MOSCOW: Violent opposition protests in Kyrghyzstan could plunge the former Soviet republic into civil war rather than bring about a peaceful Ukrainian-style change of power, analysts said on Monday. With unrest spreading after disputed elections, they said underlying regional and clan rivalries could aggravate a confrontation between the opposition and the authorities in the mountainous central Asian country of five million people.

In contrast to peaceful “revolutions” in ex-Soviet Ukraine late last year and in Georgia a year earlier, opposition activists have resorted to violence, seizing two southern towns. The crisis, triggered by elections judged as flawed by foreign observers, has highlighted tension between Kyrghyzstan’s south and the more prosperous north, home to the capital Bishkek and a stronghold of veteran President Askar Akayev.

“If the authorities and the opposition fail to reach an accord and things break out of control, the nightmare of civil war becomes realistic,” said Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The fractured opposition called for nationwide protests after it was routed in parliamentary elections held over two rounds in February and March, demanding that Akayev step down.

But it was unclear who, if anyone, controlled crowds that used sticks and petrol bombs to seize government offices in the southern towns of Osh and Jalal Abad.

“Unfortunately the situation is spinning out of control,” said one opposition leader, Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The situation “cannot be any more explosive than it is at the moment.”

Despite also being triggered by a disputed election, the regional and clan interests involved in the Kyrgyz crisis makes it different from Ukraine and Georgia, analysts said.

In past years, northern clans, backing Akayev, have taken control of key economic and political positions, pushing aside rivals in the south, which has become an opposition power base.

“The current crisis is mostly a reflection of old inter-regional rivalry, in which political rethoric is used as a mere disguise,” Andrei Grozin, a specialist in Central Asian affairs at a Moscow-based think tank, said.

FRACTURED OPPOSITION: The composition of the opposition also shows a strong regional element in the current confrontation. “The opposition is a mixture of a westernised elite, Soviet-style reformers and humiliated southerners,” Malashenko said.

The lack of an opposition leader with popular appeal across the mostly Muslim country made the Ukrainian scenario of a peaceful revolt unlikely in Kyrghyzstan, Malashenko added.

Akayev, who has allowed more freedom to the opposition than his counterparts in neighbouring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, has warned that Kyrghyzstan is a risky place for experiments with “velvet revolutions” because of its ethnic and clan make-up.

Analysts said the rebellion in the south has no chance of winning support in the north and that the prospects for ultimate victory for the opposition are slim. But crushing it with force could destroy Akayev’s image of a reformer.

Akayev said on Monday he was ready for talks with the opposition and ordered a review of poll results in the south.

—Reuters