An impressive report from the Associated Press is up on the Guardian which describes a 70% turnout in the Kyrgyzstan referendum today. It seems incredible that the result is already known (and I rather suspect some people will ask questions about the speed of the count, given the circumstances) but there are heroic tales of how ballot papers have been taken to the refugee camps and workarounds to allow people to vote who lost their IDs in the fighting. Currently, the government is reporting 90% in favour of the new constitution – if true then it rather gives the lie to some of the theories about the violence two weeks ago being a popular action by Kyrgyz not in favour of reform.

There have been no reports of increased violence (although there are still, daily outbreaks on a small scale) designed to disrupt today’s vote. Credit is due to the Kyrgyz government for pressing ahead and making this happen peacefully, despite the odds.

If 400,000 people fleeing their homes doesn’t quite put the problems in Kyrgyzstan in perspective, how about this story of horror from Osh. Over 100 SOS signs have been spotted by satellites imaging the city. People desperate for help who still aren’t getting it.

Things are still developing fast. Amnesty International is calling for the government of Uzbekistan to stop forcibly returning people who fled during last week’s fighting in Osh and Jalal-Abat.  It may be too late, as other reports suggest that most of the 100,000 women and children who crossed the border to flee the violence have already returned. (Men weren’t allowed over, the suspected reason being that Uzbek dictator Karimov didn’t want potential pro-democracy supporters on his turf.)

What that means is more people in the highly insecure camps on the Kyrgyz side of the border, or women and children returning to homes that are little more than rubble, where supplies are few and far between. Throw in more tensions around Monday’s referendum on political reform and it’ll be amazing if the country isn’t back in the headlines over the weekend.

It’s going on for a week since trouble began in Osh, now, and the foreign press pack has finally arrived in the city and is starting to bring back accurate reports of death tolls and the sheer scale of the destruction. The one thing they all seem startled by, CNN, the BBC, the Guardian, is that there’s no sign of humanitarian aid for Kyrgyzstan yet.

Luke Harding’s report in the Guardian confirms almost everything Emil told me on Monday – the different stories that were used to foster discontent, the massively higher death toll than is still being claimed and the violence against women. What I don’t think anyone has grasped yet, though, is that in the areas outside of Osh and Jalalabad you can travel for 200km without seeing a police station. These are places where authority and moral order had already broken down and legal power was vested in the hands of uneducated village elders. There is no civil or military Kyrgyz force which can keep order. Back in April, the interim government admitted to the world it was broke.

In Bishkek it’s been the people’s militias that have been holding the line against the former president’s supporters. Emil believes that part of the insurgents’ strategy is to draw troops away from the capital so that a counter revolution can take place.

Read Luke’s article linked to above. It’s chilling. The fact that no peace keeping force has been dispatched to the area from the UN, NATO or the Russia security alliance proves that the world has learned nothing from Bosnia, Albania, Rwanda or Somalia when it comes to the speed with which action must be taken in these circumstances.

Obviously I’m not there at the moment, but I spoke to a friend of mine who’s a professor at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek this morning to find out his thoughts on the situation.

Emil’s family is from Osh, the focal point for this weekend’s extraordinary violence. He grew up there, before he moved to Bishkek to study. He was visiting the city last week, and scheduled to return this week with a visiting colleague from the UK in tow. He missed getting caught up in the rioting by a matter of hours.

Like most people who’ve sent eyewitness accounts to the BBC, he isn’t convinced that ethnic conflict is at the heart of the trouble. It’s just not been a feature of everyday life there, he says. The ethnic divisions are such that Uzbeks live mostly in the cities, while the countryside is dominated by the Kyrgyz. Both are so poor and underfunded that they have more than enough other problems to concern themselves with.

I’ve seen, however, the way men can react when they live in the poor and marginalised areas of the country. When I was in Kyrgyzstan last September it was to report on women who’d been subjected to the most horrendous domestic violence. I can easily believe that it wouldn’t take much to spark a bigger fight – three months of living under an innefectual interim government which has failed to deliver on the hopeful promise of actually changing people’s lives in a meaningful way perhaps? While constantly being subjected to the murmourings of exiled President Bekiyev’s supporters telling you the Uzbeks have it better? These are my thoughts, not Emil’s, I hasten to add.

Emil has heard through his family that the unrest was sparked by the arrival of 300 Uzbeks from outside of Osh – possibly Tajikistan – intent on causing trouble. He’s heard rumours – unsubstantiated – that they broke into a Kyrgyz dormitory and raped and murdered teenage girls. Whatever the cause, he says, he firmly believes they were organised by pro-Bakiyev supporters.

His family’s experience has not been good. At least one “distant brother-in-law” has been killed, shot three times by a sniper. His uncle, he says, lived in an Uzbek area of Osh, and pleaded with the mob not to burn down his house, explaining his Russian descent. The mob not only obliged, but in a way I find curiously Kyrgish, spared the neighbour’s house too, so that the flames wouldn’t catch Emil’s uncle’s roof.

Every other house nearby was razed.

In Osh I stayed at a beautiful little guest house with a serene garden that was filled with the smell of herbs in the evening. We met with a charming Muslim muftiat in his tin roofed mosque who explained how he was trying to educate the rural clergy in female emancipation. He used his walking stick to knock apples off a nearby tree for Amanda, Claudia and I. It saddens me to think that most of that has – by all accounts – probably gone. We arrived during Ramadam, and the high spirits of midnight feasters seems hard to reconcile with the images coming from the city now.

Worse, though, is that in the Suzak area near Jalalabat we saw this incredible primary school, being rebuilt by dedicated teachers after two decades lying unused – and unlike Emil I have no way of finding out whether or not the irrepressible Syrga who runs it is safe.