... you're getting military aid from Tajikistan. But that is the situation poor Kyrgyzstan finds itself in:
The head of the Commonwealth of Independent States' security organization says Tajikistan has agreed to help stabilize southern Kyrgyzstan, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.
Nikolai Bordyuzha, the secretary-general of the CIS's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), said after meeting in Dushanbe today with President Emomali Rahmon that the Tajik leader had signed a CSTO agreement providing emergency aid to Kyrgyz law-enforcement agencies.
The issue had been previously discussed at a CSTO Security Council meeting in Moscow on June 14.
Bordyuzha said he had even discussed with Rahmon what kind of weapons and technical and special equipment should be sent to Kyrgyz forces to help restore order in the cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad, where at least 291 people were killed and thousands left homeless after several days of ethnic clashes in mid-June.
This follows promises of aid of helicopters from Kazakhstan and Russia, and armored vehicles from unspecified other countries. Thus far there doesn't seem to be any news about delivery or use of this equipment.
But what the CSTO does over the coming weeks and months in southern Kyrgyzstan will be an important test. Most observers agree that the organization failed its first test: intervening quickly to stop the violence. (Azerbaijanis are already crowing about this failure, suggesting that it means CSTO member Armenia would also be alone in the case of a war between those two countries.) But is it going to be able to set up a credible force to maintain the fragile peace that exists there now? We will see.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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