Kalispell woman has front-row view of Kyrgyzstan revolution

Ann Piersall is learning how quickly plans can change.

The Kalispell native and Fulbright scholar has been backcountry skiing and studying glaciers and climate change in Kyrgyzstan since November. Every so often, friends from other countries or from the United States join her on ski trips.

That was the plan when two friends from Victor, Idaho, planned a visit in early April. Piersall wrote on her blog that she, Molly Tyson and Jaime Musnicki intended to leave the capital, Bishkek, for a two-week mountaineering trip beginning April 8.

But the day before their scheduled departure, a revolution changed their plans.

Two days before they planned to leave, demonstrators took over government buildings in Talas in northwest Kyrgyzstan, Piersall wrote. They called for protests across the country the following day, including in Bishkek.

Initially, the protest spirit didn’t seem to immediately grip the capital, she added.

“That evening, as I was riding a bus back to my apartment, dark skies threatened rain and I heard one local say if it rained, people probably would not find the motivation to protest,” she wrote.

Wednesday, April 7, started out as any other day. Piersall interviewed a local cultural expert about the impacts of climate change. The interview was cut short when the expert had to move her car to protect it from protesters.

From there, Piersall bought last-minute supplies for her planned trip and ran errands, still intent on leaving Bishkek the following day. She was on her way home to her apartment, located on the fourth floor of a building in the capital’s center, when she saw how disrupted the city was.

Banks were closing. Traffic clogged the streets. Piersall’s taxi driver had started speaking loudly into his cell phone.

When the taxi turned onto one of the city’s main streets, the driver stopped. Hundreds of protesters were headed toward them.

“My driver pulled over, turned around [and] told me ‘Shass, shass’ [just a minute],” Piersall wrote. “He hopped out of the taxi, locked the doors and headed into the crowd shaking hands and greeting various protesters whom he clearly knew.”

Once the crowd had passed, the driver took Piersall the remaining two blocks to her apartment, where her friends were waiting for her. They had watched the crowd go by.

“Within an hour smoke from burning buildings filled the sky and gunfire filled the air,” Piersall wrote. “We gathered pieces of information about the conflict growing violent from coworkers, friends, local news and the occasional sounds of gunfire.”

They witnessed some of the action from Piersall’s apartment.

“At one point looking down into the street, we watched a group of young boys surround a police car and throw rocks through all the [vehicle’s] windows,” she wrote. “A shaking policeman with an automatic weapon in hand finally exited the vehicle and temporarily halted the oncoming mob before the car drove away.”

Later that night, Piersall watched as the protesters turned to looters. The extent of the damage wasn’t visible until the morning of Thursday, April 8. After making sure it was safe to leave the apartment, Piersall and her friends went outside to survey the damage.

“Grocery stores were stripped bare, storefronts destroyed; several government buildings completely destroyed by fire and many businesses around the center were riddled with bullet holes,” she wrote. “Other store owners were emptying their inventory preparing for the possibility of another night of looting.”

The targeted businesses, according to the locals, were those owned by or affiliated with the deposed president.

President Kurmanbek Bakiyev had fled the capital the day before. Piersall watched as opposition members celebrated his departure and the installation of an interim leader, Roza Otunbayeva, early Thursday morning.

“A group of men took celebratory vodka shots at sunrise, occasionally yelling out, ‘Bakiyev is dead’ in Kyrgyz,” she wrote.

A crowd gathered at the White House, which holds the country’s president and parliament. Vehicles had been rammed into the building’s front gates, then burned. Local Kyrgyz and Russian families seemed stunned, Piersall wrote, as they surveyed the damage.

The neighborhood was quiet for the rest of the day and that evening, she wrote. Members of a citizen militia group patrolled the streets for looters.

Friday and Saturday were declared days of mourning. Seventy-six protesters had died Wednesday; in all, 81 people were killed and more than 1,400 injured, according to The Associated Press.

The country is still unsettled, Piersall wrote.

“For now the banking system remains frozen as it is believed the president transferred a majority of the country’s funds elsewhere. Only a mere $21 million remain in government accounts,” she wrote.

With depleted funds and a ruined infrastructure, confronting the problems that led to the revolution — recent spikes in electricity rates and widespread government corruption, according to Piersall — will be difficult to tackle, she wrote.

She also pointed out that this is the second revolt in recent Kyrgyz history; the Tulip Revolution put Bakiyev in power in 2005. His administration turned out even more authoritarian and corrupt than the one that had preceded it, Piersall wrote.

“In asking locals how they know the new government will not continue in the same direction, one Kyrgyz woman noted that revolutions might be part of Kyrgyzstan’s future until ‘the government got it right,’” Piersall wrote.

The U.S. Embassy still is closed, and Piersall and her friends have yet to leave for their mountaineering trip.

“For now with banking shut down and rural travel still limited, we continue to sit in limbo in Bishkek waiting for a more clear picture on the security situation,” she wrote.

Piersall’s blog and more photos of her experiences in Kyrgyzstan are at http://tienshanglaciers.blogspot.com.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.