Media mark a month of fighting

Uzbekistan's mountains: calm before the storm

The media in Central Asia are giving wide coverage to the fighting with Islamic militants that has been raging in the mountains of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for the past month.

State TV in Uzbekistan waited nearly a week before first acknowledging the rebel incursion, but it is now carrying daily reports from the conflict zone aimed at assuring viewers that the army has the situation under control.

"The terrorists... have not carried out any military operations for two days, because they have run out of ammunition," a piece aired on Friday said.

The reporter said the militants had been trying unsuccessfully to contact their "foreign patrons", and that one group trying to flee back to Tajikistan "is in a desperate position and wants to surrender".

Mountainous terrain

Press coverage has followed a similar line, but the Uzbek army newspaper this week carried a rare admission that all is not plain sailing.

The bandits' tactics are different from those that most officers learned at military college

Uzbek arms official Alijon Sobirov

An official in charge of armaments told the Vatanparvar weekly that the rebels were better equipped and trained for coping in mountainous terrain.

"One would wish that both uniforms and kit were better adapted to war conditions in the mountains," Colonel Alijon Sobirov said.

"The tactics that the bandits are using in the mountains are different from those that most of our officers learnt at military college. This requires us to change many things in the way divisions are armed and weapons used."

Kept in the dark

Media management has also surfaced as an issue in the two countries directly involved.

In Uzbekistan, apart from an intervention by a presidential aide who criticized domestic media both for not checking carefully enough with the authorities and for waiting too long for government instructions, attention has focused on allegedly biased coverage by foreign broadcasters.

Rebels want to cross Askar Akayev's Kyrgyzstan

The freer media in Kyrgyzstan, however, have complained openly about a lack of official information.

"As often happens, following official reports... which are disseminated sparingly by the Defence Ministry, our newspaper is reporting facts which are being kept secret," the main national evening paper, Vecherniy Bishkek, said on Wednesday, prefacing a report from "confidential sources" about one recent rebel incursion.

In Kazakhstan, the media initially took a more relaxed view, with pundits on TV discussion programmes debating the insurgents' motives and the ability of the neighbouring armies to tackle the threat.

No turning back

In the past few days, however, reports that the Uzbek fighting was coming closer to Kazakhstan prompted the authorities to beef up security at the border, and the changed mood was reflected in TV coverage.

We do not want to be taken back to the Middle Ages - I do not want to live in the 1700s or 1500s

Absattar Derbisaliyev, chief mufti of Kazakhstan

The head of the country's Muslims, who was appointed in June, chose this week to give his first public news conference, and his dire warning about the rebels' intentions was given wide coverage on prime-time TV news.

"The militants... seem to want to set up a caliphate in Central Asia," Absattar Derbisaliyev said.

"No, we do not want to be taken back to the Middle Ages. I do not want to live in the 1700s or 1500s," he said.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.