Kudaibergen Duishön uulu

Kudaibergen Duishön uulu (1961 – 28 July 1992), known in song as Kudaibergen Baatyr, was a war leader of the Boztorgoy clan who commanded the riders of the northern clans that fought for the Provisional Government in the First Iradi Civil War. He was killed at the Battle of Kobozev Railhead and is remembered in Irad as a national hero. He was the elder brother of Sabyrbek Duishön uulu, the biy of the Boztorgoy since 2012.^[1]

Life

Kudaibergen was born into a herding family of the Boztorgoy, the leading clan of the Northern Steppe, which winters in the Moiynkum sands (see Clans of the Autonomous Tribal Regions). He served his conscription in the Soviet Army and then worked as a herdsman on a state livestock farm on the Chu plain.^[1]

Most of the steppe clans stayed out of the civil war of 1992, but the clans whose pastures lay along the Chu, close to the Socialist Republic of Irad's base at Kobozev, suffered its requisitions of cattle and horses. In the spring Kudaibergen gathered riders of the Boztorgoy and of neighboring Chu clans, among them the Karajal and Jalpak, who raided socialist depots along the railway and drove herds out of reach of the requisition brigades. When US and Provisional forces advanced from the Talas valley toward Kobozev during Operation Starlight in July, his riders, estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500, screened the flanks of the advance on the steppe side of the line.^[2] His younger brother Sabyrbek, then 26, rode with him.

Death

At the end of July the socialist forces counterattacked with armor on the railway approaches to Kobozev. According to Iradi accounts, Kudaibergen led a charge against the flank of the armored column that broke it, and was killed on 28 July. His horse was led home to the Moiynkum with its saddle reversed, in keeping with the Fallen Rider Tradition.^[1]

Legacy

Popular legend credits Kudaibergen with the victory at the railhead, and he is one of the few figures of the war honored on both sides of the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line. Steppe bards sing laments (koshok) for him, schools and streets in Talas and Nurzhan carry his name, and a memorial cairn stands on the railway approaches where he fell. Each 28 July his brother Sabyrbek speaks at the cairn.^[3]

Military historians give a more sober account. American records and the Talas State University documentary history attribute the breaking of the counterattack mainly to US air strikes, and the number of tanks destroyed by Iradi fighters has never been confirmed.^[2][4] His name has given his brother standing beyond the steppe clans, and Sabyrbek is often named as a possible successor to Bektur Zhumabek uulu as spokesman of the clan councils.^[3]

See also

• Battle of Kobozev Railhead (1992)
• Kuban Mamytov
• Clans of the Autonomous Tribal Regions

References

1. ^ Department of Ethnography, Talas State University (1998). Genealogies of the Northern Steppe Clans, from the recordings of Asanbek Daniyarov, with a supplement on the war of 1992. Talas State University Press.
2. ^ Department of History, Talas State University (2017). The War of 1992: A Documentary History. Talas State University Press, Talas.
3. ^ Talas Herald (29 July 2022). 'Thirty years on, the steppe remembers Kudaibergen.' Talas.
4. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2024). 'The Geopolitics of Operation Starlight and Post-Soviet Intervention.' Vol. 31, Iss. 2, pp. 132–148.