The Bug Pit
Hazing of young military conscripts continues to be a big problem in the Caucasus and Central Asia, according to the U.S. State Department, though reporting of the problem appears to vary widely from country to country.
Israeli Defense Contractor Sues Georgia, Says Tbilisi Never Paid for Drones
Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit is suing the government of Georgia, alleging Tbilisi hasn't paid for some weapons purchases, according to press release from the company:
What's Behind Kyrgyzstan's U.S. and Russian Counterterror Training Centers?
A couple of weeks ago, Kyrgyzstan's president, Roza Otunbayeva, announced that the country was planning to construct two counterterror training centers in the southern part of the country, and that one would be built by Russia and the other by the U.S.
It was just a couple of weeks ago when international mediators called on Azerbaijanis and Armenians to pull back their snipers from the front lines of Nagorno Karabakh. To no one's surprise, neither side agreed.
Observers from the OSCE may not approved of in Nursultan Nazarbayev's 95.5 percent victory in Kazakhstan's presidential elections, but the Shanghai Cooperation Organization liked what it saw:
As Nagorno Karabakh's first civilian airport gets set to open on May 9, Azerbaijan is threatening to "annihilate" any Armenian planes that use it. Azerbaijan argues, of course, that Karabakh belongs to them and the Armenians who now occupy it do so illegally.
Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili says there is only one source for the kind of heavy weaponry his country needs to defend itself from Russia: the U.S. In an interview with Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin, Saakashvili discussed the question of the U.S. providing weapons to Georgia. He said that the U.S.
Turkey has hosted joint "urban warfare" exercises with troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan, comprising sniper and anti-tank units from the three countries. A video, apparently from the exercise:
Is the U.S. military planning some sort of new facility in the Caucasus? The commander of U.S. European Command, Admiral James Stavridis, testified before Congress this morning and suggested that. In his written testimony (pdf), he described five ongoing "force posture" (Pentagon-ese for basing issues) initiatives: