Preveza and the struggle for Greece

Preveza, at the mouth of the Amvrakikos Gulf, in southern Epirus, is a pleasant little town. In a maze of narrow streets between the Venetian clock tower, built at the end of the 18th century, and the seafront are lots of little restaurants selling simple, fresh seafood, packed with locals and a handful of foreign visitors during my weekend stay. It is a sleepy, peaceful place in autumn, but it is expanding fast, new villas springing up along the coast, international flights now arriving at the airport. But the proliferation of crumbling fortresses, overgrown with greenery, attest to a time when Preveza was strategically important and bitterly fought over. Now that importance has gone. Inside the walls of the Agios Andreas and Agios Georgios fortresses, which flank the town, stand derelict military barracks, empty guard huts at the entrances, evidence of more recent, but now ended military use.

The Venetian clock tower, Preveza

Preveza changed hands many times during the Middle Ages, and, after a long spell of Ottoman rule, was held by Venice from 1717 until the Venetian Republic was snuffed out by Napoleon in 1797. The small French garrison stationed in the town, together with local Preveza guards and a band of Suliote warriors, were no match for the army with which Ali Pasha marched on the town the following year. The massacre of the defenders and the local Christian population that accompanied Ali Pasha’s capture of the town was one of the most notorious episodes in his cruel reign. He then called on those who had escaped to the mountains to return to the town, promising they would not be in any danger. When they returned, many of them were immediately put to the sword. Surviving prisoners were marched up to Ioannina, many of them perishing on the journey. Those who made it were paraded through the streets of Ali Pasha’s capital carrying the severed heads of their dead comrades, to the taunts of the town’s Muslim inhabitants. A handful of the French prisoners were afterwards sent to Istanbul.

Lord Byron briefly stopped in Preveza a few years later, when he first arrived in Greece, dining with the British consul in the town. It did not make a favourable impression. Byron’s companion, John Cam Hobhouse, was appalled by the hole-in-the-floor privy, later admitting that ‘had the commander of the brig been very pressing, I believe we should have consented to go back to Patras.’ The sorry state of Preveza in the years following Ali Pasha’s conquest was attested by another British traveller, the Rev. Thomas Smart Hughes, who visited a few years after Byron and Hobhouse. He wrote of a deplorable change in the town, whose population had been reduced from 16,000 to 3,000, a monument to the worst afflictions of arbitrary power. The remaining inhabitants stalked like spectres through its vacant and deserted streets, many of the buildings and all the churches raised to the ground. Yet despite all that, Hughes wrote, Preveza was ‘a very favourite residence of the pasha, his great naval depot, fortified by the strongest works and adorned by the finest palace in his dominions.’ But Ali Pasha cannot have cared much for Preveza. He removed the clock mechanism and bell from the clock tower, and took them back to Ioannina.

Pantokrator fortress, Preveza

Ali Pasha beefed up the defences of the town. He substantially rebuilt the Venetian fortress of Agios Andreas, and built the Agios Georgios fort on the other side of the town. He built the Pantokrator fortress, named after the church on the site, a little to the north of the town, and a small fortress on the other side of the gulf, next to where the airport now stands. This is a region of many castles, up and down the coast. The fortresses around Preveza are all decaying, neglected. Modern buildings and streets have breached the walls of Agios Georgios. Sitting a little distance from the town, and only recently surrounded by new suburbs, the Pantokrator fortress has been better preserved. Jutting out into the sea, from a distance it looks rather fine. But inside, it is much decayed. Some more modern constructions inside the fort have also been abandoned, and vandals and graffitists have done much damage. There appears to be little interest in conserving the town’s past.

With the fall of Ali Pasha in 1822, the town reverted to direct Ottoman rule, which continued until the First Balkan war of 1912. Later in the 19th century, as the emergent Balkan states vied for the territory of the decaying Ottoman Empire, Albanians struggled to assert their interests. Preveza had a significant Albanian population in the 19th century. In 1878, as the Congress of Berlin considered a further carve up of Ottoman territory, and Greece pressed its claim to Epirus, Albanians began to organise their resistance. In January 1879, the Albanian Committee of Preveza, a branch of the League of Prizren, organised the Assembly of Preveza, a meeting of local Albanian delegates and supporters from elsewhere in the Albanian-inhabited Ottoman lands. This Assembly determined to oppose the cessation of Epirus from the Ottoman Empire to Greece. The following month, Albanian representatives from around the Ottoman Empire signed a petition in Preveza, threatening to take up arms to prevent the town being transferred to Greece.

On this occasion, the Albanians prevailed. But it was only a temporary reprieve. In the First Balkan War, in 1912, Preveza was taken for Greece. There is no visible sign of the former Albanian presence now. The statues and monuments are for Greek heroes, the victors. By the best preserved section of the wall of the fortress of Agios Andreas is a memorial to the fallen defenders of the homeland from 1912-1940, the Greek homeland. Their victory meant this would not be a homeland for Albanians. The Albanian story in Preveza has been rubbed out. Prominently placed on the seafront is a statue of Odysseus Androutsos, one of the several rival leaders of the Greek revolt against the Turks, whose mother was from Preveza. Shortly before his death in Missilonghi, just down the coast from Preveza, in April 1824, Byron had accepted an invitation from Androutsos to attend a congress in Salona, in eastern Greece, to try to unite the different Greek factions. He hoped his presence might help bring accord. He never made it, dying before he could set out.

Ioannina to Tepelena

When Lord Byron visited Ioannina in 1809, he travelled for three days from Preveza, on the coast, with an entourage of servants, guards, an interpreter and ten horses, carrying beds and linen with them, among many other necessities. I travelled with a rucksack by bus from Igoumenitsa, having first taken the ferry from Corfu, and was in Ioannina in time for lunch. Travel is less arduous today, and less romantic.

When Byron visited, Ioannina was the capital of Ali Pasha Tepelena, the Albanian despot who controlled a large territory, including most of present-day Greece, southern Albania, and the south-west corner of Macedonia. Nominally subject to the Sultan, Ali Pasha ruled largely autonomously in his domain. Arriving at the town, the first impression of Byron’s companion, John Cam Hobhouse, was almost fairy-tale: ‘The houses, domes and minarets, glittering through gardens of orange and lemon trees, and from groves of cypress – the lake spreading its smooth expanse at the foot of the city – the mountains rising abruptly from the banks of the lake – all these burst at once upon us...’ The impression was marred by the sight of the severed arm of an executed robber hanging by a finger on a piece of string from a tree as they approached the town.

Ioannina, the Aslan Pasha Mosque

Another British traveller who visited Ioannina not long after Byron and Hobhouse was the Rev. Thomas Smart Hughes, a Cambridge don, who published an account of his travels in Sicily, Greece and Albania in 1821. Approaching the city, he described it as having a noble appearance, crowned with palaces and mosques. The palace of Ali Pasha, and those of his two sons, were, he wrote, in the best Turkish style of architecture, bursting on the sight with great magnificence. Like Byron and Hobhouse, Hughes’s party stayed in the house of Niccolo Argyri. Hughes tells how Ali Pasha, on the death of Argyri’s wealthy father, had appropriated most of his property, which, fearing for his life, Argyri had been unable to oppose. As a result, he was left with a fine house in Ioannina, in which Ali Pasha had ordered him to accommodate the British guests, but with hardly the means to maintain it. This was not an uncommon fate for the city’s Greek merchants. Hughes met one of them, the richest in the city, who had built a house so splendid that Ali Pasha had seized it for his nephew, banishing the merchant and his family from the town.

Like Byron, Hughes was received by Ali Pasha, who at the time was assiduously courting every British visitor, hoping to gain territorial advantage, perhaps an Ionian island, having bet on them during the wars with the French. Hughes, like Byron and Hobhouse, had heard much of the tyrant’s cruelties, including his penchant for roasting alive, impaling and skinning those who crossed him. Not long before Byron’s arrival, Antonis Katsantonis, the leader of a rebel band that had long been a thorn in Ali Pasha’s side, had been captured, together with his brother, Yorgos, and cruelly executed by having his bones broken with a sledge hammer. One of Ali Pasha’s most notorious acts of cruelty was the drowning in Lake Pamvotis of some 17 Greek women for alleged adultery. Among them was Kyra Frossyni, who had apparently been accused of adultery by the jealous wife of Ali Pasha’s son. Some have suggested she may also have been a mistress of Ali Pasha himself. The event was commemorated by a painting, which now features on postcards sold in souvenir shops in Ioannina.

But, as Byron had discovered, Ali Pasha had great charm when he chose. Hughes struggled to recognise the brutal tyrant when his party was received by him in Ioannina: ‘Here it is very difficult to find any traces of that bloodthirsty disposition, that ferocious appetite for revenge, that restless and inordinate ambition, that inexplicable cunning, which has marked his eventful career: the mien of his face on the contrary has an air of mildness in it, his front is open, his venerable white beard descending over his breast gives him a kind of patriarchal appearance, whilst the silvery tones of his voice, and the familiar simplicity with which he addresses his attendants, strongly aid the deception.’

As I walked from the bus station, along a road that followed the shore of Pamvotis lake towards the historic city centre, I caught my first glimpse of a minaret through the trees, and felt perhaps an echo of the excitement of earlier travellers. Ioannia is nowadays a big, modern town. But the historic centre still has charm. Although the lake is polluted, one cannot tell that looking over it towards the same mountains described by Hobhouse. Walking alongside the lake, beneath the great walls of the citadel, as men sit with their fishing rods, it is still a beautiful scene.

When Byron arrived, he found a message awaiting him from the forewarned Ali Pasha, inviting him to come up and visit him in Tepelena, where he was conducting a ‘little war’, besieging Berat. While they stayed in Ioannina, they were looked after by two of Ali Pasha’s grandchildren, Byron describing the boys as ‘the prettiest little animals I ever saw’.

Ioannina was taken by Greece in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, much to the chagrin of the Albanian community there. Abdyl Frashëri, one of the founders of the League of Prizren, formed to prevent the annexation of Albanian-inhabited Ottoman territory to other newly emergent Balkan states, had been the head of the Albanian Committee of Ioannina. This sought to preserve the city and the Epirus region from inclusion in Greece. There is little sign nowadays of the once significant Albanian presence in Ioannina. A friend in Tirana told me his grandmother was originally from Ioannina, and that he still had some relatives there, although most had moved to Albania. Of those who remained, the elderly ones could still more or less speak Albanian, but the younger generation not. Expulsion or assimilation under pressure have been the lot of national minorities in Greece.

Ioannina as it once was

But there is still much evidence of the Ottoman past, including the bazaar area, with its narrow lanes and low houses, some dating from that period. There is also a Jewish quarter, although few Jews remain. A memorial to the Jews deported under Nazi occupation commemorates the extinction of their once flourishing community. Within the citadel walls, many of the buildings are modern. But some of the former public building remain. These include an Ottoman-era library, as well as the now-ruined and overgrown baths. Byron and Hobhouse had wanted to visit the baths, but had been put off by the sight of the elderly masseur at the entrance. Argyri told them it was a pity, as they would have been served by ‘belli Giovanni’.

Above the library and the baths stands the Aslan Pasha Mosque, now a museum, but, unusually in Greece, retaining its minaret. Following a revolt against Ottoman rule in the 17th century, the Monastery of St. John the Baptist, which had stood on the site, was demolished and replaced by the mosque, and the Christian populace, those that had not been slaughtered for their participation in the rebellion, was banished from the citadel, the ‘castro’, and forced to live outside the city walls. Following the inclusion of the city in Greece, the mosque continued to function as such until 1924, when the Muslim population was expelled as part of population exchange with Turkey that followed Greece’s ‘Asia Minor Disaster’. The abandoned Mosque was turned into a museum in 1933. Alongside the Mosque is a long, low building that had once been a Medresa.

The museum is organised into sections exhibiting artefacts from Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities, the last of these in the main part of the Mosque. It is a fine collection, amply, even generously given the historically poisonous relations between Greece and Turkey, demonstrating the once cosmopolitan nature of the city.

Among the exhibits that attracted my attention was a Damascus sword that had been presented to Georgios Karaiskakis, a klepht, insurgent against Ottoman rule, one-time commander of Ali Pasha’s personal guard, and hero of Greece’s independence war, by the British naval Captain Thomas Cochrane. The Scot Cochrane was one of Britain’s most dashing and successful naval officers during the Napoleonic Wars, and some have seen him as one of the inspirations for the fictional naval officers, C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubry. Disgraced in Britain following his conviction for his part in the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814, he continued his seagoing career in command of the Chilean and then Brazilian navies during their respective independence wars. Then, in 1827-28 he took part in Greece’s independence war, which is when he must have presented the sword to Karaiskakis, who was killed in battle shortly after Cochrane’s arrival. Cochrane, having become the Tenth Earl of Dundonald following the death of his father, returned to the British navy as an admiral in 1832.

My attention was also drawn by the display in the Christian section of the museum of the costume of a Suliote woman. The Suliotes were a warlike people who long resisted Ottoman rule from their mountainous region to the west of Ioannina. Albanian-speaking Orthodox Christians, they were in time assimilated as Greeks. At the height of their power, in the second half of the 18th century, the Suliote Confederacy was an independent territory comprising numerous villages and several thousand souls. After seizing power in Ioannina, Ali Pasha carried on a relentless war against them, eventually abandoning direct assault and resorting to siege and attrition. In 1803, the Suliotes finally capitulated and went into exile. In his usual style, Ali Pasha reneged on his promise to let them pass unmolested, and many of them were massacred. In a famous episode described by the Rev. Hughes, a group of Suliote, women trapped near the monastery of Zalango, in desperation threw their children over a steep precipice, and then, singing and dancing, whirling furiously, with a shriek they hurled themselves to their deaths.

A Suliote

Many of the Suliotes who escaped made it to the Ionian isles, where some entered Russian military service during the period of the Septinsular (Seven Island) Republic. When that came to an end, and the Ionian islands reverted to French control in 1807, many entered French service, including in a unit known as the Albanian Regiment. While the French hung on to Corfu until Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the other Ionian islands fell into British hands, and some Suliotes ended up in British service, in the Greek Light Infantry Regiment they formed. Byron took some of them on as his guards on Cephalonia in 1823, before he embarked for Missolonghi to take his part in the Greek independence war. Suliote warriors also featured prominently in his efforts once he got there. He penned some verses in honour of the wild, unruly and often troublesome, yet brave Suliotes, to whom he was much attached:

Up to battle! Sons of Suli –

Up, and do your duty duly –

There the Wall – and there the Moat is

Bourrah! Bourrah! Suliotes!

The Suliote identity is hard to fathom in modern terms. While they spoke Albanian, identities in the Ottoman Balkans were generally defined by religion rather than nation, and the Suliotes, like the Greeks, were Orthodox. Hughes appears to have confused religious and ethnic identity, in his account referring to Ali Pasha’s troops as ‘Albanians’, perhaps unaware that the Suliotes too were Albanian. They fought hard against Ottoman Muslim oppression, including against their fellow Albanian, Ali Pasha. But when the Sultan sent an army to subdue the recalcitrant Ali Pasha in 1820-1822, he formed an anti-Ottoman alliance with his former Suliote foes, promising them a return to their lands. Ultimately, Suliotes distinguished themselves in the Greek independence war, and in the Greek military following independence. As such, whatever their ethnic origins, they finally identified with Greece. In the small museum of the independence war on the island of Nissi, in the lake at Ioannina, are pictures of Suliote warriors in their strikingly fine costumes which so captivated Byron.

Fethiye Mosque and Ali Pasha's tomb

A short distance from the Aslan Pasha Mosque, on a plateau surrounded by high walls, is the former inner citadel, Its Kale, where Ali Pasha’s Seraglio used to stand. Alas, the palace that so impressed Hobhouse and Hughes was destroyed in a fire in 1870. In the place where it stood is now a Byzantine museum and a large open space. The fortifications at Ioannina go back to the Byzantine period, although they were much extended and strengthened by Ali Pasha. The austerely simple Fethiye Mosque, built at the end of the 18th century, next to the site of the palace, still stands tall, and well preserved. Next to the Mosque are the tombs of Ali Pasha and his first wife, covered by a wrought iron bird cage like structure, an imitation of the original, which was removed during the Second World War. Ali Pasha’s body was buried without its head, which was sent as a trophy to the Sultan following his defeat and execution in 1822.

As the Sultan’s forces closed in on him, following a long siege, Ali Pasha, tricked by offers of a pardon, sought refuge in the monastery of Agios Panteleimon on Nissi island, together with his favourite wife, or mistress, a Greek Christian woman called Kyra Vassiliki. Trapped in the upper room, but defiant until the end, he was shot through cracks in the floor boards before being beheaded. The little monastery now houses a museum dedicated to Ali Pasha. The monastery had to be reconstructed after a tree fell on it some years ago. Nevertheless, a glass square in the modern floor of the upper room reveals what are claimed to be the holes in the original floor through which Ali Pasha was shot.

Visiting castles, old buildings and other sites associated with famous historical figures, one rarely gets a sense of how they were in their heyday. Great stone palaces of the Muslim world, even when they survive, such as the Alhambra in Granada, shorn of the carpets, divans, cushions, all the colour that gave them life, are impressive, but evoke nothing of what they were like, of the world that once existed within the now bare stone walls. Nowadays, there is nothing left of the opulent palace described by Byron, Hobhouse and Hughes. Their accounts, and others like them, are all we have left of the vanished world. And yet, in the little museum on Nissi, surrounded by artefacts and pictures from Ali Pasha’s own time, I felt I caught just a glimmer of the Ioannina of the past.

Seeing a picture of the citadel with Ali Pasha’s palace in all its glory recalled something of the wondrous sight that so impressed earlier visitors. Among the many pictures off Ali Pasha, most of them shrouded in a voluminous cloak, is one by a British visitor, Joseph Cartwright, who met him some years after Byron. Cartwright was paymaster of the British forces based in Corfu, then the capital of the British protectorate of the Ionian Isles. He was a member of the delegation negotiating the transfer of the town of Parga to Ali Pasha. His picture shows Ali Pasha as he really was, and as described by Byron, as immensely fat. In his hand is his favourite, long pipe. And there, in a case in the middle of the room, is the pipe itself; the pipe held and smoked by Ali Pasha. And in the next room, the dress allegedly worn by Kyra Vassiliki on the day Ali Pasha was killed. Vassilki herself had been taken as a prisoner to Istanbul, but was later released and allowed to return to Greece.

Ali Pasha, with pipe

After spending a few days in Ioannina, Byron and Hobhouse set out on an eleven-day journey to Tepelena, there to meet Ali Pasha. The first night, as Hobhouse forged on ahead with some of their party, Byron was lost in an enormous storm, only arriving in the village of Zitsa in the middle of the night. The next day, Byron was enchanted by Zitsa, describing it as being ‘in the most beautiful situation (always excepting Cintra in Portugal) I ever beheld.’ They were entertained at the local monastery by the prior, who, according to Byron’s servant, Fletcher, tried to teach him Greek and kissed him. The Dutch author Tessa de Loo, who made a journey from Ioannina to Tepelena in the 1990s, which she described in her book In Byron’s Footsteps, was disappointed with Zitsa, which she found to have been thoroughly modernised. With luck, she was able to enter the monastery, now abandoned by the monks and only used on special occasions.

I decided rather to head for the Zagori region, slightly to the east of Zitsa, renowned for its spectacular scenery and picturesque villages, carefully conserved according to regulations put in place by the authorities. The only bus to Monodendri, at one end of the Vikos Gorge, left Ioannina well before dawn. I arrived just as the first dull light began to illuminate the stone buildings of the village. My first day in Zagori was washed out by a violent storm that must have been something like the one that overtook Byron. Thunder rumbled from one side of the sky to the other, and then back again throughout the day, and the rain came down in sheets. I ventured out during a brief lull, wandering along the slippery cobbled paths of the old village. At one end of the village, where the tarmacked road arrives, where the buses stop, there are newer buildings, small hotels and shops, built for the burgeoning tourism industry. While they are built in the traditional stone style of the region, they do rather disfigure that part of the village. But walking into the heart of the old village, it is still very charming.

When I reached the village square, dominated by a huge old tree, the storm got going again, unleashing the biggest hail stones I had ever seen, like good sized stones. I sheltered in a little taverna, which was promptly plunged into near darkness as the electricity went out. Having already eaten, I asked for a glass of local grappa, which was warming and pleasant. Even better, the lady brought me a little plate of delicious spit-roasted pork, with some bread and onion, on the house. It seemed, for a moment, I was not just a customer, but, together with an elderly man in the corner, a guest who had sought refuge from the storm. This was the heart-warming kindness of strangers that I experienced many times during my travels in Greece.

Historically, Zagori was a multi-ethnic region, and many of the place names have Slavic or Vlach origin. The name Zagori itself might indicate a Slavic origin. Similar names – Zagora, Zagorje, meaning behind the mountain, are found in many South Slav regions. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was a prosperous region, as can be seen in the fine, large stone houses, most of which date from that period. A number of schools were founded in the 19th century, sometimes with help from Greek émigrés, which fostered the eventual triumph of Greek language and identity, which was finally resolved by the mass expulsions of Slavs and Albanians from northern Greece in the first half of the 20th century.

A bridge in Zagori

It is a lovely region. During two days of bright sunshine following my arrival, I visited the old village of Vitsa, not far from Monodendri. Both are set on hillsides, in the kind of beautiful situations that so beguiled Byron at Zitsa. Until the 1950s, when modern roads were built, the villages of Zagori were linked by stone paths, with 18th century stone bridges crossing the rivers and streams. It makes for wonderful trekking country, and the high-arched bridges that dot the valleys are a delight to see. Perhaps most splendid of all is the Vikos Gorge, nearly 1,000 metres deep in places, and all the more spectacular for its narrowness, sheer walls of rock rising up high from the riverbed at its bottom. The gorge is in virgin, pristine state, with no buildings, and just a path along which trekkers can walk. In summer, it is a popular destination. In October, I saw almost nobody as I walked.

Returning each day in mid-afternoon to the same little taverna in Monodendri where I had sheltered the first day, I sat under the huge plane tree and ate delicious simple food, washed down with Zitsa wine, the wine which Byron and his party must have drunk at the monastery there. Close to Monodendri, sitting perilously on the edge of the precipice of the Vikos Gorge, is the little 15th century Ayia Paraskevi monastery, much renovated, with bearded monks pottering about. On the day I visited, there were parties of Greek pilgrims, come to pray, light candles and bow before its icons.

I made the journey from Ioannina to Tepelena by bus in half a day, getting out at the border crossing at Kakavia, walking across, and catching a minibus on the Albanian side. When Byron and Hobhouse made the journey, taking a route a little to the east of today’s road, there was no border. This was all the territory of Ali Pasha. Ali Pasha was born in a village near Tepelena, and it was here that he had started his career of brigandage and war-making. Byron wrote of the arrival at Tepelena in the poem he wrote during his travels, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

Childe Harold saw, like meteors in the sky,
The glittering minarets of Tepalen,
Whose walls o’er loom the stream; and drawing nigh,
He heard the busy hum of warrior men
Swelling the breeze that sighed along the lengthening glen.

He passed the sacred harem’s silent tower,
And underneath the wide o’erarching gate
Surveyed the dwelling of this chief of power

Where all around proclaimed his high estate.

He was much impressed by the sight of the throngs gathered outside the palace, ‘a new & delightful spectacle to a stranger…’ In a letter to his mother he described ‘the Albanians in their dresses (the most magnificent in the world, consisting of a long white kilt, gold worked cloak, crimson velvet gold jacket & waistcoat, silver mounted pistols and daggers)…’ Hobhouse wrote of a first night in the castle disturbed by ‘the perpetual carousal which seemed to be kept up in the gallery, and by the drum, and the voice of the muezzin…’

Statue of Ali Pasha, Tepelena

The minibus dropped me in the square at the entrance to Tepelena, in front of the statue of the town’s most celebrated son, a reclining Ali Pasha, his beard flowing, pistols tucked into his belt. There is no palace now, but the fortress still stands. Inside its walls are modern houses, higgledy-piggledy along scrappy litter-strewn streets, some of them derelict. Tepelena is a modern town now, most of its buildings the poorly constructed blocks of the Hoxha period. I stayed at the communist-era Hotel Tourism. Every town in Albania had one like it. It wasn’t too bad, simple but adequate. The window frame in the bathroom did not fit into the hole in the wall, leaving a gap of about half an inch on one side, not uncommon in Hoxha-period construction. Thankfully the October nights were still warm. I slept well, no muezzins to disturb me now.

Seen from the river, the long fortress wall stretches along the ridge above. It is a fine sight on a sunny morning. The turquoise river winds through the valley, the fortress on one side, hills rising on the other. A rickety wooden bridge, slung between stone pillars, is the only link with the town for villagers on the other side. I stood at one end, half of the planks rotted away or missing, as many gaps as solid boards, and decided I did not need to cross. Halfway along the castle wall above the river is an entrance. Was this where Byron and Hobhouse arrived? It is piled high with earth, rubble and rubbish now.

The fortress, Tepelena

There is a plaque marking Byron’s visit on the town-side wall of the fortress, with the famous picture of the poet in one of the Albanian costumes he bought in Tepelena, and some verses roughly translated from Childe Harold. But little has been done to show off Tepelena to its best advantage. However it looked when Byron visited, nothing has been preserved except for the stark fortress walls. Perhaps it was never as beautiful as Gjirokaster to the south and Berat to the north, both now UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Few tourists stop here, despite the name of the hotel. But the site is magnificent, the river lovely, the castle impressive. Tepelena could be something more.

Lord Byron in Albanian costume

Byron wrote to his mother that he had spent £50 on Albanian costumes. In his portrait, painted back in England, he looks less like an Albanian warrior than an English lord in fancy dress. When, the day after his arrival in Tepelena, they were received by Ali Pasha, Byron was dressed in uniform with a sabre. The meeting took place in a room paved with marble, with a fountain in the middle. Ali Pasha paid them the unusual compliment of greeting them standing. He was highly attentive, telling Byron to regard him as a father while in Ottoman lands. Perhaps a little disconcertingly, he told Byron he could tell he was well-born by his “small ears, curling hair and little white hands”. He asked Byron to visit him often, especially at night, when he was more at leisure. During their stay in Tepelena, Ali Pasha sent gifts of almonds, sherbet, fruit and sweetmeats.

Byron admired the Albanians, seeing in them primitive virtues, bravery and honesty. They appealed to the romantic poet. In Childe Harold he wrote of them:

Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes
On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!
[…]
Fierce are Albania’s children, yet they lack
Not virtues, were those virtues more mature.
Where is the foe that ever saw their back?
Who can so well the toil of war endure?
Their native fastnesses not more secure
Than they in doubtful time of troublous need:
Their wrath how deadly! but their friendship sure,
When Gratitude or Valour bids them bleed,

Unshaken rushing on where’er their chief may lead.

Byron kept a couple of Albanians as his guards throughout his travels in Greece. His lasting affection for them probably explains his indulgence of the unruly Suliotes he took under his wing when he joined the Greek independence struggle more than a decade later.

Venetians, Serbs and others on Corfu

The idea of visiting Corfu in October held many attractions for me, not least the chance to extend summer, cheat the seasons and escape the autumnal weather of northern Europe. Corfu city is a very attractive town, if rather overwhelmed by mass tourism, even outside the main tourist season. Monstrous cruise liners stand off the new harbour, mercifully some distance away from the historic quarter of the town, spewing off their crowds day after day. What do they come for? As I waited for information at a tourism office by the entrance of one of the town’s two massive fortresses, the man behind the desk tried to point out some of the town’s sites to two elderly ladies. Their response? And where do we go for shopping? For some, it seems, tourism is an enhanced shopping opportunity.

Corfu looks quite different to other parts of Greece, reflecting its very different history. Unlike the rest of the country, it never fell to Ottoman rule. For centuries it was a key stronghold of the Venetian Empire, guarding the mouth of the Adriatic. That Venetian heritage is evident in the town’s architecture, with its narrow streets and multi-storied buildings, often with colonnaded fronts. It is said that the Veneto dialect, once spoken alongside Greek, could still be heard in Corfu within living memory, and a small Roman Catholic population remains on the island, some of them descendants of Maltese immigrants and others of the old Venetian families.

The Ottomans tried repeatedly to capture the island, but the Venetian and Corfiot defenders held on. Looking at the two colossal fortresses that stand at either side of the old town, you can see how. At the entrance of the Old Fort stands a statue of Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, a German who led the successful defence against the final Ottoman siege in 1716. Schulenburg had had a distinguished military career, including fighting under Prince Eugene of Savoy and the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession.

The Old Fort, Corfu

The Old Fort is a bit of an architectural hotchpotch today. Atop the massive bastions of the Venetian citadel stand square, brick 19th century British barracks that would be more at home in Woolwich than on a Mediterranean island. The island was governed by Britain for half a century after the Napoleonic wars, and it too has left a lasting mark. Even more bizarre is the mock classical St. George’s church, built by the British in the fort’s grounds. Several cannon are displayed inside the fort, with information about where they were made and to which armies they belonged. Some are British, some Venetian, and one is Russian, from the brief period when Russian forces occupied the island during the Napoleonic Wars. Some of the mortars, dating from the 17th century and used by the army of the Serene Republic, were also made in England. Behind St. George’s, I came across several other cannon lying around. On closer inspection, there was the crest with ‘G R’ below a crown; George III.

The vast walls of the New Fort loom over the old port. Built by the Venetians, it is in fact only a little newer than the Old Fort, which was originally built during the earlier Byzantine period. Both have been repeatedly restored, enhanced and rebuilt over the centuries. If anything the New Fort is the more impressive, with its huge curving walls. I looked in vain for the Lion of Saint Mark, emblem of Venice, which I had been led to believe could be found in the New Fort. The lady at the ticket office said there were none. However, at the Old Fort, a stone plaque of the Lion was on display, removed from the wall to which it had once been fixed. The Lion, with its mouth curled in a rather odd, friendly smile, can be seen above the entrance to the reconstructed Venetian barracks that had been destroyed in the German bombing in 1943. Under British rule, the building housed the Ionian Academy, the first such institution of higher education in modern Greece. In front of it stands a statue of Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of modern Greece, and a native of Corfu. In an illustrious career, Kapodistrias had earlier been Russian foreign minister, but he did not do so well as Greek head of state, and was assassinated in 1831.

After Napoleon rubbed out the Venetian Republic in 1797, Corfu passed to French control. It did not last long, and in 1799 the French were ousted by a Russian-Ottoman force, and Corfu became the capital of the autonomous Septinsular (Seven Island) Republic, under Ottoman suzerainty, with Kapodistrias as Chief Minister. The Russian action is commemorated by a plaque on the little island of Vido, just across from Corfu city. The plaque, unveiled in 2011, and flanked by Russian and Greek flags, has a pointed message for the Greece of today, with its troubled relations with the western-dominated European Union, about the historical ties between the two countries,: ‘To the Greeks and Russians who died for the Orthodox faith of their fathers…’ The French returned in 1807, and remained until the arrival of the British, following the defeat of Napoleon. The French tenure was brief, but they left a lasting mark, notably the colonnaded Liston, nowadays crammed with cafes, that gives on to the Esplanade, a large expanse of green, beyond which is the Old Fort.

The British established a protectorate, the United States of the Ionian Islands, with its capital in Corfu, with a British Lord High Commissioner and an advisory parliament. The former parliament building has a stone plaque outside the entrance commemorating the parliament’s vote in in 1863 in favour of the union of the Ionian isles with Greece, ‘by will of the Ionian people and with the consent of the protecting power Great Britain.’ The islands formally united with Greece the following year. Many signs of the British period remain, not least the Ionian Academy and the grand former residence of the British High Commissioners, the Palace of Saints Michael and George, at one end of the Esplanade, now a museum. In front of the palace stands a statue of Sir Fredrick Adam, one of the High Commissioners, while at the other end of the Esplanade, close to the Ionian Academy, is the Maitland Rotunda, commemorating another British High Commissioner, Sir Thomas Maitland. But perhaps the most poignant memento of British influence is a cricket pitch on the Esplanade, in front of the palace on one side and the Liston on another. I watched a group of local youths playing cricket on the pitch, very badly, it must be said.

Among the various foreign rulers and visitors who left their mark on Corfu, in 1916 the Serbian army came, not as conquerors, but as refugees. Defeated by combined Austrian, German and Bulgarian attacks, the Serbian army retreated through Montenegro and Albania in the winter of 1915-16, together with their elderly King and numerous civilians. They died in their thousands during their journey, from cold, disease, exhaustion, starvation, and the attacks of Albanians who harried them all the way. This terrible death march, known to Serbs as the ‘Albanian Golgotha’, ended when allied ships transported them from the Albanian ports of Durres and Vlora to Corfu. Some 150,000 arrived, but their sufferings had not ended. Adequate provision for them had not yet been made in time for their arrival on the island, and they continued to die.

The Serbian Mausoleum, Vido, Corfu

The Serbian House in Corfu city is a museum dedicated to this not widely known episode in the history of the First World War. As well as artefacts from the time, it contains numerous photographs of the retreat and of the time spent on Corfu. Many of the photos are harrowing. Some of the newly arrived soldiers, as well as the corpses, look like mere bags of bones, reminiscent of holocaust photographs from World War II. Thousands ended their lives in a hospital on the island of Vido, from where they were taken in boats for burial at sea, the ‘Blue Graveyard’ commemorated in a poem by Milutin Bojić, who took part in the retreat. A plaque below the Serbian Mausoleum on Vido contains lines from the poem. At the spot where ferries from Corfu now arrive on Vido, another plaque, next to the one commemorating the Russian capture of the island in 1799, marks the place from where boats laden with their grisly cargos put off in 1916. In fact, the coat of arms on the mausoleum is not that of Serbia, but of the pre-World War II Kingdom of Yugoslavia, combining the emblems of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. An inscription in large letters over the entrance reads ‘Serbian Heroes Yugoslavia.’ In 1918, when the Serbian army stormed northwards and westwards from the Salonika Front, winning a state more than twice the size of their pre-war kingdom, it might have seemed that the sufferings in 1915-16 had been rewarded.

The tragedy of the retreat across Albania and the arrival on Corfu was not given much attention during the communist decades in Yugoslavia. The communist regime, basing its legitimacy on the partisan struggle against foreign occupation during the Second World War, preferred to avoid discussion of events earlier in the century, beyond damning stereotypes of Great Serbian nationalism and Croatian Fascism. The connection with the elderly King, who comes across as a heroic figure, sharing the sufferings of his troops, whose frailty at times meant he had to be carried over the mountains, was also awkward for the communists. But nowadays Serbia has been rediscovering its past, and has begun to pay greater attention to this both heroic and tragic episode in its history. Serbian leaders regularly visit the island to pay homage to the heroes of the past. Standing on the walls of the New Fort, I watched the little Vido ferry returning with a group of Serbs on a historical tour, a large Serbian flag flying proudly from the mast. Opposite the Serbian House, a Serbian souvenir shop sells mementoes of the Serbian army’s time on Corfu to the numerous Serb tourists who visit the island.

After the first difficult weeks, the Serbs’ stay on Corfu became more tolerable for the survivors, as some of the photos attest. Naked soldiers were photographed frolicking in the sea. Officers stroll in the town, and go on outings with Corfiot friends, many women among them. One photo shows a wedding between a Serbian officer and a Corfiot woman. In the meantime, the troops paraded and trained for their return to the front.

In the spring of 1916, the Serbian army left Corfu, travelling eastwards to re-join the war on the Salonika Front. But the Serbian government and parliament remained on Corfu until 1918, basing themselves in the grand municipal theatre, which was destroyed by the German bombardment in 1943. The theatre was replaced by a nondescript concrete box typical of post-World War II architecture. I walked round the graffiti-covered, crumbling building, its bare concrete colonnades stinking of urine and smothered in pigeon shit. No one cares about such a building, and even the vandals recognise its worthlessness. The local government has considered pulling it down and replacing it with a replica of the old theatre. In any case, they should pull it down.

The signatories of the Corfu declaration,

Nikola Nikola Pašić (with beard) and Ante Trumbić in the middle

In 1917, a key meeting took place on Corfu between representatives of the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee, a group of South Slav politicians from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who had been lobbying the western powers in favour of the formation of a united Yugoslav state. The so-called Corfu Declaration was signed by Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić and Ante Trumbić of the Yugoslav Committee, committing to post-war unification. The Serbian House exhibits photographs of the participants in the discussions. But it was a flawed agreement. The Yugoslav Committee had a very tenuous mandate to speak on behalf of the South Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And the Serbs were only lukewarm about the idea, preferring the expansion of Serbia to include all Serb-inhabited lands, leaving out Slovenia and rump bits of north-west Croatia in which they were not interested. The idea of a union of equals never attracted most Serbs.

The Serbian army was joined in its retreat to Corfu by several foreign medical staff. One of them was a remarkable lady called Flora Sandes, who became the only British woman to serve as a frontline soldier in the First World War. In 1914, together with numerous other women, she went to Serbia with a St. John’s Ambulance unit. As the retreat got under way, she was enrolled in the Serbian army. The Serbian House exhibition contains a photograph of her, with others, on Corfu. In 1916 she published An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army, to help raise funds for the army. She was seriously wounded by a grenade during hand-to-hand combat against the Bulgarians defending Bitola, in Macedonia. She was the first ever woman to be made a commissioned officer in the Serbian army, and was awarded Serbia’s highest military decoration, the Karadjordje Star.

Flora Sandes, in Serbian Army uniform

Flora Sandes is one of several extraordinary British women in the early decades of the 20th Century, who travelled through some of the remotest, harshest regions of the world. Among the others were Edith Durham, who travelled through Albania and other regions of the Balkans, and became a heroine of the Albanian national cause during the First World War; Gertrude Bell, whose unmatched experience and knowledge of the Middle East prompted the British foreign policy establishment to overlook her sex and take her on and make use of her expertise; and Rebecca West, who achieved celebrity status, among other achievements, for her accounts of her travels through Yugoslavia. Their experiences and achievements were remarkable by any standards. But for women, in the conservative, misogynist environments of those places and those times, what they did was heroic beyond anything that any man of their times accomplished.

No change in Montenegro

Another election passes in Montenegro, and again things carry on much as before. The key political arena in Montenegro is not elections. That is not where interesting things happen. On the contrary, the result is always, has always been for the past 20 years, essentially the same. The Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) and its allies win. Milo Djukanović remains in power, whether as president, as prime minister or, as in the past couple of years, from behind the scenes as DPS leader. No. The interest in politics in Montenegro is in the power struggles within the ruling coalition, such as the long tussle between Djukanović and his long-time key ally, Svetozar Marović over the former’s determination to advance his young protégé, Igor Lukšić, to the premiership. It is also in the scandals that emerge about alleged corruption involving the ruling circles, such as the charge that the government has illegally favoured Prva banka, which is controlled by the Djukanović family.

Elections are not interesting because the opposition never manages to present a credible challenge to the DPS. It harps on about corruption and organised crime, and about the lack of an independent judiciary. And few people doubt there is much truth in these accusations. But it does not make any difference. DPS voters turn out time after time. This time they and their allies did not manage to win an outright majority, but they will reach agreement with smaller parties and form the government nonetheless.

So what is wrong with the opposition in Montenegro? How does Djukanović manage to stay so dominant for so long? This time the great hope was supposed to be Miodrag Lekić, a former Montenegrin foreign minister, Yugoslav ambassador to Italy and ally of Slobodan Miloševic. And was it not predictable that Djukanović and his allies would scorn Lekić for his loyalty to Milošević? Was it not obvious that Lekić would present an easy target for those who portray the opposition as pro-Serb, opposed to independence, and disloyal to Montenegro?

Nebojša Medojević, leader of the Movement for Change (PzP), part of the two–party Democratic Front (DF) coalition fronted by Lekić, was surely correct in his analysis when the PzP was formed that the only hope for opponents of Djukanović after the country’s independence in 2006 was to set aside divisions and appeal to opponents of the DPS among supporters and opponents of independence. But the issue has remained critical in defining politics. By throwing in its lot with the New Serbian Democracy (NOVA), the PzP has put off many pro-independence voters. As a party tied to the population that identifies itself as Serb, NOVA is essentially a minority party. In an environment in which identification with independent Montenegro is still crucial, it is hard to see how an alliance including NOVA can appeal to many among the pro-independence majority. Neither can they be expected to win much support among the Bosniac, Albanian and Croat minorities, almost all of whose members supported independence from Serbia.

What of other parties? The Socialist People’s Party (SNP), founded by opponents in the DPS of Djukanović’s break with Milošević in the late 1990s, has never been an out-and-out Serb party like NOVA. Although it also opposed independence, it has made some efforts to put that issue behind it and present itself as a modern centre-left party. But its background remains a handicap, and it has never managed to persuade most voters of its competence to run the country. Despite losing out to the DF in the recent elections, perhaps it could bounce back. But even in that case, some suspect it might eventually be tempted into an alliance with the DPS. Perhaps the new Positive Montenegro (PCG) party, which picked up a few seats in these elections, might have a chance to fulfil the earlier ambition of Medojević, to play down the independence question and appeal to voters on all sides.

But for the moment, a substantial minority of the electorate remains devoted to its Serb identity and supports NOVA and other pro-Serb parties. As long as this division between pro- and anti-independence parties remains, the DPS has an easy ride. In order to challenge Djukanović, parties whose acceptance of independence is not in doubt need to establish a distinct identity, not tied to the pro-Serb opposition, but concentrating on presenting a credible alternative to DPS rule.

It is something like what the PzP initially aimed to do, although Medojević’s intense personal antipathy to Djukanović too often clouded his judgement. The obsession of most opposition parties, as well as civil-society opponents of the regime, with corruption allegations has persistently failed to win over most DPS supporters. After so many elections focusing on that one issue, it is time to recognise that, on its own, it is not going to win over loyal DPS voters. A successful opposition party will have to persuade voters it can run the country, that it has credible policies on the economy, health, education etc. This is a challenge, because the DPS-led coalition has many achievements to its name, notably in advancing the country’s EU ambitions. Tackling corruption and establishing an independent judiciary are vital, but those issues alone do not seem to be sufficient to persuade enough voters to ditch the DPS.

So what is the likelihood of the emergence of an opposition capable of seriously challenging the DPS? So long as the pro-Serb parties remain major players on the opposition scene, the DPS will probably manage to bat them aside as easily as it has up until now. The continued divisiveness of the independence issue is a gift to the DPS. This problem in Montenegro is peculiar among ex-Yugoslav states. No significant political factor in Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia or Kosovo opposes independence (leaving aside dysfunctional Bosnia, which has yet to throw off international tutelage). But as long as the opposition in Montenegro is identified by the pro-independence majority with lack of commitment to the Montenegrin state, it is hard to see how they will be persuaded to vote out the party and the leader, Djukanović, that brought them their independent state.

A journey in Kyrgyzstan

My journey through Kyrgyzstan began in Bishkek. It is a typically Soviet city of broad boulevards and grandiose (often crumbling) monuments. I was struck by one World War II memorial featuring two Kyrgyz soldiers, with an inscription in Russian on one side (there is one in Kyrgyz on the other) declaring “We were fighting for Communism”. There has been little effort to airbrush out the communist past, with one notable exception: the statue of Lenin, arm outstretched pointing to the future in one of the stock poses seen all over the former empire, has been removed from its plinth on the central Ala-Too Square (formerly Lenin Square), in front of the State Historical Museum, and replaced by the legendary national hero, Manas. Lenin has been moved to a more modest spot behind the museum. The cult of Manas has become ubiquitous in Kyrgyzstan in recent years, an officially-inspired nation-building myth to bolster a people’s pride and consolidate a newly independent state.

Inside the museum, a strange hotchpotch of displays sits awkwardly together. Here, Lenin has pride of place. Several statues of him, striking a variety of inspirational poses, dominate a whole floor, as he addresses different sections of Soviet society: here workers, there intellectuals. A huge statue dominates the cavernous central stairwell. Interspersed among the statues are exhibits about the revolutionary and the Great Patriotic wars, uniting the principal legitimising themes that underpinned Soviet rule. Fitted in uneasily among all this are more recent displays concerning the unrest in Bishkek in April 2010, which led to the deaths of dozens of protesters and the flight from the country of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. They appear to have been slotted into available space, incoherently, without any thought.

Upstairs, the main themes are prehistory and Kyrgyz folklore. Bizarrely, many of the mannequins draped in Kyrgyz national costumes have fair hair and blue eyes, rather than the Asiatic features of the Kyrgyz themselves. They would have been less out-of-place in shop windows. Perhaps these were standard mannequins used in Soviet-era department stores. The overall impression is of a country grappling uncertainly with its identity in the post-Soviet world, not sure what to do with its Soviet past, undecided about the motifs of its newly acquired independence.

Travelling east from Bishkek, I visit the Burana Tower, a Soviet-era reconstruction of a medieval minaret. There is little else to see now, a small museum, a collection of balbals, carved Turkic stone figures, and a mound of earth. Yet this was once Balasagun, an eleventh-century capital of the Karakhanids, a Turkic people who ruled a territory that included chunks of modern southern Kazakhstan, eastern Uzbekistan and western China. An artist’s impression attempts to give an idea of what it might have looked like in its heyday. Before the Karakhanids, Balasagun had belonged to the Sogdians, the Iranian people whose merchants once dominated the Silk Road, and whose language was the lingua franca of its traders. Central Asia has long been a region of migrations, of trade and exchange in goods and ideas, of mixing among peoples and cultures, of transience, sometimes great violence, and of impermanence. The once great civilisation of the Sogdians, whose power and influence had spanned continents, has passed into obscurity, just as Balasagun had vanished into dust.

Orthodox church, Karokol

Continuing eastwards, I reached the town of Karakol, founded by Russian settlers in the 1860s, close to the Chinese border, at the eastern end of Issyk-Kol Lake. It is a pleasant enough little town, with a bustling market and streets of single-story, wooden houses, painted white with ornate blue window frames. Karakol boasts an especially charming Orthodox Church, dating from the late-19th Century. Built of wood, its onion domes were destroyed by the Bolsheviks, who turned the building into a club. Now it is restored and returned to its original purpose, serving the dwindling Russian population.

But Karakol’s most extraordinary feature is the Dungan Mosque. Before the Bolsheviks, this was one of several mosques in Karakol, and it was the only one to survive their onslaught. It was built for the Dungan community, otherwise known as Hui, Muslims who migrated from China in the late 19th Century following rebellions against the Chinese. Numbering close to 60,000 in Kyrgyzstan according to the most recent census, they are also found in Kazakhstan and, in smaller numbers, in Russia. They speak a dialect of Mandarin, infused with Arabic, Persian and Turkic words. Indeed, although physiologically they appear Chinese, they are thought to be descendants of the medieval Arab conquerors who first brought Islam to the region. There are still a number of Dungan villages, near Karakol and Bishkek, where they have maintained their distinctive traditions.

Dungan mosque, Karakol

Standing in front of the mosque in Karakol, I was initially confused. Before me was what looked very much like a pagoda, the architecture purely Chinese, until I noticed the squat little minaret to one side. The interior, with its spread prayer carpets, appears more identifiably Muslim. What an astonishing blend of different styles and civilisations, Muslim and Chinese. But in its way it is quintessentially Central Asian, a product of the toing and froing from east to west and back that characterised the Silk Road for centuries, exchanging ideas and technologies, combining them in novel ways. For the purist Muslim zealots of Saudi Arabia, the vandals of Timbuktu, Karakol’s Dungan Mosque would no doubt be an impossible affront. Yet this mosque appeared to be a glorious expression of the globalisation and multi-culturism of the Silk Road long before such terms had been invented.

Since time immemorial, the nomadic Kyrgyz have set off every summer with their animals to the high summer pastures. Even amid the urban living of the 21st century, some still leave their villages to spend the summer months in these jailoos, living in yurts, the traditional felt-covered tents of the Central Asian nomads. Taking to the mountains around Karakol, I got a foretaste of this summer migration, at the hot springs of Altyn Arashan and in the Jeti-Oguz (Seven Bulls) gorge, and the Valley of Flowers. In serene landscapes, families go about their business, tending sheep, and making kymys, the extremely sour fermented mare’s milk that the Kygyz value highly, but which to me is only just barely palatable.

Increasingly, the traditional life of the Kyrgyz is being overtaken, not only by modern living, but by the beginnings of mass tourism, and the commercialism it brings. Some of the shepherds in the summer pastures now supplement their incomes by putting up visitors in one of their yurts, offering them food and traditional hospitality. In the little town of Kochkor, just to the west of Issyk-Kol, this seems particularly visible. Westerners, with their hiking boots and ruck sacks, stride through the bazaar, or lounge outside the little café which has been adopted as their favoured drinking spot. Their numbers are not great for now, and Kyrgyzstan is still a destination for the somewhat adventurous. But they will certainly increase, and the facilities on offer for them will become more elaborate, more comfortable.

Song-Kol

Kochkor is the main jump-off point for visits to Song-Kol lake, perhaps the greatest jewel of Kyrgyzstan, a little over 3,000 metres above sea level, the most breath-taking of the jailoos. For now, no tarmacked roads lead there, and there are only one or two derelict buildings dating from the Soviet era. Well away from civilisation, families spend the summer in their yurts, tend their animals, collect water from the lake, and carry out their ablutions in little basins fed by water from a small tank above. Behind each little group of yurts, a small shed stands over a deep hole in the ground, and patches of brown grass around it reveal where previous years’ latrines have been filled in. Chickens and turkeys run about the little encampments, while horses and cattle wander the meadows around the lake, the horses often hobbled by short ropes tied around their legs, preventing them from moving far. In one small area, about a dozen family encampments are grouped together, with signs on their yurts indicating which travel company they are connected with. In this yurt camp, a few dozen foreign tourists and their guides are put up, fed traditional dishes such as laghman, a broth of noodles, mutton and a variety of vegetables, or plov. Sitting on felt mats at a low table, the hostess attends with a pot of tea, from which she repeatedly refills the little bowls of the guests. In one yurt, I initially made the mistake of sitting opposite my companions, with my back to the door. I was gently told by my guide that, as a foreign guest, I should sit on the other side of the table, facing the door, as was traditional for honoured guests.

Song-Kol

Walking along the shore of Song-Kol, away from the yurt camp, I have a sense of timelessness, of wandering in a wilderness unchanged over centuries. Meadows surround the lake, wreathed by snowy mountains beyond. A great variety of birds flutter and skip across the water, some of them diving in after the abundant fish. In the last light of evening and the first light of dawn, I tread quietly among the little humps of earth close to the water’s edge, pock-marked with mouse burrows, trying to approach the eagles as they stand and wait, before soaring into the air, flying low over the burrows, spying out the mice that are their prey. As I sit at the lake’s edge, a girl rides down to water her horse a few yards away from me, offering a “salam” as greeting, then leaning in her saddle as the horse lowers his head to slurp in his evening drink. In this country, children take to a horse at a very young age, and I saw boys of six or seven cantering along with full confidence and control over their mounts, riding bear-back, their legs too short to reach a stirrup.

Song-Kol

The next morning, it was my turn to mount a horse, for the first time in my life, not counting occasions when, as a child, I had ridden a pony led by a man walking in front. Not to worry, I had been assured, I would have a very calm horse that would just follow the horse of my guide, riding in front. And for the most part, it was true. My guide’s horse, however, was far more unruly, repeatedly trying to veer off, or refusing to budge, the guide responding with sharp whacks with his whip to the horse’s haunches or neck. This was unsettling for my horse, as well as for me, and I was happy to hang back. Occasionally, my horse too dug in his hooves and refused to move, but for the most part he was content quietly to amble along, choosing a path with which he was well familiar. My guide said the horse was happy to have a tourist on his back, who would not hit him hard, and who would let him get away with his transgressions. I wasn’t sure the horse had a favourable opinion of me. Kyrgyz horses are used to being hit hard, and he probably thought I was weak. But I became used to him, and perhaps he became used to me.

Horses are central to the culture of the Kyrgyz, nomads until only a few generations ago. I was a little perturbed at the readiness I sometimes saw to beat them without mercy. At Altyn Arashan, I watched a young man on horseback as he tried to round up a couple of unwilling horses, who were possibly also confused as to what he wanted them to do. When he finally got them where he wanted them, he dismounted and beat them both savagely and gratuitously with his rope. My guide at Song-Kol told me he would prefer not to have to hit a horse, but that it was necessary to show who was boss.

Beginning my trek alongside the lake, after lunch in a yurt along the way, we turned up towards a mountain pass, following a stream past yurt encampments, with their grazing horses and sheep, and children at play. It was an idyllic scene, and, I felt, in this country there was no better way to see it than from the back of a horse, gently rocking to and fro as we climbed up to the top of the pass.

Arriving at the top, I was in for a shock, Looking down the other side, the path appeared alarmingly steep. My guide assured me it would not be a problem. No doubt he found my trepidation feeble. Probably any Kyrgyz child would not have given it a second thought. Setting off gingerly on the descent, my horse, probably sensing my discomfort, was as reluctant as I. Both horses tended to slip and slide on the loose, gravelly rocks on the steep slope. They always recovered their footing, but, unsettled, I said I would rather dismount and descend the steep sections on my own feet, leading my horse. Reluctantly the guide agreed. It was only my first day in the saddle, and maybe I would have become accustomed to such steep slopes in time. I watched impressed as Kyrgyz men almost ran their mounts down nearly sheer inclines. The following day, I rode down a similarly steep slope, not without fear, but I did it.

A yurt camp

By the end of the second day, if it were not for the mounting pain in my knees, I was starting to feel at ease, as we followed the mountain paths, up and down, from one valley to the next, my horse generally obeying my commands by now. As we rode across a final meadow at the end of the trek, we passed a couple of local men setting off with supplies strung over the sides of their steeds. As my guide stopped to chat with them, the horse of one of them suddenly, without warning, dropped to its haunches, his rider maintaining his seat on its back. “Oh yes, they sometimes do that”, my guide said.

Although I intended to head farther south, for Osh, the absence of any regular public transport meant I had to return, with my driver, first to Bishkek. There are several daily flights from Bishkek to Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second city, but I wanted to travel overland. There were no public buses or minibuses. Other than by airplane, the only way to make the journey was in a private, shared taxi. I arrived at the place from where taxis departed for Osh at about 6 am the following morning. There were three or four taxis waiting to fill all their places before setting off. So I waited. By 8.30, I was beginning to wonder whether we would ever get away. Could it be possible that so few people wished to travel from the capital to the country’s second city? The north-south divide is frequently cited as one of Kyrgyzstan’s biggest problems. Indeed, what does it say about a country when there are no regular buses between its two most important cities? Most people would not be able to afford the price of an air ticket. Yet no one, not even the government, had thought it necessary or desirable to ensure regular transport links between the capital and the southern provinces, including Jalal Abad and Osh.

After a while, I noticed that in each of the taxis waiting to depart for Osh there were one or two passengers. There was no taxi-rank system, filling up one car at a time. So I suggested that four of us should combine and all get into one taxi. The drivers themselves would never suggest this, I was told, as they would not poach each other’s passengers. But when initiative came from the passengers themselves, there were no objections. Ten minutes later we were on our way.

It is a long, ten-hour journey, the road following a twisting route over mountain passes, looping well to the west, before heading back eastwards along the Uzbekistan border, through Jalal Abad, and finally down to Osh. Setting out along the built-up plain west of Bishkek, the journey begins in the most developed part of the country, before heading south, up into the Alatau mountain range. Before reaching the mountains, close to the town of Kara-Balta, the road passes a big new oil refinery, still under construction, a huge sign in Chinese characters outside, and numerous Chinese workers in identical red overalls beetling away around it. This may be the future for Kyrgyzstan. Beijing is also investing in other major infrastructure projects, including a railway from China to Uzbekistan, across Kyrgyz territory, and a north-south power line, linking the hydroelectric plant at Jalal Abad with the energy poor north of the country. Numerous Sino-Kyrgyz joint ventures have been established in recent years, and Chinese traders increasingly make their presence felt in Kyrgyz markets.

Many Kyrgyz have mixed feelings about all this. Suspicion and antipathy towards Chinese is widespread. Many want the prosperity they hope Chinese investment may bring, but fear being swamped by their vast eastern neighbour. And, aware of the environmental degradation that has accompanied China’s economic growth, they fear the despoliation of the beautiful nature of their land. Surveying the magnificent landscape of Song-Kol, my guide had told me the Kyrgyz would try to protect its pristine beauty. But he was anxious. A young man in Karakol, close by the Chinese border, told me there were, as yet, few Chinese in the region, and he hoped it would remain that way. Daniar, my guide at Altyn Arashan, above Karakol, thought it was better for Kyrgyzstan to maintain its key relationship with Russia, which he saw as less of a threat. I was not sure it represented such an opportunity as China either.

Heading up into the mountains, via a long tunnel, the road goes over the Tor-Ashuu Pass. In many places prone to avalanches the road is shielded by concrete shelters against the winter snow. Yet I am told the road is often impassable during winter, adding to the isolation of north and south. On my return journey, we had to wait in a long queue of vehicles at the entrance to the tunnel, because some cattle were being herded through it. And this was the main north-south artery of the country. Beyond the pass the road proceeds westwards through a long valley, bordered with yurts at frequent intervals, some of them inhabited by shepherds, others selling kymys, food and other products to passers-by. After traversing another mountain pass, the road descends, around the Toktogul reservoir, before turning eastwards for Jalal Abad and Osh.

Here, beyond the mountains, we entered a different world from northern and central Kyrgyzstan, the world of the Fergana Valley, with gentle rolling hills, and a hot, sultry climate. Fergana, with its diverse ethnic make-up, had long had a distinct identity. Then the Bolsheviks divided it up arbitrarily among three Soviet Republics, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, their territories coiling around each other in an awkward and nonsensical carve-up. Some think it was a deliberate policy on the part of Moscow, to divide and rule. Perhaps it did not matter so much when they were all republics of one country, under one imperial authority. But as in so many other examples of botched decolonisation, independence and separation brought to the surface all the underlying tensions that too often afflict multi-ethnic regions.

Some writers downplay the distinctiveness of the Central Asian nations, seeing them as modern constructs forged by the Bolsheviks out of disparate tribes which had previously had no sense of national identity. Colin Thubron, in his account of his travels through the region, Shadow of the Silk Road, writes that the Kyrgyz nation-state was “the gift of Stalin”. It was the Soviets who drew its boundaries, and standardised the Kyrgyz language, taking care to differentiate it from its close Kazakh relative. And it was Russians who promoted the compilation of the Manas epic out of the oral tradition of the Kyrgyz nomads, to buttress the Kyrgyz national identity. Of course, there is much truth in this, in the notion that modern nations are constructs, or “imagined communities”, in the phrase dreamed up by political scientists. The historical accuracy of the official story of Manas is much in doubt. Early versions were changed in the Soviet period to portray Manas as Kyrgyz, rather than Nogay.

But if the Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek nations are modern constructs, is that not equally true of hundreds of nations the world over? However or whenever nations are formed, if its members are convinced of their identity, can any one nation be counted as either more or less valid than any other? Is this not as true for Kyrgyz as it is for Macedonians, Montenegrins, Ukrainians. Palestinians or Kurds, all of whose claims to nationhood have been denied by others? The origins of nations, the development of their nation-founding myths, are interesting subjects for academic study, for sure. But it should not be overlooked that every nation, including those that consider themselves the oldest and most venerable, has its myths. That the development of national identities has in some cases been recent, and that the identities of some groups of people even today are not settled, still disputed by their putative members, is a matter of interest. But it should not be a reason to dismiss the claim of any who say “we are Macedonians” or “we are Kyrgyz”. This is a matter of practical sense as well as the recognition of peoples’ national rights. In the Fergana Valley, the differences between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks have been sufficiently strongly felt as to cause bitter and bloody conflict since the end of the Soviet Union.

Medieval mausoleums, Özgön

I visited Özgön, a small Uzbek-majority town on the road between Jalal Abad and Osh. Özgön has an ancient pedigree, having been, like Balasagun in the north, an important centre of the medieval Karakhanids. Unlike Balasagun, a trace of the medieval splendour of Özgön remains. An 11th century minaret and three mausoleums, joined together in one building, are well preserved, and faced with fine ornamental brickwork. Unfortunately, Özgön is better known today for the inter-communal violence which in 1990 pitted crudely armed local Uzbeks and Kyrgyz against each other, resulting in hundreds of casualties.

Strolling through the town’s bazaar today, all appears calm and normal on the surface. Uzbeks and Kyrgyz are said to differ from each other physically, although they speak closely related Turkic languages. In general, Uzbeks’ appearance retains more of the pre-Turkic Indo-European, Iranian inheritance than the Kyrgyz. In addition, dress can give clues, Uzbek men preferring small skull caps, often green, rather than the tall felt hats sported by many Kyrgyz men. But I could not reliably distinguish between the two peoples. After generations living in close prosperity, united by their Muslim faith and the closeness of their local dialects, the differences must surely have been eroded by inter-marriage. Probably those differences are more apparent to locals. But nevertheless, the town and its people did look different to the places I had visited in northern and central Kyrgyzstan. Willowy women with fair complexions and sandy coloured hair peeping out from beneath their veils ambled through the streets.

Osh boasts a history stretching back more than two millennia. None of that can be seen today in the grid-like street pattern of a Soviet-era city. The town is dominated by a long rocky ridge known as Solomon’s Throne, a place of pilgrimage for Muslims, but also infused with pagan beliefs and rituals that probably pre-date the arrival of Islam in the region. At one end of the ridge stands a little mosque, built into the rock, originally constructed in the 15th century, and rebuilt in the 19th century and again following the end of communism. All along the ridge are holy places, caves, hollows, smooth rocks, which draw pilgrims hopeful of blessings, cures, and who knows what other miracles? The ridge itself, viewed from a certain angle, is said to resemble a reclining pregnant woman, and is a particular draw for prospective mothers. I paused before a narrow aperture in a rock, watching as women thrust their arms deep into it. One of them cajoled a little girl to do likewise. It seemed hardly surprising that she was reluctant to put her arm into a dark hole, but she eventually complied. Young people queued to do likewise. What is the significance of this hole? I did not know, but I gave it a go. I watched with curiosity as women slid down a gently sloping rock, smoothed away by countless others over the ages. They laughed as they did so. But what meaning did it have beyond innocent fun? Money had been placed in little niches in the rocks, blackened by candles. What were these offerings for?

Colin Thubron had described a visit to such a place, a mazar near Kochkor. He was given a tour by an Imam, who explained the magic of the place, the miracles that occurred there. Islam had put down shallow roots among the Kyrgyz, nomads whose traditional folk beliefs lingered, even under godless communism. Something similar can be found in South America, among the nominally Catholic peasants of the Andes who put a Christian gloss on older animist beliefs, and continue to make offerings to the Pachamama. And in the whirling suns, miraculous cures and rosaries turned to gold of Marian shrines in Europe. It is perhaps harmless enough. But nowadays a rigid conformity with the supposedly pure Islamic Orthodoxy of the Arabian peninsula is intolerant of the local cultural accretions of far-flung Muslim lands from Timbuktu to Indonesia. In such a world, where is the place for the mysticism and magic of places like Solomon’s Throne? Below the ridge is a large new mosque, built with donations from I don’t know where. What does the Islamic establishment make of the pagan pieties performed by Muslim pilgrims on the hill above?

Another feature distinguishing Osh and Özgön from the north of the country is the more overt devoutness of many of the people, even younger women more often going veiled, men wearing skull caps. This is in large part down to the Uzbeks, who according to the 2009 census made up almost half of Osh’s population, and who have long tended to be more strictly observant than their Kyrgyz neighbours. Although I was journeying through Kyrgyzstan during Ramadan, I had seen little sign of it. In so many little grocery stores, the main item on sale, sometimes taking up a whole wall of shelves behind the counter, was vodka, in a bewildering variety of brands. The Kyrgyz family with whom I stayed in Osh did not observe the fast at all until the last evening of my stay, when they invited a large party of people, men and women seated separately, to share the post-fast feast, commencing with prayers. One of the daughters of the household, like her mother and sisters dressed in modern, western clothes, explained that it was traditional to invite others during Ramadan.

Osh market

Strolling through the bazaar in Osh, as in Özgön, all is outwardly calm. Uzbek and Kyrgyz appear to go about their business as normal. Perhaps the most pertinent difference between the two peoples is that, whereas the Kyrgyz were until relatively recently nomads, the Uzbeks had been settled. It was Uzbeks who had made up much of the urban population, including Osh, where they dominated commercial life. In recent decades, this had sparked resentment among Kyrgyz, who had moved in from rural areas in increasing numbers, but often found it hard to find work. Matters came to a head following the ouster of Bakiyev in April 2010. Bakiyev was a southerner. Many southern Kyrgyz saw his removal as a northern ploy to weaken their position, while Uzbeks in the south had often seen Bakiyev as favouring the Kyrgyz. The tensions peaked with clashes in Osh and Jalal Abad in June 2010, leading to anti-Uzbek pogroms as Kyrgyz poured in from the surrounding countryside to join in the attacks. Hundreds were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, both within Kyrgyzstan and over the border into Uzbekistan. Thousands of houses and businesses were burned.

Numerous reports of complicity by Kyrgyzstan’s security forces in the attacks on Uzbek neighbourhoods in Osh were confirmed in a report by an Independent International Commission of Inquiry. While the report refuted claims that the events amounted to genocide, it did point to grave crimes against humanity. It infuriated the interim government in Bishkek. However, events since June 2010 suggest that Bishkek’s control in the south has become tenuous. The nationalist mayor of Osh, who came to prominence during the violence, has assertively championed Kyrgyz dominance, openly telling Uzbeks to accept a subordinate position. Several reports, including one by the International Crisis Group, have told how Uzbeks have been victimised by the police, subjected to arbitrary arrest, torture and extortion, with bribes sought for the release of detained young men. They have also pointed to tight links between the authorities in the south, the police and organised crime in a transit region for drugs from Afghanistan.

The Bishkek authorities have done nothing to address, or even to acknowledge the grievances of the Uzbeks, or to counter the narrative peddled by the Osh mayor that the Uzbeks were separatists who had brought their troubles upon themselves. While the large majority of victims in the violence were Uzbeks, most of those who have been arrested and charged in connection with it have also been Uzbeks. There is a dearth of Kyrgyz in the south willing to challenge the mayor’s the mayor’s version of events. An elderly Kyrgyz former policeman I spoke to in Osh told me “the Uzbeks had started to live well, and so we fired their houses; you understand, we fired their houses.” Facing hostile local authorities and an unsympathetic Kyrgyz public in the south, and indifference and powerlessness from Bishkek, southern Uzbeks have withdrawn into themselves, increasingly turning to the Islamic faith for succour. Despite the apparent calm, the festering conflict between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks threatens to boil up again unless the central government begins to get a grip.