Our sister blog Inside the Cocooncalled attention to news that the CSTO is forming a peacekeeping force, using the unrest in Kyrgyzstan as part justification.
However, the organization appears to be stepping back from earlier plans to build a dedicated CSTO base in Kyrgyzstan, in Osh. Interfax Kazakhstan, via BBC Monitoring:
The Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO] has no plans yet to develop its infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan, the organization's Secretary-General Nikolay Bordyuzha told a news conference in Moscow on Friday [14 May].
"There are several Russian military facilities in Kyrgyzstan, including Kant base, which was established to support missions as part of the CSTO. It is active today. There is a reinforced group of personnel there that guards its active infrastructure," Bordyuzha said.
He also said that there was no Collective Rapid-Reaction Forces training centre of any kind in Kyrgyzstan. "There was hypothetical work on the issue of setting it up, but it was not set up," Bordyuzha said.
"There are no further actions planned for the CSTO to develop its infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan. A lot will depend on the turn of events there," Bordyuzha summed up.
KULOB, Tajikistan – At the request of the Tajikistan government, Third Army in support of U.S. efforts donated a C-17 load of tents to provide shelter to some of the more than 2,000 people who were affected by the flooding in Kulob, May 7.
"It is our privilege to help our partner and friend, the people of Tajikistan, in their hour of need," said Col. Michael J. Keller, 1st Theater Sustainment Command, Civil Military Operations Center commander. "Our engineering and medical teams will continue to assess the situation to determine where further assistance is required."
Well that's selfless of them, to help out the victims of flooding. And naturally such a humanitarian gesture was done in the low-key, understated way that the U.S. is well known for. Oh, wait...
Young soldiers in the Tajikistan army look out the back of a truck as a pallet full of tents, covered with an American flag, passes by. Third Army Soldiers delivered over $250,000 worth of tents to Kulob, Tajikistan, while answering the nation's call for help due to recent floods. (Photo by Dominic Hauser, Civil Military Operations Center)
Have you noticed that the speculation over the fate of Manas Transit Center has slowed down quite a bit? Stars and Stripes -- a newspaper targeted at the U.S. military -- noticed, too:
One of the first moves of Kyrgyz interim leader Roza Otunbayeva after coming to power last month was to promise renewal of the lease for the key U.S. air base near Bishkek, the country’s capital.
Days later, her foreign minister criticized Americans for worrying only about the base — officially called the Transit Center at Manas — at the expense of supporting democratic values.
Now, leaders of the new government are hesitant to say anything publicly about the base.
“We have said enough,” said interim government spokesman Edil Baisalov. “We don’t have any views on the base.”
The story goes on to note that there is a lot of public disapproval of the base, and of the interim government as well, and so the government may not be willing to stick its neck out to preserve the base.
Last week, I wrote about the U.S. ambassador to Kyrgyzstan's clumsy defensiveness regarding charges that she ignored the former opposition for the sake of maintaining the U.S. air base there. Apparently she had a reason to feel defensive: Steve LeVine reports that the ambassador is on her way out:
In Washington, I am told that prior to these latest events there already had been a senior-level Administration decision to pull Ambassador Tatiana Gfoeller several months prior to the end of her scheduled rotation out in Fall 2011. Gfoeller will return to Washington after a few months, I am told, after an interval from the April 7 ouster of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
The apparent decision comes against the backdrop of bitter complaints by members of Kyrgyzstan's provisional government -- most prominently those of leader Roza Otunbayeva -- that Gfoeller met with them only infrequently while they were in the opposition to Bakiyev. ... In fact, Gfoeller appears to have raised not only Otunbayeva's bile, but also that of Bakiyev, who railed against the Embassy meeting with the opposition at all.
CSTO head Nikolay Bordyuzha was asked during a visit to Kazakhstan today whether there might soon be a U.S. base in that country, and unsurprisingly he said that wasn't necessary. More surprisingly, he praised the presence of Manas in Kyrgyzstan. Via Gazeta.kz:
Answering the question of possibility of creation in the territory of Kazakhstan of the military base similar to the air base Manas in Kyrgyzstan, N. Bordyuzha said that it is inexpedient. The base Manas accomplishes specific important tasks. It serves the groups in Afghanistan that work to maintain stability in Afghanistan, struggle against Talibs. It is an important goal. I do not think we need another base," he noted.
Add this to the list of counterintuitive statements Bordyuzha has made about the situation in Kyrgyzstan. Today in Kazakhstan, he also said that the CSTO's peacekeeping forces "will start their joint combat training in the near future," and didn't mention anything about any CSTO bases, in Kyrgyzstan or elsewhere. Might this be part of the secret plan for Russia to become more pro-Western? Or is it, as Stephen Blank wrote yesterday in EurasiaNet, a means of "snookering" the international community?
Ribbon-cutting at the opening of KAZBRIG Training Center by Ambassador Richard Hoagland and General Adilbek Aldabergenov
Discussions of the military aspect of Kazakhstan's "multi-vector diplomacy" usually conclude that, whatever happens with oil and gas and other trade, the country's armed forces are likely to remain oriented toward Russia. That's because language limitations mean Kazakh officers who train abroad are most likely to do so in Russia, and of course because the military's legacy equipment and doctrine is Russian.
That's why an interview that Kazakhstan's defense minister gave to Kazakhstanskaya Pravda this week is kind of curious (not online; via BBC Monitoring). The language that he uses to describe the direction the military is going in will be unmistakeable to anyone who follows the Pentagon:
The main principle that we are using in building our armed forces is a brigade-based army. ... a compact, mobile and effective armed force which would be able to carry out the whole spectrum of tasks connected with the state's military security ... improve the communication system and electronic forms of military management.
Whole-spectrum, brigade-centric, network-centric... sounds straight out of an Art Cebrowski briefing from the early 2000s.
But, the Kazakhs could also just be learning to talk the talk: The U.S. has also just opened a language-training center in Almaty, apparently to get Kazakhstan's peacekeeping soldiers to speak better English to be able to better serve abroad. Said the U.S. ambassador at the center's opening at the end of last month:
Many observers have fretted about France's proposed sale of Mistral ships to Russia, pointing in particular to a statement by Russia's naval chief that with the Mistral, Russia's victory over Georgia could have been accomplished in 40 minutes rather than 26 hours.
But Dmitry Gorenburg, at Russian Military Reform, points out that Russia's military superiority over Georgia was never an issue. What is an issue (for those worried about Russia's actions rather than Georgia's) is the level of Russia's willingness to alienate the West by attacking countries like Georgia. And when you think in those terms, the Mistral sale would likely make conflict between Russia and the West less, rather than more, likely:
Some analysts fear that Russia could use equipment purchased from NATO, such as the Mistral ships, to attack its neighbors. The 2008 Georgia war showed that even without NATO equipment the Russian military is plenty strong enough to defeat a small and weak army of the kind that just about all of its immediate neighbors possess. Western arms sales are not necessary for Russia to be able to successfully undertake hostile action against a country like Georgia. But again, if NATO arms sales to Russia become ubiquitous, Russia may well become more hesitant to undertake actions that could potentially result in the cut-off of such arms sales. In other words, Western leverage over Russian actions will actually increase.
The geopolitical situation around the Ayni air base in Tajkistan has always been murky. And according to this story reporting the completion of renovations to the base, that has not changed. Russia may be using the base, or it might not be, and may have moved all of its air assets from Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan, and India doesn't seem to be using the Ayni base, even though it paid for the renovation, but Tajikistan is hosting its air force there, even though Jane's deadpans that, that force is "not even an air force in the generally accepted sense." Got it? According to Ferghana.ru:
Russian military forces are not based in the Ayni aerodrome, close to Dushanbe. This was announced by Ramil Nadirov, the Joint Staff Chief of the Republic of Tajikistan armed forces and the first deputy Defense Minister of the Republic. According to him "after finishing the modernization of the aerodrome Tajikistan signed the state acceptance certificate and now the aerodrome hosts the national air force"....
Ferghana.Ru sources in the Tajik Defense Ministry also confirm the existence of agreement between Russia and Tajikistan about joint use of Ayni aerodrome. However, we were not able to get official confirmation.
Meanwhile, Pavel Konev, the press-secretary of 201th RF military base in Tajikistan informed that entire aviation component of the base was relocated to Kant base in Kyrgyzstan long ago. "I have no information about the presence of Russian air force in Ayni aerodrome. The battle-planes, formerly located in the airport of Dushanbe, were moved to Kyrgyzstan" he said.
The Franz Ferdinand of the next Georgia-Russia war?
Tensions are high on the de facto border between South Ossetia and Georgia proper, with both sides trading accusations and EU observers being called in. An armed incursion? Shots exchanged? Nope: cattle rustling. According to Georgia's "Expert Club":
In the evening of May 10th shepherds from the Georgian village Kelktseuli (located near the line of the occupation) returned without herd entrusted to them and told police that they were attacked by a group of eight armed people. The militants were dressed in Russian uniforms and spoke among themselves in Ossetian language, but they talked with the shepherds in Georgian and demanded that they drove their cattle into the occupied territory. They took away a mobile phone from one of the shepherds. Another one who tried to resist was hit on the head. Ultimately, shepherds fled.
EU observers were informed about the incident and they also talked to the victims...
The story's breathless, mockumentary-style tone (read the whole thing) is funny, but cattle raiding is no joke. According to Azar Gat's phenomenal book War in Human Civilization, meat was one of the original two causes (along with women) of conflict among early humans. And it's still the case in Sudan, where cattle rustling is a major cause of the conflicts there. Let's hope it doesn't get that way in the Caucasus.
RFE/RL held a small press conference in Washington yesterday with Waheed Omer, Hamid Karzai's spokesman, and a representative from Freedom House. The official theme of the event was press freedom, and a discussion of Freedom House's new report that called Afghanistan's press "not free." But of course -- as anyone could have predicted -- the journalists who showed up were more interested in the visit of Karzai to Washington this week than (with all due respect to the fine people at Freedom House) a report on the Afghan media environment.
But when Omer had finished his defense of the state of press freedom in Afghanistan -- he argued that the country should not be judged by global standards, but in terms of how much progress it has made in the last ten years -- and it was the journalists' turn to ask questions, Omer clearly got flustered by the reporters' insistence on asking about Karzai's visit, such as what the Afghans hopes to bring up with the Americans. He protested (pdf):
"[T}hat is when you use freedom of expression in the wrong way because I was not prepared for this question."
The irony was not lost on the assembled reporters, several of whom responded "Freedom of the press! Free speech!" One suspects most reporters left with a distinct impression of the Afghan government's attitude to the press, and it wasn't the one Omer wanted.
