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СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASAMoral panic, memory, and symbolic politics in Kyrgyzstan.
On February 10, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov dismissed his longtime ally, Kamchybek Tahsiev, from his post as head of the State Committee for National Security. The two men had risen to power together in 2020, forming what many analysts referred to as a tandem.
Kyrgyz simply called them eki dos – “two friends.”
The breakup of the tandem between Japarov and Tashiev was marked by controversial memories, ambiguity, disappointment, and shock. It triggered not only a political rupture but also a broader sense of moral panic, as if the entire moral framework of local politics had shattered.
Drawing on public and local media, social media discussions, and conversations with my informants in Kyrgyzstan, it became clear that people’s responses and the narratives constructed around them were organized around a series of stark dichotomies: fear versus stability, clean versus dirty politics, ethical versus unethical behavior, and acceptance versus rejection.
These tensions were further amplified by perceptions of external influence, particularly from Russia and Uzbekistan, alongside divisions between the north and south in public discourse and the ongoing struggle between old and emerging elites for influence.
In this environment, the breakup of the tandem became more than a personal or institutional split; it also became a symbolic, emotional, and moral moment through which society attempted to make sense of competing narratives of victory and loss, stability and disruption, legitimacy and power.
To understand why people interpret political events in such different ways, the work of Italian oral historian Alessandro Portelli offers useful insights. In his 1991 book, “The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History,” Portelli argued that people’s memories of events, even when they contain factual inaccuracies, can reveal important social meanings.
What matters is not only what people remember, but also how they interpret events and what they choose to emphasize. According to Portelli, conflicting memories are not simply mistakes. Instead, they show how communities interpret political change and moral values. When people tell different stories about the same event, they are often expressing deeper concerns about justice, betrayal, power, and historical change.
All of this is evident in the reactions to the tandem’s breakup last month.
The Tandem as a Symbol of Unity
People’s reactions to the Japarov-Tashiev tandem are less about the formal constitutional roles of president versus security chief and more about what the tandem symbolized: unity between north and south, the consolidation of old and new elites, strength after years of instability and revolutions, and a promise of order after chaos. The so-called stable tandem of the two friends became a symbol interpreted in different ways. Some saw it as a source of justice and stability, and others as a sign of unfairness and questionable political practices.
Japarov represented legitimacy as a “man of the people,” while Tashiev represented force, discipline, security, and fear. Together, they embodied a narrative: “Unity + strength = stability.” Even if that stability was partly based on fear, many people accepted it as a lesser evil after years of political upheaval. When Tashiev was removed, it felt to some like a betrayal of the promise of unity, while to others it felt like a moral correction that weakened coercive power.
When Tashiev was removed from the security services, the shock was not just about a kadrovyoe resheniye (a “personnel decision”). It disrupted a symbolic narrative of stability. People struggled to make sense of it because the meaning of power had shifted, not just the personnel involved. Power had been structured through the tandem between Tashiev and Japarov, which incorporated a wide range of groups with different interests, voices and visions.
The Tandem as an Emotional World
After Tashiev’s removal, people reacted in radically different ways. Some supporters of Tashiev expressed anger (“this breaks stability”), disappointment, and uncertainty. Some opponents of Tashiev reacted with relief (“this weakens authoritarian security power”), while others felt confused and anxious.
Rumors and speculation – about whether Tashiev would return from abroad, where he was when Japarov dismissed him, or remain absent – circulated widely, reinforcing the sense that the political order itself was unsettled. Emotions were at the heart of these discussions.
These contradictions mirror the diversity of voices in Kyrgyz society: fear versus the desire for order, exhaustion from revolutions versus fear of authoritarian consolidation, the north-south symbolic balance versus different power struggles. These tensions reflect broader social differences, political debates, and diverse emotional responses. Just as in Portelli’s work, the diversity of interpretations tells us more about society than any single “correct” interpretation of a political event.
The Tandem as Order
Kyrgyzstan has experienced multiple revolutionary upheavals (2005, 2010, 2020). These revolutions remain emotionally close. As a result, Japarov and Tashiev are remembered not just as politicians but as figures emerging from a cycle of instability, protests, and regime change in 2020.
During the political unrest of 2020, Japarov was released from prison and later became president. Some people explain this rise through a simple story: that Tashiev freed his friend and brought him into power.
The tandem thus became a narrative of “finally, order” after repeated ruptures and upheavals. When the tandem broke-up, people began to reinterpret not only the present moment but also the meaning of 2020 itself. Was it a people’s revolution? A populist seizure of power? A necessary reset – or the beginning of a new single-headed authoritarian leadership? For others, the disruption opened moral and political space for relief from fear-based governance. At the same time, critics have widely argued that the tandem enabled both leaders to control and appropriate significant resources, while also accumulating compromising material on one another.
As Portelli highlights, memory is about meaning, not just facts, and contradictory memories can be socially productive. In the Kyrgyz case, memories of past revolutions are constantly reworked through present anxieties. Popular reactions to the breakup of the Japarov-Tashiev tandem reveal how recent revolutionary experiences continue to shape political imaginaries in Kyrgyzstan.
The Tandem as a Moral Drama
The tandem between Japarov and Tashiev served a moral role, too. Public reactions to its breakup were not just political opinions – they were moral judgments about what kind of political order is legitimate.
Many interlocutors interpreted Tashiev’s removal as morally troubling not simply because of the political consequences, but because of the circumstances under which it occurred. The fact that he was removed while undergoing medical treatment in Germany, at a moment of physical vulnerability and reduced capacity to resist, was narrated by some as an act of betrayal and political opportunism. People described it as unfair, dishonorable, and even cowardly.
In these accounts, the timing of the decision mattered as much as the decision itself. Power was seen as being exercised against someone who was temporarily “weak,” violating moral expectations of loyalty and strength that underpin political alliances. In Portelli’s terms, the narrative foregrounds moral meaning over political procedure: vulnerability becomes the key lens through which power is judged.
Local people’s concerns and interpretations reveal how political events are evaluated through culturally embedded notions of honor, masculinity, and fair confrontation. The removal thus became not only a political rupture but also a moral drama of betraying a friend in a vulnerable position.
The moral frame suggests that exercising power when the other is weak violates local expectations of strength, loyalty, and face-to-face confrontation. The story therefore becomes not just about elite politics but also about the moral economy of power, the ethics of rivalry, and acceptable versus unacceptable ways of removing a rival. And thus, politics becomes a moral drama.
Conclusion
Following insights from Alessandro Portelli, the diversity of narratives surrounding the tandem’s collapse should not be treated simply as factual inaccuracies or political rumors. Instead, they provide insight into how people make sense of power and historical change. Conflicting memories and interpretations reveal underlying moral frameworks, collective anxieties, and shifting political imaginaries. The story of the tandem thus becomes symbolic and emotional fields in which broader questions about legitimacy, betrayal, strength, and vulnerability are negotiated.
Kyrgyz local politics is dynamic. Despite its authoritarian character, the tandem also reflected political diversity and competing interests, and a balance of power sustained through networks of loyalty, conflict of interests and the strategic use of kompromat – compromising material. Political order was not only institutional but also moral, symbolic, and emotional. After years of upheaval, people came to perceive the tandem as a symbol of stability and unity, despite the that its weaknesses, internal tensions and vulnerabilities remained visible.
The removal of Tashiev created a rupture in this narrative. The shock itself is revealing: it shows that people had internalized the tandem as a taken-for-granted structure of power, even if they disliked certain aspects of it. In Portelli’s terms, this is the moment when the “story people tell themselves about power” collapses and new narratives have yet to fully emerge.
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