Turkey, a NATO member, has been one of the U.S.'s top defense industry customers. But could it be serious about buying a new air defense system from Russia or China? That's what Hürriyet Daily News is suggesting. In addition to bids from the U.S. and Italy, Turkey is "taking the Russian and Chinese options seriously":
The Russians earlier were hesitant about whether to bid but decided to go ahead and formally submit their offer when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Moscow and held talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in mid-January, one business official familiar with the issue said. The Russian S300s are seen as an effective system.
The Chinese, meanwhile, are expected to offer the cheapest price and the highest degree of technology transfer, defense analysts said.
As the paper points out, the Russian and Chinese systems wouldn't be compatible with NATO equipment, and either would seem an unlikely choice. But it's worth recalling that two years ago Turkey bought a few S-300s from Russia and said they were just to "simulate threats that may come from countries with ex-Soviet systems in their inventories," namely the Greek Cypriots.
Meanwhile, the big annual American-Turkish Council conference in Washington, which is traditionally a big forum for interaction between Turkish and American defense officials and industry, was cancelled this year because of the row over the Armenian genocide resolution.
Well, that didn't take long. A senior Russian official has suggested that Georgia could be behind the Metro bombings on Monday. As quoted in the Times (London), National Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev :
“All theories have to be checked. For example, there is Georgia and the leader of that state, Saakashvili, whose behaviour is unpredictable,” Mr Patrushev told the Kommersant newspaper.
“He has already unleashed war once. It is possible that he may unleash it again. We have had information that individual members of Georgian special forces support contacts with terrorist organisations in the Russian North Caucasus. We must check this also in relation to the acts of terror in Moscow.”
Georgian officials, naturally, responded negatively. Here's Temuri Yakobishvili using a memorable phrase on Civil.ge:
“Unfortunately, it became a trend in Russia – Jewization of Georgians – wherein if previously Jews were to blame for everything in Russia, now Georgians are to be blamed for everything,” he added.
Russian media also yesterday implicated Georgia in a foiled terror plot in Baku. Just to play along for a bit, as strategically challenged as Saakashvili can be, it's hard to see what Georgia could possibly gain by doing this. This will almost certainly result in greater instability in the north Caucasus, and likely increased Russian military activity just across Georgia's border.
For a far more sensible take on the reaction to the bombings, see the excellent Sean's Russia Blog.
Is anyone shocked that the U.S. military cooperation with Uzbekistan in the Northern Distribution Network has tied the Pentagon up with some unsavory characters there? No? Well, now there is some proof. Ken Silverstein of Harper's reports that a company tied to Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Islam Karimov, as well as to the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce, has a contract to do some NDN shipping:
FMN says it is a subcontractor on a deal for “Line Haul Trucking Operations” for the U.S. Army. The contract calls for FMN to move supplies between Tajikistan and the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, with thirty trucks a month traveling the route and carrying “outsized” equipment on low-bed trailers. FMN also claims to have serviced “every US air base in Afghanistan to date.”
The Washington Post has a good feature on the sad aftermath of a hearts-and-minds gesture by officers at Manas Air Base. A woman from Kyrgyzstan, Lyudmila Sukhanov, was dying of an intestinal ailment in a Bishkek hospital in 2002 when she came to the attention of U.S. officers at Manas, who realized she could be saved if she were taken to a hospital outside Kyrgyzstan.
But with Kyrgyz cooperation vital to the United States, saving Lyuda, as she came to be known, was not only humane but also strategic, a goodwill gesture directed at a vital but skittish ally. The request to medevac her received the blessing of the commander of U.S. forces in the region, Gen. Tommy Franks, and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In early 2003, a C-17 military transport plane braved dangerous conditions to airlift Sukhanov first to Germany and then to Washington.
Now her medical condition has stabilized, but she's not well enough to go back to Kyrgyzstan. So she's stuck in the U.S., watching too much TV, costing taxpayers "millions" and apparently arousing the resentment of doctors and nurses at Walter Reed who say she's monopolizing a bed in the hospital.
Kyrgyzstan's President Kurmanbek Bakiyev has apparently publicly endorsed the idea of a smaller, fully professional military. Reports Central Asia Online:
On March 18 in Osh, where the country’s first professional military unit began deployment, he said, “Well-trained professionals, not 18- and 19-year-old boys, should be serving in the military”.
That is likely true, though conspicuously missing in Bakiyev's comments is how the government would pay for such a thing. In addition, the results from Kyrgyzstan's moves toward professionalization -- like the unit in Osh -- have not been encouraging, according to Jane's Sentinel:
Around 90 per cent of personnel in the southern group are now serving on contracts, but there is no evidence that the presence of these 'Kontrakniki' have enhanced combat readiness or enhanced overall standards in the region; surprisingly so, given the awareness of its strategic significance.
There's also a lengthy discussion in the article about the possibility of Kyrgyzstan declaring neutrality and abolishing the military (though there is no evidence the government is considering any such thing). Argues the professor who put forward the idea:
Given its size, the Kyrgyz army would be “helpless in the face of a serious attack”, Suyunbayev said. Instead, he said, Bishkek should disband the standing army while retaining border guards, interior ministry forces and intelligence agencies. Those remaining forces, in his view, could take care of extremist threats, while a neutral diplomatic stance would make the country a “demilitarised state in a militarised territory”, he argued.
Detainees at Camp X-Ray, possibly including some new residents of Georgia
Foreign Policy's The Cable blog has a few more details about the Guantánamo Bay detainees now in Georgia. Most intriguing to me:
The process of organizing their emigration started last fall, when Amb. Dan Fried, the special envoy tasked with resettling Guantánamo prisoners, visited Georgia. He asked Georgian officials to consider taking Guantánamo prisoners and set up a visit for the Georgians to visit the facility in Cuba, which they did in December.
The Georgians met with several detainees at the base, reviewed their medical and psychological records, and spoke with them about what their life in Georgia would be like. In the end, there were several offers extended to prisoners who had been cleared for release, and three accepted.
So, if I read this correctly, some detainees (what exactly is "several" minus three?) were offered the chance to move to Georgia and declined. They thought Gitmo was better?
If there is any possibility to curry favor with the U.S., you can bet the Georgian government will be all over it. So it comes as little surprise that Georgia has agreed to accept three prisoners from the U.S.'s Guantanamo Bay prison. The prisoners weren't identified, though apparently two were Libyan:
Two of the three men were Libyans, according to Chicago attorney H. Candace Gorman, who identified one of them as her client Abdel Hamid al Ghazzawi, 47, a Libyan married to an Afghan with one child, a daughter. He ran a small shop in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, she said, until shortly before the American invasion, when he was handed over to U.S. forces.
The prisoners will lead "normal" lives in Georgia, Tbilisi says:
The three prisoners don’t pose a “serious danger” to Georgia and they won’t he held in detention, though their movements will be “strictly monitored” and they won’t be allowed to leave the country, Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said by telephone today in the capital Tbilisi.
Georgia's opposition Labor Party, however, objects:
At today's press conference Kakha Dzagania, one of the party leaders, said that "import of Guantanamo prisoners to Georgia, turned by Saakashvili into a concentration camp" creates a great threat, from surrounding Muslim states as well.
No, it's not rich, stable Switzerland, where two other Gitmo prisoners were sent the same day, but Georgian hospitality should more than make up for that. And given that they were picked up in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan, the threat of a new war with Georgia shouldn't faze them too badly.
What to make of the recent news that the U.N. signed a cooperation agreement with the CSTO? According to Vlad Socor, writing at Jamestown, it will further embolden Russia to act unilaterally in its near abroad:
The core issue, however, is that of a de facto division of responsibilities for conducting peacekeeping operations and authorizing military intervention. Moscow seeks to carve out a zone of responsibility for itself in Eurasia, under the flag of the CSTO, its political mechanism, and its collective forces. In such a zone, Russia (acting either through the CSTO, the latter’s regional subgroups, or unilaterally) would initiate and lead peacekeeping, military, or “anti-terrorism” operations.
Russia would not have to await an international mandate from the UN or some other organization for such operations. It would, however, welcome any form of endorsement to legitimize its initiatives, even short of an international mandate (which it cannot realistically expect from the UN in the foreseeable future). The declaration just signed is a significant step in that direction.
This seems true to me, though it seems like Russia has already been able to get international organizations' imprimatur (like the UN and OSCE) for its dominance of peacekeeping missions in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Tajikistan. Any thoughts on what this new step might mean?
Has Russia given up on its desire to have a CSTO base in Osh? That's what this Russia Today story suggests:
Moscow has reportedly dropped the idea of deploying an additional military contingent on the territory of Kyrgyzstan despite the earlier agreement between presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Kurmanbek Bakiyev...
... five months after the initially planned date, no agreement between Moscow and Bishkek has been signed. It is not clear whether the base will be created or not.
RT offers few details, however. In a similar vein, an intriguing but vague mention of the Ayni base in Tajikistan at the very end of this Vancouver Sun piece:
Moscow, though, is none too happy about New Delhi playing its strategic “Great Game” in Russia’s backyard. Russia has persuaded the Dushanbe government of Emomali Rahmon that operational control of the Ayni airbase should rotate, and that it should share that responsibility with India.
EurasiaNet's Deirdre Tynan uncovers an intriguing tidbit about some of the aviation activities at Manas Transit Center:
A company with ties to Blackwater, the controversial private security firm now known as Xe, has been ferrying US government-directed cargos over the past five-plus years across Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition, the company may be a candidate to continue its services for years to come, if a Sources Sought Announcement posted by the US Defense Department becomes a live contract.
Given what we know about contractors in Afghanistan, none of this should be surprising. But the most intriguing part to me: Apparently there remains at least some slim hope or expectation among the military and contractors that the U.S. will again get use of Karshi-Khanabad:
A separate solicitation issued on February 25, 2010, to provide fixed-wing transportation services for US Central Command and the National Geospatial Agency (NGA), to which Presidential Airways is listed as an interested vendor, also includes Karshi-Khanabad as one of 16 airfields that could be potentially used within the scope of the contract.
