376th Air Expeditionary Wing Command Chief Master Sgt. Jim Dowell helps a Kyrgyz soldier unload flour from a Transit Center at Manas truck in TokMok, Kyrgyzstan, April 29, 2010. Airmen honored five fallen Kyrgyz men who, among many, were slain during the recent unrest in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Airmen donated dry and household goods to assist their surviving family members.
4/30/2010 - Transit Center at Manas Airmen honored five fallen Kyrgyz men in a ceremony in TokMok, Kyrgyzstan, April 29, 2010.
Five brave men, among many, were slain during the recent unrest in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Airmen donated dry and household goods to assist their surviving family members.
"We bring small tokens of friendship for the families who are going through so much difficulty right now," said Transit Center director Col. Blaine Holt. ...
"Whether you read the local newspaper or the international press, there are many political discussions about the Transit Center," Colonel Holt said. "But the reason I'm here today is just to tell you that we are in the community and we want to continue to help."
So what is up with several of Abkhazia's top military brass retiring all at once? According to the official news agency Apsnypress, via BBC Monitoring:
According to the rules of military service, deputy Abkhaz defence ministers, Col Gen Anatoliy Zaytsev, Maj Gen Zakan Nanba, Maj Gen [and deputy defence minister] Garri Kupalba, Maj Gen Slava Ankvab, and Maj Gen Aleksandr Melnik, have been transferred to the reserve due to their age. In addition, colonels Dmitriy Sokolov (due to health condition), Aleksandr Antipov, Anatoliy Gorbunov, Zaur Adleiba, Ruslan Chokua, and Nodar Kakubava were also transferred to the reserve.
On Monday, 26 April, the supreme commander of the armed forces of Abkhazia, president Sergey Bagapsh, personally visited the main defence body of the country and thanked servicemen transferred to the reserve "for flawless service in the Abkhaz army".
Obviously this mass retirement is suspicious, and the Georgian "Expert Club" sees a sinister Russian hand:
The Russian Federation has enough reasons for this step. Firstly, Abkhazian militants are entering into armed conflict with Russian soldiers more and more frequently. And Against the backdrop of growing dissatisfaction in Abkhazia with lawlessness of Russians, with cases of lawlessness of the occupation troops, redistribution of spheres of influence and different kinds of criminal business, such incidents have all chances to spontaneously develop into large-scale confrontation. And this would be the collapse of the entire political model that the Kremlin has been constructing around Abkhazia. And secondly, the armed forces of Russia have already taken over functions of the Abkhazian "army". So why spend resources on poorly controlled groups that have their own interests that differ from those of Russia!?
A senior adviser to the president of Abkhazia, Nadir Bitiev, is visiting Washington this week. Bitiev is the highest-ranking Abkhazian official ever to visit D.C., but he is doing it in an unofficial capacity (and traveling on his New Zealand passport, to ease visa troubles). He sat down with me for a conversation at the National Press Club; following are some of the excerpts of his take on Abkhazia's military and security situation, in particular the Russian military presence on Abkhazian territory.
The 2008 war between Russia and Georgia resulted in Russian recognition of Abkhazian independence, and agreements with Moscow that have resulted in 1,200 Russian troops each at a naval border patrol base in Ochamchire and at a land forces base in Gudauta, leading many (especially Western) observers to conclude that Abkhazia was merely a Russian colony. But Bitiev emphasized the Russians' role in preserving Abkhazian independence.
Bitiev was in town to promote Abkhazia at a Russia investment forum and to him, the Russian military presence in Abkhazia is key to the territory's economic success: “We need them to stay there. The reason we have 2.5 million tourists a year is that the Russian troops are there... We need something to patrol our borders, in addition to our troops, in case of a conflict to make it bigger.”
I asked if he saw the Russian military presence as permanent, or just a step on the way to military self-sufficiency.
“That's what investment does – the more successful we are, the quicker we'll restore ourself to full capacity, and there will be no need for...” He trailed off; at several points he seemed to stop himself before he even implicitly criticized Russia. “And if Georgia recognizes us, of course, there will be no need at all,” he added.
Of all of the accusations that have recently been flying in Baku about the U.S.'s alleged pro-Armenian bias, this is perhaps the silliest:
According to MP Eldar Ibrahimov, the United States is planning to use Armenia for offensive against Iran.
“The United States intends to dislocate its military bases in Armenia”, Public TV channel reports that the due statement was made by chairman of the committee on agrarian policy of Milli Medjlis Eldar Ibrahimov at a meeting with representatives of the Iranian parliament on April 27.
Ibrahimov went on to say that the U.S. approached Azerbaijan for help in launching an attack on Iran, but was rebuffed, and thus turned to Armenia.
It's worth noting that, while his allegations have been widely reported in Azerbaijan, the English-language Iranian media -- which are usually not shy at all about speculating about American aggression against Iran -- seem not to have mentioned this in their reports about the meetings.
Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev are cooking Kurmanbek Bakiyev on a shashlik skewer. They slowly rotate the former Kyrgyz president over an open fire. Medvedev excuses himself for a few minutes.
When the Russian president returns, he sees Putin turning Bakiyev very quickly.
"Vladimir Vladimirovich, what are you doing?"
"Dimochka, I'm keeping Bakiyev from stealing the coal."
The interim government in Kyrgyzstan has a daunting list of challenges, says a new report on the recent uprising by the International Crisis Group. "A Hollow Regime Collapses," chronicles the unraveling of Kurmanbek Bakiyev's corrupt, nepotistic regime and presents a warning. The events in Kyrgyzstan - "a case study of the risks facing authoritarianism in Central Asia" - should present a lesson to the country's neighbors.
[T]he authoritarian model of government has not worked in Kyrgyzstan, and is unlikely in the long run to work in the rest of Central Asia. Its superficial stability is attractive to Western leaders who are looking for a safe environment to pursue commercial or security interests, such as the current effort to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. But the deep-seated and invisible instabilities of authoritarian regimes remove all predictability. A well-defended government, seemingly without a coherent challenge from its political opponents and apathetic populace, can be swept away in a day. By blocking all social safety valves – the media, public dissent, political discourse and the right to legal redress – the Bakiyev regime created a semblance of calm. But it was unable to control the underground currents of anger at the regime’s rapacity. The closure of all other channels of change made a violent response just about the only option for an angry population.
Latest political joke doing the rounds in Bishkek:
As part of Russia's aid package to Kyrgyzstan's provisional government, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sends a box to interim Kyrgyz leader Roza Otunbayeva.
"To: Roza Isakovna. From: Vladimir Vladimirovich."
Otunbayeva opens the box and, to her surprise, finds a bicycle inside. But there are no handlebars. She calls up Putin and asks where the handlebars are. He says the instructions are in the box, "You peddle and I'll steer."
The same day the interim government charged former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev with mass murder, a Bishkek-based NGO says he should be charged with polygamy to set an example for others, AKIpress reports.
Kalicha Umuralieva, director of the NGO Our Right, has requested that the Bishkek police initiate a criminal investigation against the ousted president.
According to [Umuralieva], the ex-president violated Article 153 of the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic, because he is married to several women at the same time. As she stated during the press conference, the NGO intends to make a precedent and call for responsibility by filing a case for violation of article 153. Answering the question whether she has facts about K. Bakiyev’s polygamy, K. Umuralieva stated that the facts are known to all and the investigation will have to find out the number of wives of the former president.
Bakiyev is widely rumored to have two or three wives: Tatyana Bakiyeva, an ethnic Russian, the mother of Maxim and Marat; and one or two younger ethnic Kyrgyz wives. Bakiyev fled from his Jalalabad stronghold on April 15 to the southern Kazakh city of Taraz, reportedly with a younger Kyrgyz wife and two young children.
Southwestern Tajikistan is registering the first cases of clinically confirmed polio since 1997 and the first cases in the European/Central Asian region since the area was declared polio-free in 2002.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed 120 cases of acute flaccid paralysis in Tajikistan, seven of which were confirmed to be caused by poliovirus type 1. Ten children have died.
Initial reporting suggests that over 45 percent of the children stricken by the paralysis had polio vaccines, said the WHO in a statement.
WHO is communicating with countries in the Region about the outbreak. It is important that neighboring countries strengthen surveillance for cases of acute flaccid paralysis, in order to rapidly detect any new poliovirus importations and facilitate a rapid response. Countries should also analyze routine immunization coverage data to identify any sub-national gaps in population immunity to guide catch-up immunization activities and thereby minimize the consequences of any new virus introduction.
…
WHO does not recommend the imposition of restrictions to the international movement of persons as a control measure at this time.
Polio is considered endemic in Afghanistan, Tajikistan's southern neighbor.
The move toward trying to open up to the public the arrangements by which the U.S. government bought fuel at the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan appears to be gaining momentum. There was a terrific investigative piece in The Nation last week, which anyone interested in this issue should read in full. It involves a former U.S. defense attache in Bishkek, a whole host of extralegal (to put it gently) contracts and even Bob Dole (somewhat indirectly). This is the gist:
Officials in Kyrgyzstan's provisional government say it straight out: Mina Corp., the affiliate of Red Star, was paying funds to Maksim Bakiyev, the president's son. The new government's chief of staff Baisalov says that in order to keep the air base secure and supplied with fuel, the United States essentially "bribed the Kyrgyz ruling family. First it was Akayev and then it was Bakiyev. On one hand, the White House and the US State Department, they announce these noble goals, democracy, good government, and on the other hand, the military comes in and overrides everyone else." The Defense Logistics Agency, which oversees the Defense Energy Support Center, wouldn't comment specifically on that, even to deny it. "We can't speak to that," said DLA spokesman Dennis Gauci. "You'll have to speak to Mina Corp."
But the devil is in the details, and that piece is full of good ones.
Still, that piece raises many more questions than answers. And it seems there are two primary lines of questioning that we'll look at going ahead.
