NATO leaders missed an opportunity during their recent summit in Chicago. In addition to trying to garner international support for an Afghanistan drawdown and stabilization strategy, they also should have considered the overlooked toll that the Afghan campaign has taken on the adjacent Central Asian states.
The United States and Kazakhstan are exploring the idea of expanding the amount of military cargo passing through Kazakhstan into and out of Afghanistan. The focal point of the discussions is the Caspian port city of Aktau.
Reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan have had a fair share of well-publicized difficulties. But amid the dark patches, there is a bright spot: Afghans are getting connected again.
A slight, kalpak-wearing man from Afghanistan with weathered cheeks, Abduvali Abdulrashid looks out of place at a posh sushi joint in downtown Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital. He’s a one-man advocacy delegation, seeking Bishkek’s help so that roughly 1,500 ethnic Kyrgyz nomads in Afghanistan can migrate to their titular homeland.
Red Star Enterprises Ltd., the controversial ex-supplier of aviation fuel to the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, has lost full control of a lucrative fuel contract at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
While some NATO members may be skittish about the alliance’s continuing involvement in Afghanistan, Georgia remains firmly committed, and will soon rank as the mission’s largest non-NATO supplier of troops.
With the United States and its allies preparing for the 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan, a top British defense official who recently visited the region believes that British forces are close to securing overland transit routes via Central Asian states to extract military equipment.
Russia has reportedly blocked a U.S. plan designed to help stem the flow of drugs from Afghanistan through Central Asia in a sign of Moscow's continued wariness about Washington's intentions in a region often thought of as "Russia's backyard."
With the planned US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014 looming ever closer, Russia is pressing to solidify strategic relationships with Central Asian states, especially with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
U.S. President Barack Obama has announced a major policy shift in the size and strategic goals of the country's defense forces. The announcement comes at the end of America's long involvement in the Iraq war and within sight of the end of fighting in Afghanistan.
