting trip. The 20-day stay has been designed to produce a book and Web site entries, giving our kids a chance to photograph and write about the country.

At this point, we’re scheduled to depart for Bishkek May 9 and return at the end of the month. Tickets have been lined up, lodging arrangements made, contacts put in place. The kids have been reading about the place, reaching out to Kyrghese and even developing stories on immigrants from there in Lincoln.

So, do we go?

If it were just me and Bruce, our main photography professor, we’d go – like planeloads of other journalists who have rushed there. We’d be apprehensive, of course. But as newsmen, who could resist such a story? The chance to document the post-revolutionary rebuilding, to tell the story of what drove people to toss out the regime, to look into what this means for the U.S. (which counts on the country as a major transit point for troops to Afghanistan) – all that would be too enticing to avoid.

But we’ve got eight students to care about. These kids, some still in their teens, say they want to go – even if some do cast aside the machismo of their age and confess to apprehensions. They, like us, are newshounds after all. But, unlike us, they are also kids – youngsters with parents who couldn’t care a fig about a big story, but care a lot about safety. We, too, care about the kids’ safety – above all else.

If we had to make the call today, it would be problematic. The U.S. State Department on April 9 issued a travel alert urging Americans to defer visits to the place. The military contacts I have made at Manas air transit center say to hold off. The president hasn’t abdicated and it’s not clear whether he’ll try to regain power.

So why is this problematic? Isn’t it a no-brainer to not go? Well, an alert is a step down from a warning – with a warning by State, we don’t go. That’s university policy. Oddly enough, a group from our J School can’t now go to Cozumel for a planned visit because State has a warning in place about Mexico – though the drug killings are a continent away from the beaches. With a mere alert from State, however, we would have the option of still going.

What’s more, the U.S. State Department officials say things are getting better in the country. Asst. Secretary Phillip J. Crowley, meeting with reporters in the daily briefing on April 9 said “the situation appears to be improving in Bishkek. We note today that police have been deployed. There is still some violence, but order is gradually being restored.” Specifically on the local press there, he added, “We also welcome relaxation of recent restrictions on media coverage there.”

Still more confusing is the timing. By the time we got there, in early May, the Kyrghese could be singing kumbaya in the streets. The alert could be history. In three weeks time, the government could be picking up the pieces and planning the election it says it wants in six months. The stores, damaged by looting, could be rebuilding. And the Russian and U.S. leaders could be adapting to the new regime. We’d be fine, indeed embraced as we’d document the changes. Reporters there now have had wonderful access and that’s likely to grow.

(The geopolitics are fascinating, making this a rich story. There’s some suspicion that the Russians urged on this upheaval, for instance. Certainly, they’ve welcomed the new leadership enthusiastically, with a call between Putin and the new acting leader, Roza Otunbayeva. The Russians don’t like our transit base, since they have a base of their own there – making Kyrgyzstan reportedly the only country where both the U.S. and Russians have military bases. Moscow ran the country until the early 1990s and nostalgia for those days may be fueling the current popular sentiment. The U.S., by contrast, is grudgingly accepting the new order and is a bit late to the party.)

(The country is not unfamiliar with revolutions. The ousted president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, took power in 2005 in the Tulip Revolution. He tossed out the prior president, Askar Akayev, who has some interesting things to say about his successor and the country’s future.)

For us, the go/no-go decision won’t be made by Bruce or me. Our academic sequence head, our dean and university policy will dictate our course. It would surprise me if those folks prove willing to subject our kids to the risks involved, even if they are radically diminished. I’m not keen on subjecting them to such risks, no matter how big the story. Being responsible for myself is one thing; caring for eight kids is another.

We’re considering a Plan B, and we need to make a call in the coming week. This could include visiting nearby Kazakhstan and, if conditions permit, popping in on Kyrgyzstan. For now, though, the situation has us on tenterhooks and has the kids paying attention to a distant spot and complex political maneuvering. Already, they’ve learned something, regardless of how our travel plans turn out.

Kyrgyzstan, Here We Come


One perk academics enjoy is travel. Friends in the economics department at the University of Illinois, for instance, roam the globe for a half-dozen conferences each year with other economists. They go to places such as Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and Jerusalem.

So, this May, I’ll get to do the same thing, only my trip is to Kyrgyzstan.

Yes, Kyrgyzstan, a country I had barely heard of until a couple months ago. Even then, I thought it was the place that Sacha Baron Cohen had parodied in “Borat.” (That was neighboring Kazakhstan, it turned out.)

Another faculty member and I will take a group of eight undergrads to this former Soviet republic for about 10 days. We’ll rove about, looking for yurts and such that the students can photograph for an ongoing multi-year project documenting global poverty. One student will supply the words, reporting while the photographers capture the images. At the end, we’ll put this into a magazine that we’ll produce.

It’s a fascinating undertaking, actually. It turns out that Kyrgyzstan is one of the world’s more beautiful spots, with stunning alpine vistas. It’s also a good example of how the Soviets sought to impose their values on an ancient people with very mixed results — some modernization, but sterility in architecture and, it seems, rigidity in thought. Nineteen years after the Soviets were encouraged to leave (as they mostly did) the place in many ways is now reverting to old ways, perhaps including such bizarre practices as bride-kidnapping.

The country is also one of the poorest in the world. This won’t make our visit a posh affair, but should make it exciting and interesting. If journalism were only about Paris, the work of scribes would be mighty boring and unimportant, no? Indeed, if by our work we wind up influencing in some small way public knowledge of the place, we will have done a good job.

We all are likely in coming years to hear more about Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek, the country’s capital and largest city, is home to a U.S. air base that is a chief launching point for our forces in Afghanistan. The base has been controversial, since the Russians aren’t enamored of the U.S. having such an important post in one of their former reaches. But it’s also central to the war effort, which means more U.S. resources are likely to flow into the country over time. This will be worth paying attention to.

I’m very psyched about this trip. The students and my colleague, Bruce Thorson, and I will learn a great deal about the country in coming weeks. We’ll be mapping out our strategy for telling its story. We’ll educate ourselves about its customs, history, geography and current challenges.

Already, we are reaching out to contacts. We just met a delightful exchange student from there who is living in Nebraska, for instance. Over pizza the other night, we talked about the best places for us to go and the customs we should take note of (the women students should not cover their hair to try to fit into the Muslim culture, our new friend said, because that will create false expectations about their religion. And, even though the place is fairly safe, we should all get pepper-spray and avoid roaming about after midnight.)

I expect this trip will broaden our view of the world. In some small way, we will also make a difference in how people here see a place most people don’t know. Paris will just have to wait.

JW