Kyrgyzstan: A bird, a plane, no. . . Secretary Gates
I couldn’t tell if Ferghana.ru was laughing or cursing (maybe both) when they wrote this article: Bob Gates saves US base from Kyrgyz authorities.
Secretary Gates flew in from Afghanistan, compared base agreements between the U.S. and other countries with base arrangements in Kyrgyzstan, and then announced their parity to the Kyrgyz press. After the analytical plea for fairness, he then stepped up the flattery, saying that Kyrgyzstan’s efforts were vital for world counterterrorism. It’s not all flattery, of course: it happens to be true.
Next week, Undersecretary Boucher is coming to convince Kyrgyzstan not to talk ugly about the U.S. at the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, and more importantly, not to honor SCO requests to oust the US from Ganci.
It would be nice, somewhere in these meetings, if Kyrgyzstan would be able to say something about the role the US has to play in the role of counterterrorism in their back yards, and also what the SCO is providing for Kyrgyzstan that the U.S. has not shown a willingness to provide. That could be, for starters, a little border security and narcotics interdiction in Afghanistan that would specifically target Kyrgyzstan’s problems. But I don’t want to put words in anybody’s mouth. It looks like that may have happened already.
June 11th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
[…] Last week, Secretary of Defense Gates measured the costs of Ganci AFB in Manas against the costs of other bases maintained by foreign powers in Kyrgyzstan. This whirlwind trip-with-comparative analysis, designed to keep Ganci open, was followed by today’s visit from a high-ranking U.S. official, Undersecretary of State Boucher. […]
July 27th, 2007 at 9:59 am
[…] B. Short shrift in handling local controversies There has also not been sufficient will to resolve the controversies connected to Ganci Air Force Base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan. In June, the U.S. sent two officials in two weeks to make plain the U.S. position on the air force base, but that intervention had all the symptoms of surgical strike: a quick descent, a painful but short interlude, and little or no further discussion. This top-down approach in a region so close to a War Zone, in a Developing Democracy with Contentious and Lively Elements, may solve an issue, but it will not sustain a relationship. I covered these events less than eight weeks ago: On June 7, with Secretary Gates’ visit to Kyrgyzstan, about Ganci, and then the second strafe, June 11, during Undersecretary Boucher’s visit to Kyrgyzstan. Now, as Mr. Blank reports in the above-linked article, Secretary Gates has publicly solicited European and Asian assistance in U.S. goals for Central Asia. […]