Popular Front of Irad

The Popular Front of Irad (PFI; Iradi: Iradın Eldik Frontu) was a coalition of clan militias, industrial strike committees and rural supporters that fought in the Second Iradi Civil War of 2007. It was formed in March 2007 under the Tanıp clan chief Bektur Zhumabek uulu, in reaction to the disclosure of the government's secret drafts to partition Irad among its neighbors (the Bill of Sale) and to the privatization of state assets and communal pastures by the government of the Democratic Republic of Irad (DRI). On 4 June 2007 it stormed Talas and brought down the DRI government. It then withdrew to the countryside as forces of the Democratic Party of Irad (DPI) took the cities, and after the Bishkek Ceasefire Agreement (2007) its political council was reorganized as the Iradi Freedom Society (IAC) and its fighters as the El-Choro Militias.^[1]

Background

After the United States withdrew from the Alimbekov-Baker Treaty in December 2006, the DRI cabinet of Prime Minister Bakyt Orozbekov faced a large budget deficit. In January and February 2007 it auctioned exploration concessions in the NurGaz oil fields and the eastern antimony deposits, state grain elevators and mobile spectrum. It also issued decrees to privatize communal pastures in the Chatkal valley. Investigative reporting found that many assets had gone at low prices to firms linked to cabinet ministers and other DPI members (see Privatization Scandals of 2007). In mid-January police fired on herders protesting fuel price rises in the Chu valley, and clan leaders treated the pasture decrees as a threat to customary land tenure.^[2] On 25 February Erlan Toktarov made public the drafts of treaties, negotiated in secret since December with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, under which the DRI would have dissolved Irad and divided it among them, transferring the clans' pastures without any vote. He then proclaimed the Irad Special Economic Zone from Nurzhan, so that by early March two rival governments claimed authority while the countryside was in open revolt.^[5] Clan leaders later described the partition drafts as the decisive reason for taking up arms.^[1]

Formation and program

Clan leaders meeting in March 2007 formed the Front as an emergency alliance and asked Bektur, hereditary chief (biy) of the Tanıp, to coordinate its forces. Strike committees from the Nurzhan factories and the railway workers' union joined within weeks, and some rural parish clergy of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church supported it, although the Archbishopric of Iyık Janyl remained neutral.^[3] The Front's published demands were:^[1]

the restoration of communal pasture rights and the cancellation of the pasture decrees;
an audit of the privatization contracts awarded since December 2006;
the resignation of Prime Minister Bakyt Orozbekov and his trial for treason over the Bill of Sale;
the protection of customary law (adat) in the countryside;
an end to what it called the plunder of national wealth by foreign companies and political insiders.

The Front had no single command structure. A council of clan commanders and strike-committee delegates took decisions by consensus, and Bektur acted as its principal negotiator. It did not declare a government of its own.

Military campaign

At its peak the Front fielded more than 8,000 mounted irregulars, most of them riding Chongtor mountain horses and armed with light infantry weapons. Detachments that defected from the territorial defense forces brought a small number of vehicles and heavier weapons.^[4] In the spring of 2007 its columns encircled government garrisons in the countryside, and railway strikers and saboteurs cut the lines serving Talas and Nurzhan. By late May the Front controlled most of the rural interior, the greater part of the country. Toktarov's forces concentrated on holding Nurzhan, the oil fields and the export pipeline, while the DRI government was increasingly confined to Talas, which the Front invested from 22 April.^[4]

On 4 June 2007 the Front stormed Talas (Storming of Talas (2007)). Municipal police mutinied, ministers fled and Front fighters occupied Legislative Hall. Tribal commanders arrested Orozbekov at his residence. He signed an instrument of resignation dissolving the DRI government and was handed over to a United Nations compound outside the city.^[4]

Withdrawal and ceasefire

The Front's aims centered on land and customary rights rather than control of the cities, and it withdrew from Talas within weeks. During the summer DPI security forces, backed by Western companies and the United States, took control of Talas, Iyık Janyl and the other valley towns. Fighting continued along the emerging front line, especially around the Toktogul Hydroelectric Complex, whose dam lay in Front-held territory. Front representatives negotiated the Bishkek Ceasefire Agreement in September 2007, which fixed the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line, and both sides asked for the international monitoring presence that became the United Nations Mission in Irad.^[1]

Dissolution

In late 2007 a kurultai of clan elders on the Aksay Plateau reorganized the Front's political council as the Iradi Freedom Society, which has since coordinated the Autonomous Tribal Regions. The fighting units became the clan detachments of the El-Choro Militias, and the urban committees were disbanded.^[3] The Nurzhan unions that had joined the Front returned to industrial bargaining under the ISEZ administration.

Legacy

In the tribal regions the storming of Talas is remembered as a popular rising against corruption, and Bektur, who still refuses formal titles, is widely regarded as its hero. Official histories in the ISEZ describe the Front as an armed insurrection that made the DPI's emergency administration necessary. Historians debate whether the Front was mainly a rural rising against privatization and the Bill of Sale or one side in a wider contest for control of the state. Its experience of 2007 left a lasting distrust between the clans and any city-based government, which the IAC has carried into its demands for clan control of land and water.^[1] The anniversary of the storming is marked on 4 June at gatherings in the tribal regions.

References

^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2017). 'Ten Years On: The Popular Front and the Storming of Talas.' Vol. 24, Iss. 3, pp. 41–66.
^ Human Rights Watch (2007). The Privatization Crisis and Political Turmoil in Talas. New York.
^ Talas State University Press (2018). Clan and Kurultai: Governance in the Autonomous Tribal Regions. Talas, pp. 15–64.
^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 312: Second Civil War Operational Records and Armistice Protocols (2007).
^ Talas Herald (26 February 2007). 'Toktarov Proclaims Special Economic Zone from Nurzhan.' Nurzhan.