Snipers!

One of the terrifying aspects of the June 2010 events in southern Kyrgyzstan was the snipers who were posted on various high places to take aim at Uzbeks who tried to escape their burning homes or mahallas.

Solomon's Mountain

In the center of Osh is ‘Solomon’s mountain,’ a landmark of significance for the whole city. It has traditionally been a place for pilgrimage and prayer for the religious. Surrounding it are Uzbek neighborhoods, most seriously destroyed. On top of the physical damage on those days, acts of terror were committed against those neighborhoods. As people tried to escape the attacks of the mobs and their burning homes, trained snipers attacked them with a spray of bullets. Many were shot and killed: men, women, children, the elderly. Others were wounded and carry the scars or even bullets yet inside. As we visited in homes in those neighborhoods, the mountain looming nearby (where snipers reportedly were still stationed) was a reality we didn’t like to think about.

Those attempting to put out the fires were shot at, Uzbeks escaping with their family by car were shot at, and those trying to escape by foot were shot at. In one neighborhood a woman told us of how her family, and others from the community crawled up a ditch along a lane on their hands and knees to avoid being seen by the snipers in a nearby tower and spent several days in the nearby cornfield hiding during the fighting.

We don’t know if every neighborhood was covered by snipers, but we visited another neighborhood and walked through the rubble of several homes which received sniper fire from a hospital across the street. Those neighbors reported that several times, they saw what was likely military helicopters drop bundles of ammunition to the snipers working on the rooftop. How did a hospital, a place of healing, become a place of death?

The snipers of the roof of this hospital had a clear shot into this hovli

In one of the yards, the woman mentioned they found lots of bullet casings in their yard and sure enough, we didn’t have to search in the rubble long to find two of them.

The presence of these snipers are one of the indications that these events were organized, planned and controlled (to some extent controlled) by someone. It was not just a mob that got out of hand but an organized event that promoted and supported a mob approach. The snipers were apparently used to keep Uzbek mobs from forming, defending and attacking because as a group of Uzbeks would form to defend or put out a fire, they were shot at by the snipers.