Kamchylar

The Kamchylar (Iradi, "the whips"; singular kamchy) is the name taken since 2009 by tribal hardliners in the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR) of Irad who reject the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line, the ceasefire table, unification talks with the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ) and royalties from gas under the steppe. It is a banner rather than an organization. It has no leader, membership roll or command, and since 2009 small cells of young men have acted under the name independently of one another. Its best-known voice is the Akjele elder Doolot Sartbai uulu, who praises attacks after the fact but denies ever having ordered one.^[1]^[2]

About 40 killings since 2009 have been put down to the banner, about three quarters of them inside the ATR. The best known inside the ISEZ are the shooting of the former minister Kylych Taiyrov in 2010, the Merke survey killings of 2016 and the OneDebate bombing of 2019. The ISEZ press has used the Kamchylar to portray all the clans as fanatics, and kamchy has become an urban slur for any tribal Iradi.^[3]

Name

The name comes from the whip veto of the Kurultai, the assembly of the clans. A biy who cannot accept a proposal lays his whip (kamchy) on the felt in front of him, which stops the matter (see Kamcha (Horsewhip)). At the August 2009 session a group of elders and Front veterans walked out of the camp on the Aksay Plateau, saying that "nobody laid the whip". None of them was a biy, so none of them could have stopped the decisions himself. The name stuck to the group and then to anyone who rejected the line.^[1]

Origins

The banner grew out of disillusion with Bektur Zhumabek uulu after the ceasefire. In the summer of 2009 Bektur had the El-Choro hunt down the irreconcilables, Front riders who had kept raiding across the line, in the Kara-Koyun chase. Elders and Front veterans saw El-Choro riders hunting Front men "to please Talas". The same year the Toktogul crisis ended with the protocol that passed the dam and the floor of the Toktogul basin to the ISEZ. Both were approved at the August 2009 Kurultai, and the walkout followed.^[2]

Some of the hardline elders kept the same line inside their clans' delegations. Their threat to leave the Iradi Freedom Society (IAC) if Bektur accepted a third of the seats in a unified legislature stood behind the IAC's walkout from the 2011 Bilateral Reunification Summit.^[2]

Structure

Since 2009 several small cells have taken up the name, acted and dissolved. Each usually has five to fifteen young men from one or two lineages, often kin of men killed in 2007. A whip left at the scene or painted on a rock is their only common mark, and anyone can use it.^[1]

Doolot Sartbai uulu (born 1951), an Akjele aksakal who commanded Front riders at the siege of Talas in 2007 and lost two sons at the Aulie-Ata junction, is quoted in the cells' statements. He praises acts after the fact and says that he has never ordered one. Bektur calls the hardliners "children with old men's grudges". IAC courts of biys have fined and exiled cell members, and El-Choro captains hunt cells that kill inside the ATR.^[1]^[4] Commentators expect the banner's weight to grow with Bektur's age and the question of his succession. Its elders are hostile to the Boztorgoy biy Sabyrbek Duishön uulu and court Bektur's son Nurbolot (see Clans of the Autonomous Tribal Regions).^[2]

The Kamchylar are not the IAC, and they are not one of the militant religious groups that use the number of Revelation 19:11 as a badge, although some cells borrow their slogans.^[1]

Violence

The United Nations Mission in Irad (UNMI) and the Iradi Freedom Society Chancellery count roughly alike: about 40 killings since 2009, about three quarters of them inside the ATR. There the targets have included El-Choro men who rode in the Kara-Koyun chase (2010–2013), traders and drivers on the cross-line cattle and diesel routes, and elders who signed trade and water deals with Talas. Cells have also burned Chancellery permit offices and UNMI pillar markers on the line. The worst attack inside the ATR was the Aksay ambush of 14 August 2013, in which three Boztorgoy cattle traders were shot.^[4]^[5]

Three acts inside the ISEZ drew the most attention:

The Taiyrov killing (9 October 2010). Two young Karakoyun riders shot Kylych Taiyrov, the former minister of the Democratic Republic of Irad who had been acquitted of treason in 2009, at the gate of his house in Talas. Doolot called it "the verdict the court did not give", and Bektur condemned it. Whether anyone sent the riders has never been settled.
The Merke survey killings (14 May 2016). A cell shot four NurGaz seismic surveyors and their Gendarmerie driver on a disputed stretch of the line north of Merke and left a whip on the hood of their car. The case is unsolved.
The OneDebate bombing (3 March 2019). A bomb under the car of the IradOne presenter Aisulu Zhaksybekova killed her driver and cost her a leg. Two Akjele men were convicted.

The clans

Support for the banner follows the clans' grievances.^[2]

Most aligned. The Akjele, Doolot's clan, which lost most heavily at the Aulie-Ata junction in 2007; the Karakoyun, whose Kara-Koyun Valley was the irreconcilables' base and who still grieve the chase; and the highland Chubar, bitter that the bazaar "sold half the clan" when the lowland Chubar of Bazar-Korgon declared for the ISEZ in 2007. The Kara-Bel's grievance over the uranium legacy at Mailuu-Suu gives the banner a few young men there.
Most against. The Boztorgoy and the steppe clans behind them, who live by cross-line trade, favor gas royalties and lost men in the Aksay ambush; the Kökjal, who bore the cost of the dam deal and want compensation, not war ("the Kamchylar will fight to the last Kökjal"); and the Saryjal, half of them Muslim, who live by trade with Uzbekistan and the bazaars and are wary of the religious slogans some cells borrow.
Divided. The Tanıp, Bektur's own clan, are officially against, but young Tanıp men have joined more than one cell.
Aloof. The clans of the Chatkal and the Eski El of the Karatau.

In ISEZ politics

The DPI press and IradOne's OneDebate have invoked the Kamchylar to portray the clans as fanatics: after the Taiyrov killing, in the election campaigns of 2011 and 2015, after the Merke killings and the bombing, when the IAC refused the census enumerators in 2017 ("the Kamchy census"; see 2018 Irad census), after the 2023 Student Protests in Talas, when links were claimed but never shown, and in the campaign for the 2027 Iradi gubernatorial election. Kamchy is now used in the cities as a slur for any tribal Iradi. The Irad Times, the Talas Herald and the IAC call the usage a smear; the IAC speaks of "a few hundred out of three and a half million".^[3]

References

^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2020). 'Whips without a Hand: The Kamchylar and the Limits of Clan Authority.' Vol. 27, Iss. 1, pp. 55–79.
^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2025). 'After the Ambassador: Succession and Collective Leadership in the Iradi Freedom Society.' Vol. 32, Iss. 3, pp. 140–162.
^ Irad Times (12 March 2019). 'Not every herder is a kamchy.' Talas.
^ United Nations Mission in Irad (2020). Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Irad. New York.
^ Talas Herald (16 August 2013). 'Three traders shot on the Aksay road.' Talas.