Azerbaijan’s recent move to indefinitely postpone joint military exercises with the United States is a sign that bilateral strategic ties are stagnating, analysts in Baku believe. Some wonder whether the social-network-inspired unrest that has swept the Middle East and North Africa, and which has also touched Azerbaijan, played a role in Baku’s decision.
It’s been an open secret for months, but government leaders in Kyrgyzstan have finally come out into the open with their aim: Bishkek wants full control of a US contract to supply aviation fuel to the Manas Transit Center.
Anti-American sentiment is at record high levels in Afghanistan, a factor that promises to complicate what is already shaping up as a tricky transfer of security responsibilities from Western forces to indigenous military and law-enforcement entities.
Officials in Kazakhstan are working to solidify international backing for the country’s early presidential election on April 3. So far, Astana has found the international community to be generally supportive.
US Special Operations Forces have permission to enter Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on a “case-by-case” basis when conducting counter-terrorism operations.
A controversial, opaque US defense initiative to make payments to Taliban fighters who renounce violence has been extended until September 2012. While a large, but unspecified amount of funding is devoted to the program, no one appears to be keeping track of how the money is being spent.
As the United States and Russia have strengthened ties since their “reset” in relations, one country that has witnessed significant developments between the two — in the form of deals and visits — is Kyrgyzstan.
The US government’s Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) has trouble accurately tracking the Pentagon’s convoluted efforts to source fuel for the US-led war in Afghanistan.
The United States and Kyrgyzstan appear to be on a collision course over potential surcharges on jet fuel consumed at a US military transit facility outside the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.
Robert Blake, the US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, is scheduled to be in Uzbekistan on February 17-18 for the second Annual Bilateral Consultations between the United States and Uzbekistan.
