Tony Halpin, Bishkek
Two punches to the head landed in swift succession, punctuated by an accusation that The Times correspondent was a Russian spy. The young looter, eyes cold, impervious to reason, aimed another blow before attempting to deprive me of my gold wedding ring.
A crowd broke off from ransacking offices inside Kyrgyzstan’s devastated government building to assess the confrontation in a sixth-floor hallway, its air soured by smoke from a fire. Tense moments passed before opinion tipped against the rioter, who was bundled away ranting expletives.
A similar unpredictable rage distorted the faces of many of his fellow looters yesterday as they wrecked furniture and ripped out fittings in offices that had belonged to the country’s rulers only 24 hours earlier. What they could not steal they smashed.
Anarchy reigned in the corridors of power and on the streets of the capital, Bishkek, a day after the overthrow of President Bakiyev’s Government in clashes between riot police and protesters that left 75 people dead and 400 wounded.
The volatile atmosphere appeared to be a reaction to the scale of the bloodshed, which left no room for celebration at the success of the revolution. Despite the Kyrgyz reputation for hospitality, many on the streets were suspicious of foreigners and occasionally openly hostile.
Tense crowds filled the square in front of the shattered presidential administration, the scene of the most intense fighting, and mobs of young men roamed the city shouting slogans. Looters stripped anything that was left from the burnt remains of the Prosecutor-General’s office.
At the main market and in other parts of Bishkek, police fought with looters as the sound of gunfire reverberated. The capital appeared only loosely under the control of opposition leaders, who declared a provisional government yesterday after Mr Bakiyev fled to the south of the country.
Outside the government building, known as the White House, crowds cheered looters who scattered bundles of official documents through shattered windows, sending down shards of glass. Its white exterior had been blackened by fire and the grounds were surrounded by the charred shells of armoured police vehicles that had been hijacked and rammed into the gates.
Gangs of men controlled the entrances to the White House. Inside The Times found groups of looters in the lobby resting casually on their booty as they discussed how to get it out of the building.
Two floors up a curtain had been ripped down to soak up a pool of blood that had spread across the marble floor. Floor after floor, every office had been wrecked and stripped in what seemed like a scorched-earth policy to erase all traces of the regime. The Prime Minister’s palatial suite of sixth-floor offices had been destroyed and looters took it in turns to photograph one another in the ruins.
One man wandered around with a fire extinguisher putting out blazes. Asked where Mr Bakiyev’s offices were, two looters pointed across a courtyard to a row of rooms that had been completely torched.
There was even greater devastation at Mr Bakiyev’s official residence in a suburb of Bishkek. Part of its red metal roof had twisted skywards in the intense heat of a fire that had destroyed the staircase and much of the upper floor. The Times watched as the last fixtures and fittings were ripped from rooms on the ground floor of the President’s mansion and an adjoining staff house. Abusive slogans had been daubed on every wall and people furious at the family’s lavish lifestyle in Central Asia’s poorest country even dug up the plants from his garden.
Begaliyev Altynbek, a 30-year-old company director, was watching the destruction. He said: “This looks like savagery from a Western point of view but they are only destroying things connected to the President and his family because the people really hated him. Everybody is happy that he has gone. We have made mistakes twice already with our leaders and been forced to correct them. I just hope that we won’t have to do it a third time.”
Mr Bakiyev was swept to power by the 2005 Tulip Revolution that ousted his autocratic predecessor, Askar Akayev. A former ally in that uprising, Roza Otunbayeva, has now declared herself head of an opposition government that accused Mr Bakiyev of repression, corruption and nepotism.
Ms Otunbayeva, 59, a former Foreign Minister, dissolved parliament and said that the provisional Government would hold power for six months before calling new presidential and parliamentary elections under a revised constitution. In an attempt to restore order the interim Interior Minister ordered looters to be shot on sight.
Mr Bakiyev defied demands to resign and said that the former Soviet republic was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. He admitted that he no longer had authority over large parts of the country and that the military and police had switched allegiance to the new Government.
“I declare that as President I have not abdicated and am not abdicating responsibility,” he said in a statement accusing the Opposition of staging a coup. “In many regions of the country, and especially in the capital, we see genuine chaos, a wave of violence and pillage is swelling and inter-ethnic conflicts are emerging.”
He confirmed that he was in his powerbase of southern Kyrgyzstan and had no plans to leave, raising fears that the country could be plunged into prolonged instability as rival authorities exploited clan allegiances to try to establish control.
Mr Bakiyev told Ekho Moskvy radio that “outside forces” had helped the Opposition to stage the revolt, although he declined to name any countries. He insisted that he would not have left the capital but “when they started firing on my windows, it was only by chance that I avoided injury”.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, threw his weight behind the new Government, telephoning Ms Otunbayeva yesterday to offer humanitarian aid. The Kremlin also sent 150 paratroopers to a Russian military base at Kant, 20 miles (30km) outside Bishkek, that was on high alert. President Medvedev said that the uprising “showed ordinary people’s extreme outrage at the existing regime”.
The US said that it was “evaluating what is happening on the ground”. A spokesman said that it had not made any decision about who was in charge in Kygryzstan.
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