![\"\"](\"https:\/\/natharatmouchrika.net\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/12ef93720f21878e39665cb6b1be278e-169x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
October 5th marked the 25th anniversary of the world\u2019s first \u201ccolour revolution\u201d, in Yugoslavia. A lavishly-funded, multi-pronged CIA, NED and USAID campaign exploited civil society actors, in particular youth groups, to dislodge President Slobodan Milosevic from power. Such was the effort\u2019s success, US officials and media\u00a0openly boasted<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0about Washington\u2019s central role. A slick \u2018documentary\u2019 on the unrest,\u00a0Bringing Down A Dictator<\/em>, was\u00a0even produced<\/a><\/strong>. Milosevic\u2019s fall also provided a blueprint for countless future \u2018soft coups\u2019, which continue to this day.<\/p>\n So it was, one by one in the early 2000s, insufficiently pro-Western governments throughout the former Soviet sphere were toppled using strategies and tactics identical to those deployed against Belgrade. A\u00a0common ruse<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0was for the US to fund, via local NGOs, a \u201cparallel vote tabulation\u201d to project an election\u2019s outcome in advance, and publicise the data before results were officially announced. As in Yugoslavia, PVT figures differing from formal tallies were the spark that ignited Georgia\u2019s 2003 \u2018Rose Revolution\u2019, and Ukraine\u2019s 2004 \u2018Orange Revolution\u2019.<\/p>\n Over subsequent years, much has been written by academics, historians and independent journalists about those colour revolutions. Conversely, Kyrgyzstan\u2019s 2005 \u2018Tulip Revolution\u2019 has gone almost entirely unremarked upon, and is largely forgotten now. Yet, its destructive consequences reverberate today. Hitherto the freest and most stable state in Central Asia, post-colour revolution Bishkek careened from crisis to crisis, with multiple governments collapsing along the way. It\u2019s only in recent years – following\u00a0another\u00a0<\/em>Anglo-American coup<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in 2020 – the country has regained its economic, political, and social balance.<\/p>\n Pre-2005, Kyrgyzstan was not an obvious colour revolution candidate. Upon its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union, the country quickly established itself not only as the most democratic and open in the region, but a dependable US ally. President Askar Akayev, a former scientist with zero political background, was organically popular, and moreover\u00a0made clear<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0his economic policies were informed by arch-capitalist Adam Smith, not Karl Marx. In other words, Bishkek was primed to do business with the West.<\/p>\n Akayev moreover allowed a relatively free media to develop, and welcomed widespread foreign civil society penetration. Thousands of European and US-funded non-governmental organisations duly opened up shop locally. At one stage, the\u00a0President quipped<\/a><\/strong>, \u201cif the Netherlands is a land of tulips, then Kyrgyzstan is a land of NGOs.\u201d His comments proved bitterly ironic, given the title of the colour revolution that eventually unseated him. In another deeply sour twist, it was precisely Akayev\u2019s welcoming of Western financial and societal infiltration that was his undoing.<\/p>\n A self-laudatory\u00a0USAID factsheet<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0on the President\u2019s removal notes, from 1994 onwards $68 million was funnelled into Kyrgyzstan. This vast windfall was used to train NGOs \u201cto lobby government,\u201d finance \u201cprivate newspapers\u201d critical of Akayev, establish an \u201cAmerican University\u201d locally, and much more besides. The Tulip Revolution stands today as a stark warning to governments the world over of the dangers of permitting such entities to operate on their soil with impunity – and how often, even pro-Western leaders can fall victim to their mephitic influence.<\/p>\n \u2018Defeat Dictators\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite much goodwill built up since 1991, in\u00a0October 2003<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0Akayev angered Washington by inviting Moscow to open an airbase not far from Bishkek, and just a few dozen kilometres from the Empire\u2019s vast Manas\u00a0military installation<\/a><\/strong>, one of a cluster constructed by the US across Central Asia post-9\/11 to facilitate the War On Terror. Such insubordination was sufficient to mark the President for removal, and preparations for a colour revolution according to a by-then well-honed formula began almost immediately.<\/p>\n Akayev was not unwise to this risk, warning in\u00a0December 2004<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0of an \u201corange danger\u201d of the kind that had just engulfed Ukraine threatening Kyrgyzstan, in advance of the country\u2019s elections in February the next year. As it was, the results were far too clean to allege rigging or other shenanigans, as with prior colour revolutions. A\u00a0detailed investigation<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations in fact praised a \u201cpositive\u2026lack of reports of vote-buying, voter intimidation, and harassment of journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n Washington\u2019s vast local standing army of civil society insurrectionists began causing havoc anyway. Some operated under the banner of KelKel, a group\u00a0directly inspired<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>by US-sponsored revolutionary youth factions in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine, and trained by their alumni. Moreover, as the\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>revealed\u00a0just before<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>the elections, an ostensibly \u201cindependent\u201d local printing company in receipt of Freedom House, NED, Soros and USAID cash was responsible for publishing a panoply of opposition outlets and pamphlets.<\/p>\n Days earlier, the firm\u2019s electricity was\u00a0cut off<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>by local authorities. Kyrgyzstan\u2019s US embassy \u201cstepped in with emergency generators\u201d to maintain its anti-government propaganda deluge. This included a prominent newspaper that published \u201cfront-page photos of a palatial mansion purportedly owned by the President and of a boy in a decrepit alleyway,\u201d highlighting state embezzlement versus citizen poverty. Another was a handbook produced by\u00a0CIA-connected<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0Gene Sharp,\u00a0From Dictatorship to Democracy<\/em>,\u00a0dubbed<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cthe bible\u201d of Ukraine\u2019s US-sponsored youth activists at the Orange Revolution\u2019s forefront.<\/p>\n This \u201cmanual on how to defeat dictators, including tips on hunger strikes and civil disobedience,\u201d offers guidance \u201con nonviolent resistance – such as \u2018display of flags and symbolic colors\u2019.\u201d However, the protests that instantly erupted after the elections were highly belligerent from inception, with\u00a0bomb attacks<\/a><\/strong>, police pelted with bricks and beaten with sticks, and government buildings torched and forcibly occupied.\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0contemporaneously acknowledged<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0broadcasts by US-funded local TV stations inspired violence in certain areas of Kyrgyzstan.<\/p>\n Upheaval raged for weeks, prompting a personal intervention from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who expressed\u00a0significant alarm<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>over \u201cthe use of violence and intimidation to resolve electoral and political disputes.\u201d He welcomed Akayev\u2019s invitation to instigate dialogue with protesters. They demanded he resign instantly – despite the President having already pledged before the election to do so in October that year. In March, Akayev acquiesced and stood down, replaced by Kurmanbek Bakiyev.<\/p>\n \u2018Terribly Disappointing\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Bakiyev\u2019s ascension was initially framed by Western journalists, politicians and pundits as a sparkling victory for people power, and the dawning of a new era of democracy and freedom in Kyrgyzstan. Yet, five years later, he fled the country, following mass protests over his savage, corrupt rule. The tipping point for Bakiyev\u2019s ouster was the\u00a0April 7th 2010<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0mass shooting of demonstrators by security forces, which killed up to 100 people and wounded at least 450 more.<\/p>\n As\u00a0Forbes\u00a0<\/em>recorded<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0at the time, the level of graft under his Presidency was \u201cmind-boggling\u201d. Bakiyev appointed close relatives to key positions, allowing his family to profit handsomely from legally questionable privatisation of state industries, and\u00a0supply of fuel<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to Washington\u2019s Manas base. Bakiyev\u2019s son Maxim, who oversaw the latter,\u00a0was described<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by US diplomats in leaked cables as \u201csmart and corrupt.\u201d By\u00a0some estimates<\/a><\/strong>, companies he ran reaped $1.8 billion from these deals, close to Kyrgyzstan\u2019s\u00a0total GDP<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in 2003.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Bakiyev\u2019s brother Zhanysh ran Bishkek\u2019s security apparatus with an iron fist. Harsh restrictions on political freedoms were enacted, while arbitrary detentions, bogus convictions, torture, and\u00a0killings<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>of opposition activists, journalists, and politicians became commonplace. For example, in March 2009 Bakivey\u2019s former chief of staff Medet Sadyrkulov died in an alleged road traffic accident. It was\u00a0later revealed<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0he was brutally slain upon Zhanysh\u2019s order. That December, dissident reporter Gennady Pavlyuk\u00a0was murdered<\/a><\/strong>, thrown out of a sixth-floor apartment with his arms and legs bound.<\/p>\n Bishkek\u2019s Tulip Revolution wasn\u2019t unique in producing such horrors. A\u00a0March 2013<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0essay in elite imperial journal\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/em>\u00a0acknowledged the results of every US-orchestrated government overthrow in the first years of the new millennium were \u201cterribly disappointing\u201d, and \u201cfar-reaching change never really materialized\u201d resultantly. This is quite an understatement. Most\u00a0target countries<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0slid into autocracy, chaos and poverty as a result of Washington\u2019s meddling. It has typically taken years for the damage to be corrected, if at all.<\/p>\n Still, despite this disgraceful legacy, US appetite for fomenting colour revolutions – and the willingness of groomed citizens, particularly youth, the world over to serve as Washington\u2019s regime change footsoldiers – remains undimmed. In September, Nepal\u2019s elected government\u00a0was overthrown<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by disaffected \u2018Gen Z\u2019 activists, with the full support of the country\u2019s powerful military. The palace coup bore all the hallmarks of a colour revolution. Who and what will replace the felled administration still remains far from clear.<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!1PqY!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffad555f0-596f-4786-b6a8-86fa94c491e1_1500x1002.webp)
<\/picture>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!UeDn!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0e8ef6f-10b8-49aa-8a6c-65324a35fb78_1080x608.avif)
<\/picture>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!Guw_!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4372250-3d22-4913-bcef-ecb749dd6ce2_1071x688.avif)
<\/picture>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HjVO!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa68a9992-e49b-423c-aea4-be4b59b912d5_2000x1125.webp)
<\/picture>\n