Crossroads Asia | Society | Central Asia

As the World Nomad Games Come Home, Japarov Expands Kyrgyzstan’s National Story

The opening of the games coincided with Kyrgyzstan’s 35th independence anniversary and a major Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

A group of tourists pose in Bishkek’s central Ala-Too square on Aug. 31, hours before the World Nomad Games got underway. 

Kyrgyzstan marked 35 years of independence in grandiose fashion on August 31. More than 20 world leaders arrived in Bishkek throughout the day ahead of a landmark Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, before the curtain rose on the sixth World Nomad Games with a glamorous opening ceremony in the evening. 

Considering the games’ moniker as the “Olympics of the nomadic world,” the spectacle more than befit the occasion. It took place at the city’s newly built 51,000-seater Bishkek Arena, the largest stadium in Central Asia, and featured an impressive array of dignitaries, such as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event was reminiscent of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London in its blend of national culture, history, and showmanship. 

Including a lengthy pre-show program, the ceremony lasted nearly seven hours. It began with a series of performances by some of the biggest names in Kyrgyz music, young and old. Then came the 18 heads of state, each personally welcomed by President Sadyr Japarov, with every greeting shown on screens around the stadium. 

A 29,000-person crowd awaits the opening ceremony’s main event, as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin arrive at Bishkek Arena. Photo by Oliver Fisk.

Then came the Kyrgyz national anthem, a processional roll call of the 104 countries taking part in this year’s games, and a speech by Japarov, who theatrically rose out of the floor via an elevator platform before delivering his remarks. At that point, there were still nearly 2 more hours’ worth of ceremony to go. 

What followed was a vast dramatic journey through Kyrgyz and nomadic heritage, consisting of a succession of dance routines put on by some 3,000 performers and 300 horsemen, and a non-stop background show of glitzy visual effects. 

The show depicted a variety of scenes, from the symbolic collection of water at Issyk-kul to an episode that ominously appeared at first to represent the Mongol invasion of Kyrgyzstan. (However, the would-be conquerors were eventually revealed to be athletes looking for a game of Kok Boru, one of the country’s traditional sports.) 

Horsemen and performers arrange themselves in the shape of a tunduk, the circular crown of a traditional yur, which makes up the center of the Kyrgyz flag. Photo by Oliver Fisk.

Altogether, the performance was impressive in its ambition and exhilarating in its execution — and that was before it was capped off with a fireworks show and short concert given by Nicole Scherzinger from the Pussycat Dolls. 

In many ways, the ceremony encapsulated a broader tendency of the games: conceived by Kyrgyzstan’s government in the early 2010s as a way to improve the country’s image abroad, they have also helped refashion its national identity at home.

“Following coups in 2005 and 2010, and that year’s violence in Osh, Kyrgyzstan was most commonly associated with inter-ethnic tensions, conflict, and other negative things,” Dr. Arzuu Sheranova, an independent researcher based in Germany, told The Diplomat.

“Although the government was initially skeptical of the idea, [they realized] eventually that the games could be used to attract foreign investments [and] rebrand the country as a safe destination for foreign tourists,” she explained. 

What followed was a model, if not entirely intentional, case study in nation-building. Because the Kyrgyz government began to emphasize nomadic self-branding so heavily when preparing to welcome an international audience during the Nomad Games in 2014, 2016, and 2018, the campaign ended up having significant knock-on effects........

© The Diplomat