The Bug Pit
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization begins its summit today in Tashkent, but the group appears to be moving away from a military alliance, as it seemed originally intended, toward being a broader regional security body on the OSCE model.
Russia says it has no plans to establish any new foreign military bases, reports RIA Novosti:
"He [Defense Minister Anatoly Serdykov] said it is a luxury. We already have four military bases abroad. Building more bases would be too burdensome," said Viktor Ozerov, the head of the Federation Council's committee on defense and security.
At the big defense expo in Kazakhstan, if you recall, the two main foreign countries exhibiting their hardware for Kazakhstan were Israel and Turkey. The conference ended just before the brouhaha with the Turkish aid flotilla going to Gaza, and I wondered, how would it have turned out had that been going on while Kazakhstan was buddying up to Turkey and Israel at the same time.
Robert Gates has finished his visit to Azerbaijan, and beyond the obvious discussions of Baku's role in the Northern Distribution Network, Gates highlighted the potential of new security cooperation on the Caspian Sea:
The newest report from the always-worth-reading International Crisis Group, on South Ossetia, has a good rundown of the latest military developments in the breakaway territory.
Who will get to use the Ayni airbase in Tajikistan? India, Russia, China, Iran or the U.S.? The Tajikistan newspaper Ozodagon (via BBC Monitoring), in a good, thorough analysis, says it looks like India is in the lead.
Russia is building a new "radar station and communications interception" post in Tskhinvali, reports the Telegraph (UK):
The strategic potential of the base, which would stand further south than any other Russian listening post, is much greater than has previously been suggested.
So, just a few days after violence in the Uzbekistan exclave of Sokh prompted Uzbekistan to send troops there, the situation is not only calmed down, but Uzbekistan has agreed to remove the heavy weaponry it's maintained in Sokh for ten years. From Ferghana.ru:
If you only get your news about the Manas Transit Center, the U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan, from Manas's own website, you can be forgiven for wondering how the airmen there have enough time for fighting a war, given how much time they spend in orphanages.