Kyrgyzstan

The mountain republic that has overthrown three governments by protest, which in Central Asia is unusual enough to be its defining feature. Kyrgyz identity is bound to nomadic pastoralism and to the Manas epic, an oral poem many times the length of the Odyssey that reciters still perform from memory. Russian conquest came in the 1860s and 1870s, and the 1916 revolt against conscription was put down so severely that a large part of the population fled over the passes to China, with many dying in the snow - the Urkun, remembered as a national catastrophe. Soviet borders drawn in the 1920s left the Fergana valley cut into interlocking pieces shared with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, including enclaves entirely surrounded by another country, and border clashes there continue. Independence in 1991 was followed by the Tulip Revolution of 2005, another uprising in 2010, and a third in 2020, each removing a president. Ethnic violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks at Osh in 1990 and again in 2010 killed hundreds. Gold from the Kumtor mine and remittances from Russia carry the economy. Lake Issyk-Kul is among the largest mountain lakes in the world. Over three-quarters of the country is above fifteen hundred metres. Bishkek is the capital and Osh the second city. The country has about seven million people. The yurt's roof crown appears on the national flag. Walnut forests in Arslanbob are among the largest in the world. The country hosted both Russian and American airbases simultaneously in the years after 2001.

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