A new education program has been developed by various Georgian government ministries, including the Ministry of Defense, which appears to envisage teaching adults weapons skills and children "the history of the Georgian Army and advanced combat equipment":
The new education program covers such crucial topics as civil defence, road security, first medical aid, history and armament of the Georgian army. “We consider this program very important, as young people are required to know the elementary security regulations. This program envisages acquiring the given rules. Adults also should know the basic rules of road safety, first medical aid and usage of weaponry. It should be noted as well, that thanks to this program the school pupils will have the possibility to get familiar with the history of the Georgian army and advanced combat equipment”, declared Mr. Bacho Akhalaia.
According to the Education Minister, the civil defence and security classes will be introduced in every school since 2010. "From today, the new pilot project will be launched in 15 schools. This subject will be taught in three stages. Now, you are here to attend the presentation of the third part of the program, titled as “Review of the Georgian Army’s History and Armament".
Iran has announced that it is launching its first destroyer in the Caspian Sea. Although the reports have thus far not been very detailed, this would presumably be the newly developed Jamaran class of ship, which Iran first launched in the Persian Gulf earlier this year. That Iran would be deploying its new, advanced destroyer in the Caspian would seem to contradict Tehran's earlier pledges to not militarize the Caspian. For example, the commander of Iran's navy said this in 2007:
The commander further voiced opposition to the expansion of military capabilities in the Caspian Sea, saying, "We view the Caspian as a sea of peace and friendship and we believe upgrading and expanding military equipment in this sea is incorrect. Yet, we are always prepared to defend the country's interests."
What might Iran see as a threat in the Caspian? The U.S. is helping (to varying degrees) Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan build up their respective Caspian navies. And Russia's is still the most formidable navy in the sea. People who like to speculate on possible Caspian military conflicts usually point to Iran, specifically an incident in 2001 when an Iranian warship threatened an Azerbaijani oil research vessel.
This is especially interesting in light of a report by Jamestown from last week that suggests that Russia is moving in the other direction -- from opposing full demilitarization of the Caspian to supporting it:
Georgia's speaker of parliament visited Georgian troops in Afghanistan and says that Georgia's military presence in that country is "protection" against Russia. From Rustavi 2 (via BBC Monitoring):
"Our soldiers' service there provides us with certain protection from Russia using Georgia's connection with terrorism as a pretext," Bakradze said. "The main goal of our servicemen there is the protection of Georgia's interests," he added, and recalled the recent blasts in the Moscow underground, stressing that there was an attempt to track the Georgian trace in them, which Russia could use as a pretext to resort to yet another "aggression" against Georgia.
"Therefore, it is very important to make sure that such accusations find no foundation and support in the international community, and the main argument by all our friends against Russia when it started linking Georgians to terrorism, the main argument was that Georgia is part of the anti-terrorism operation in Afghanistan, and fights against Taliban in Afghanistan," he said.
This seems so naive that I can't believe that either he would say it or, given that it was probably for domestic consumption, that any Georgian listening would believe it. But maybe I'm missing something. Any ideas?
Under the headline "A Kyrgyz interim leader says US base unjustified," the Associated Press has a story suggesting that the U.S.'s air base in Kyrgyzstan, Manas, may be imperiled:
Azymbek Beknazarov — a deputy head of the interim government that came to power last week after a bloody uprising — told the AP that Washington compromised its position on promoting democracy in Kyrgyzstan so as not to put the strategic Manas transit center under threat of closure.
"All the Americans care about is that the military base stays," Beknazarov said. "They forgot about freedom, about democratic values. They forgot about Kyrgyzstan — they are only looking at their military base."
"In my opinion, the Manas center's presence is not justified," he said.
Now, it's hard to know what to make of that. The whole import of his quote turns on one word: "unjustified," which isn't really the clearest word you might use. In addition, we don't know much about the context of the quote, or his role in the government. Still, suggests that perhaps there is at least some internal debate among the leaders of Kyrgyzstan about what to do with Manas.
When a crisis erupts in some previously obscure part of the world, we typically see a profusion of instant "experts" in the media to help "analyze" the situation with frequently banal, and occasionally hilarious, results.
Bob Brown is a former state Senate leader from Montana, who made a trip in the mid-1990s to Kyrgyzstan, and he gives the readers of northwest Montana's Daily Inter Lake his take on the situation in Kyrgyzstan and with the Manas Air Base:
“I think the Russians are pretty enthusiastic about what is going on in Kyrgyzstan, and there is pretty good evidence they’re behind a lot of this stuff,” he said.
He suspects that the Kyrgyz people “are not sophisticated enough” to operate the base and that Russia would jump at the chance to take control of Manas.
As we've discussed here before, the U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan is likely to stay, but the terms might change. Kyrgyzstan's new government has said it wants to review the terms, but the U.S. might be doing the same. Reports the Washington Post:
A House panel conducting a preliminary investigation into U.S. contracting in Afghanistanhas turned its focus on what its chairman called Tuesday the "unexplained relationships" between the families of two Kyrgyzstan presidents and fuel supplies to a key U.S. air base there.
"Two overthrows of the government there have been linked to corrupt dealings at Manas air base," said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), chairman of the national security subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "That's what we are looking into."
Should be juicy stuff. Will try to keep you posted...
It's unclear what role public opinion plays in Kyrgyzstan's foreign policy -- I think very little -- but to the extent that it does, and if there does turn out to be a showdown over Manas between the U.S. and Russia, it's clear which side the people of Kyrgyzstan would choose. According to a Gallup poll (nearly two years old, but I'm not sure why much would have changed), Kyrgyzstanis who believe it is "more important to have a close relationship with the USA even if it might hurt relationships with Russia" totaled a mere three percent. And those who said that it was "more important to have a close relationship with Russia even if it might hurt relationships with USA": 63 percent. (About 22 percent said it was important to have close relations with both.)
Several other countries of the region were polled on the same question, and the results should be pretty sobering to U.S. policymakers: In every single country, more people believed it was important to have good relations with Russia than with the U.S. That includes Georgia, though there the proportions are closest (28 percent with Russia, 24 percent with the US, and this was before the war so presumably there has been some movement there). And the proportions of people who say their country should favor relations with the U.S. are vanishingly small in a lot of the countries: four percent in Armenia, two percent in Uzbekistan, one percent in Tajikistan, three percent in Kazakhstan.
On Monday, the US Embassy in Bishkek put out a press release saying that "The Transit Center at Manas has resumed normal operations. Refueling operations continue as usual and the transit of troops has resumed."
The biggest announcement out of yesterday's meeting between Presidents Obama and Nazarbayev was that Kazakhstan would allow overflight rights of planes going over the North Pole, then south over Russia and then through Kazakhstan and then Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan. I spoke to Andrew Kuchins, a CSIS scholar who has interviewed many American, Russian and Uzbek officials about the Northern Distribution Network for a CSIS project. He pointed out that Pentagon officials were never especially interested in this polar route, that it was originally proposed by the Russians as a concrete "deliverable" that Obama and Medvedev could announce during their meeting in Moscow last July. The Pentagon would rather get permission to transit lethal cargo over its existing routes.
And yet, negotiating that extra route shortly became the top priority in the U.S.'s relationship with Kazakhstan; as one State Department official told me, "the NDN trumps everything." And it was the main achievement of the one-to-one between Obama and Nazarbayev.
My takeaway: There is an interesting behind-the-scenes story to tell about how an afterthought at the Pentagon became the top priority at the White House...
Among the many reams and terabytes of "analysis" of what Russia is up to in Kyrgyzstan and what the fate of the Manas air base there might be as a result, it's an unspoken assumption that the Russians want the Americans out, overlooking the fact that (as Russians of course know as well as anyone) the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and by extension Kyrgyzstan, may actually be weakening the U.S. So this strikes me as particularly perceptive:
Putin is playing a much more complex game than is commonly understood. Consider the following facts:
Russia is selling us air transit rights over Russia to Kabul.
Russia is selling us freight service for mass supply movements from Baltic ports through the Russian, Kazakh, and Uzbek railway networks to the Afghan border.
Russia is selling us air transport services using their Antonov cargo planes, with Russian and other post-Soviet crews — again, to Kabul.
Putin is backing Afghan President Karzai and some warlords, as well.
The lesson to draw from these facts is this: Putin’s game is to run up the cost of the Afghan war for the US, not to drive us out. His ideal scenario is an American “forever war” in the Hindu Kush — one in which we need his cooperation to keep up the fight.
