Word: kyrgyz
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...former Soviet territories - since the U.S. began operations at Manas in 2001. In Moscow in February 2009, perhaps spurred by the offer of a $2 billion loan from Russia, Bakiyev publicly complained that the U.S. wasn't paying enough for its use of the base. That same month, the Kyrgyz parliament voted to end the U.S. presence, though ultimately the lease was renewed with the hefty rent increase. (Read a brief history of Kyrgyzstan...
...Kyrgyz themselves are of Turkic stock, one of the many confederations of Central Asian nomadic tribes that coalesced into an ethnic group over generations of war and migration. Their founding national myth is the Epic of Manas, a 500,000-line poem that is 12 times the size of The Odyssey and claimed by some to be one of the few examples of oral literature preserved in its original form for nearly a thousand years. It tells of a heroic warrior, Manas, as he united the Kyrgyz and smote enemy invaders upon the steppe. It's a tale that...
Elements of the Kyrgyz nomadic heritage still shape much of this largely pastoral and agrarian society. The brand of Sufi Islam practiced by the majority of the population has blended easily with sky- and nature-worshipping traditions of an earlier era. Though now illegal, the distasteful custom of wife-kidnapping - where a woman is unsuspectingly and often forcibly seized and taken to her husband-to-be's home - perseveres in parts of the country. (See a TIME piece on whether Moscow subverted the upheaval in Kyrgyzstan...
...Russian traveler, wrote sneeringly that the "Kirghiz manner of life is a living picture of the age of the Patriarchs... they live almost solely for their herds." Heavy-handed Tsarist and eventually Soviet rule saw the migration of a significant population of Russians as well as the dilution of Kyrgyz culture. New tree-lined urban centers like Bishkek as well as spas along the land's salt lakes became popular destinations for Russians escaping the industrial grimness further north. As in elsewhere in Central Asia, Cyrillic is the adopted script and vodka shops abound...
...staunchly Muslim Ferghana Valley, where Osh lies, had been fragmented over the decades by Moscow and, after 1991, fell within the borders of independent Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. This has led to all sorts of confusion and conflict. Bloody riots in Osh in 1990 between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz marred the run-up to independence; political spats over everything from border troop movements to the sensitive issue of water access blow hot and cold between the region's capitals...