The Bug Pit
Russia and Mongolia will be holding another round of "anti-terror" drills in Siberia in September, RIA Novosti reports:
The drills, called Darkhan-3, will involve some 1,000 servicemen and 300 items of hardware. They will be held in three stages.
"Joint use of Russian and Mongolian troops to counter international terrorism threats will be practiced during the exercises," the press service said.
General James Mattis, the nominee to be next commander of U.S. Central Command, testified today at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services committee. Obviously the commander of CENTCOM has a lot on his plate -- Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, the Persian Gulf. But Central Asia is part of his area of operations, too. If his testimony is anything to go by, though, Central Asia is likely to be an afterthought.
The mysterious Manas air base fuel contractors have hired some big-time Washington lobbyists, reports journalist Seth Hettena on his blog:
The Washington Post's Spy Talk blog reports on a couple of new wrinkles in the investigation(s) into the fuel contracts at the Manas air base:
The Pentagon says it is “cooperating fully” with investigations into allegations of corruption related to aviation fuel contracts at a U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan, a major staging area for the war in Afghanistan.
Russia has clarified its short-term modernization plans for the Black Sea Fleet:
Three patrol boats of a new project and three submarines of 636 project will be laid up at Russian shipyards for the Black Sea Fleet before the end of 2010, Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said.
The government of Tajikistan says it has captured a member of al Qaeda, a citizen of Uzbekistan, which RFE/RL says is Central Asia's first "homegrown al Qaeda member":
Islam Niyozmatov, an Uzbek citizen and a suspected member of Al-Qaeda, has been arrested in neighboring Tajikistan, according to a spokesman for the Tajik Interior Ministry.
Is the U.S. now blaming Azerbaijan for the recent Nagorno-Karabakh violence?
A few weeks ago, when Hillary Clinton was on her tour of the Caucasus, the Associated Press reported that while in Yerevan, she "implicitly rebuked" Azerbaijan for violating the Nagorno Karabakh ceasefire:
Abkhazia has for some time been complaining about Georgia's violation of its airspace with unmanned drone aircraft. And now Sukhumi is going to fight back. Reports Aspnypress (in Russian; translation by BBC Monitoring):
Remember when we thought that the prospect of Turkish troops going to Armenia, through a temporarily opened border, for a NATO exercise was a further step toward rapprochement between the two countries? Well, never mind.