I was back when Namaz was being said on June 18. Since prayers were still in progress I went back to my kebab house, though I already knew what I’d find. It was ransacked and burned.

Kyrgyzstan's new leaders are pinning their hopes on a referendum to legitimize their rule. But amid rising animosities, conspiracy theories, and speculation over the government's imminent collapse, it's far from clear what will happen.

The people of Kyrgyzstan prepare to vote in a referendum that interim President Roza Otunbaeva says is the only means of ending the kind of ethnic clashes that killed hundreds and perhaps thousands this month. But with hundreds of thousands of people displaced, there's serious doubt about whether the vote will be seen as legitimate.

Kyrgyzstan has lifted a state of emergency imposed in the wake of ethnic violence in its south, amid UN concerns about the risk of fresh tensions in the area.

Moving around Osh these days, you see a lot of destruction: burned-out buildings, broken windows, smashed vehicles. But there are also two words in particular that you see written: "Kyrgyz" and "SOS."

Contributor Sam Khan says it will go down as one of the crueler ironies of the interethnic clashes convulsing southern Kyrgyzstan that the violence was fueled, in part, by ethnic Uzbeks' concerted effort to integrate into Kyrgyz political life.

I came to Osh for the first time in 1992 and fell in love with Kyrgyzstan's second city. Everyone lives here -- Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazakhs, Turkmen, as well as Arabs, Turks, Uyghurs, Slavic peoples, and many others. For me, it is the most Central Asian of Central Asia's cities. I've been here many times since 1992, and people have told me repeatedly that if I climb Suleyman Tau and make a wish, it will come true.

The ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan has displaced some 400,000 people -- an unprecedented event in the country's history. But that figure represents less than 1 percent of the total number of involuntarily uprooted people in the world.

The southern Kyrgyz city of Osh was shaken by violence between its ethnic Uzbek and Kyrgyz inhabitants over the course of several days last week. RFE/RL correspondent Bruce Pannier, who is in Osh, describes the current state of the city and the efforts to restore normalcy.

The Kyrgyz interim government often appears to be playing catch-up in the crisis in the south of the country. Will it be strong enough to take control of the situation now, despite its apparent lack of cohesion and unity?

The violence in Osh has once again put the focus on the Ferghana Valley as one of the potentially most explosive regions of the former Soviet Union. What makes it that way?

Analyst Roman Muzalevsky argues that Kyrgyzstan needs to implement a large-scale national development program focusing on the economic integration of its regions and the consolidation of national identity.

From the perspective of four Uzbek women who are hiding in a basement amid the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, those who have reached the increasingly restive border area with Uzbekistan are the fortunate ones.

A crisis erupts in a former Soviet state and Russia is reluctant to intervene alone and is instead calling for a multilateral response. Is the crisis in Kyrgyzstan the shape of things to come in the region?

Recent tensions have put the spotlight on a little-known Central Asian enclave in the Ferghana Valley that has proven to be one of the strangest creations of Soviet-era leaders. Sokh District is an Uzbek enclave located inside Kyrgyzstan inhabited mainly by ethnic Tajiks. Recent tensions between Sokh residents and local Kyrgyz over pasture rights have further complicated an already-tangled cultural and political situation.

RFE/RL senior correspondent Bruce Pannier discusses the history, demographic makeup, and recent events that have fused into the ethnic violence being witnesses in southern Kyrgyzstan. More than 100 people have been killed and some 1,700 wounded in riots and ethnic clashes that began in southern areas four days ago.

The chaotic turn of events that led to the ouster of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev this month breathed new life into fears that the country could be split in two. Upon fleeing the nation's capital amid Kyrgyzstan's second revolution in five years, Bakiev sought shelter in his native southern region, where he railed against the policies of northerners.