Is it crazy to think that "the situation in Kyrgyzstan has a critical bearing on US national security?" Steve Walt thinks so:The first sentence of the announcement informed me that "the situation in Kyrgyzstan has a critical bearing on American national security." As...
US and Kyrgyz negotiators reach a deal on Manas:Kyrgyzstan said on Tuesday it would temporarily allow the US to continue using a military air base on its territory that is critical to coalition...
I've been hearing rumors to the effect that US negotiators have cut a deal with the Kyrgyz government to allow continued use of Manas. But media sources remain silent, except to note that the...
From an opinion-editorial in the International Herald Tribune:The recent decision by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan to close the U.S. military base in the small Central Asian country...
For some time now, NATO and Russia have engaged in on-again, off-again discussions about supplying Afghanistan via the Russian Federation. So consider this sequence of events:1. An increasingly hard-currency strapped Kremlin offers Kyrgyzstan $2 billion in aid.2. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev announces that he's expelling the US and NATO from Manas.3. The Russians agree to give the US transit rights for non-military supplies headed for Afghanistan.As the BBC reports:Russia has long opposed the presence of American military forces in Central Asia, says the BBC's Richard Galpin in...
Breaking reports, if true, vindicate a manuscript Alex Cooley and I wrote last year.* Whatever pleasure I get from saying "I told you so," however, is outweighed by my concern about the complications to US operations posed by the potential loss of Manas.The AP:MOSCOW – News agencies are quoting Kyrgyzstan's president as saying that his country is ending U.S. use of a key airbase that supports military operations in Afghanistan.A decision to end the U.S. use of the Manas base could have potentially far-reaching consequences for U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.Interfax and RIA-Novosti...