Osh- I’ve made it to Osh in Kyrgyzstan’s troubled Ferghana valley of orchards and ethnic cleansing. The vote on the future of the interim government (and subsequently the October election that will follow) of Roza Otunbayeva will be held here tomorrow. The city is in pretty rough shape coming in from the airport, I observed block after block of torched Uzbek businesses, all of which I expected. What I did not expect however, was to see an Uzbek minaret burned (part of a medical facility stocked with the latest gear from Germany) with its charred hulk towering over a desolate commercial street. The destruction of a neighboring community’s medical or religious institution smacks of ethnic cleansing rather than just simple political rioting out of jealousy of a trading minority with a perhaps better buisness acumen than the city’s Kyrgyz majority. The BBC is reporting that the Uzbek authorities are forcefully repatriating Uzbek refugees back inside Kyrgyzstan where I am sitting just five kilometers from the Uzbek border. This outbreak of ethnic violence is purportedly much worse that the pre-independence riots of 1990. The difference is that with the absence of a ham fisted central authority, these two Turkic communities may not be able to live side by side for a very long time to come.