If there is any possibility to curry favor with the U.S., you can bet the Georgian government will be all over it. So it comes as little surprise that Georgia has agreed to accept three prisoners from the U.S.'s Guantanamo Bay prison. The prisoners weren't identified, though apparently two were Libyan:
Two of the three men were Libyans, according to Chicago attorney H. Candace Gorman, who identified one of them as her client Abdel Hamid al Ghazzawi, 47, a Libyan married to an Afghan with one child, a daughter. He ran a small shop in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, she said, until shortly before the American invasion, when he was handed over to U.S. forces.
The prisoners will lead "normal" lives in Georgia, Tbilisi says:
The three prisoners don’t pose a “serious danger” to Georgia and they won’t he held in detention, though their movements will be “strictly monitored” and they won’t be allowed to leave the country, Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said by telephone today in the capital Tbilisi.
Georgia's opposition Labor Party, however, objects:
At today's press conference Kakha Dzagania, one of the party leaders, said that "import of Guantanamo prisoners to Georgia, turned by Saakashvili into a concentration camp" creates a great threat, from surrounding Muslim states as well.
No, it's not rich, stable Switzerland, where two other Gitmo prisoners were sent the same day, but Georgian hospitality should more than make up for that. And given that they were picked up in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan, the threat of a new war with Georgia shouldn't faze them too badly.
What to make of the recent news that the U.N. signed a cooperation agreement with the CSTO? According to Vlad Socor, writing at Jamestown, it will further embolden Russia to act unilaterally in its near abroad:
The core issue, however, is that of a de facto division of responsibilities for conducting peacekeeping operations and authorizing military intervention. Moscow seeks to carve out a zone of responsibility for itself in Eurasia, under the flag of the CSTO, its political mechanism, and its collective forces. In such a zone, Russia (acting either through the CSTO, the latter’s regional subgroups, or unilaterally) would initiate and lead peacekeeping, military, or “anti-terrorism” operations.
Russia would not have to await an international mandate from the UN or some other organization for such operations. It would, however, welcome any form of endorsement to legitimize its initiatives, even short of an international mandate (which it cannot realistically expect from the UN in the foreseeable future). The declaration just signed is a significant step in that direction.
This seems true to me, though it seems like Russia has already been able to get international organizations' imprimatur (like the UN and OSCE) for its dominance of peacekeeping missions in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Tajikistan. Any thoughts on what this new step might mean?
Has Russia given up on its desire to have a CSTO base in Osh? That's what this Russia Today story suggests:
Moscow has reportedly dropped the idea of deploying an additional military contingent on the territory of Kyrgyzstan despite the earlier agreement between presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Kurmanbek Bakiyev...
... five months after the initially planned date, no agreement between Moscow and Bishkek has been signed. It is not clear whether the base will be created or not.
RT offers few details, however. In a similar vein, an intriguing but vague mention of the Ayni base in Tajikistan at the very end of this Vancouver Sun piece:
Moscow, though, is none too happy about New Delhi playing its strategic “Great Game” in Russia’s backyard. Russia has persuaded the Dushanbe government of Emomali Rahmon that operational control of the Ayni airbase should rotate, and that it should share that responsibility with India.
EurasiaNet's Deirdre Tynan uncovers an intriguing tidbit about some of the aviation activities at Manas Transit Center:
A company with ties to Blackwater, the controversial private security firm now known as Xe, has been ferrying US government-directed cargos over the past five-plus years across Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition, the company may be a candidate to continue its services for years to come, if a Sources Sought Announcement posted by the US Defense Department becomes a live contract.
Given what we know about contractors in Afghanistan, none of this should be surprising. But the most intriguing part to me: Apparently there remains at least some slim hope or expectation among the military and contractors that the U.S. will again get use of Karshi-Khanabad:
A separate solicitation issued on February 25, 2010, to provide fixed-wing transportation services for US Central Command and the National Geospatial Agency (NGA), to which Presidential Airways is listed as an interested vendor, also includes Karshi-Khanabad as one of 16 airfields that could be potentially used within the scope of the contract.
Al Jazeera English has a report from a post on the Tajikistan border with Afghanistan, which claims that the Taliban are moving north and, according to the governor of Kunduz province, "from here, they can operate in Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan and Chechnya":
There are a lot of questionable things about this report. Why would Taliban be shooting at Tajik border guards? And who would seriously believe that a base in northern Afghanistan gives them any sort of proximity to Chechnya? And, most importantly, in whose interest is it to put this kind of information out there? Thoughts?
Remember the report that claimed that Georgia was selling its entire fleet of combat aircraft? I was skeptical, and apparently rightly so. The Georgian Air Force is disappearing -- but it's just a bureaucratic move, bringing the air forces under the control of the army. Reports Georgia Times:
Givi Targamadze, the chairman of the Committee, said in this case no redundancy was meant; just Air Forces would exist as a separate structure no longer.
"Practice revealed that the Air Forces of Georgia are usually used for support of land operations. Such examples exist in world practice - for example, there is no command of the air forces of Canada. This change will simplify the command in conditions of specific operations."
First, the speculation was that the U.S.-funded anti-terror center in Kyrgyzstan's Batken region was a U.S. ploy for geopolitical influence. Then, it was a Kyrgyz move to thwart Uzbekistani activities in Batken. Now, official Bishkek says it is none of the above:
On March 17, 2010 Kyrgyz Defense Ministry disseminated the press-releasing, indicating that the construction of the anti-terrorist training center in the Batken Oblast is "the bilateral Kyrgyz-American relations project against international terrorism and religious extremism, transnational organized crime, prevention of drug smuggling, not oriented against third countries and does not conflict with national obligations under CSTO and other international organizations".
As that story, from Ferghana.ru, points out, the Kyrgyz statement went on to imply that the initiative for the project was the American side, while the U.S. Embassy statement said that it was a Kyrgyzstan request. The rollout of this center, from a PR perspective, has been a little rocky...
The annual SIPRI report is out, which enumerates every (known) arms sale around the world. In our humble Eurasia region, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan all got some goodies in 2009. Russia and Israel were the top suppliers.
Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan did not receive any arms imports in 2009, the report said.
Azerbaijan got 70 armored personnel carriers (of the BTR-80A variety) from Russia, and arranged with South Africa's Paramount Groups to start producing Matador and Marauder mine-protected vehicles in Azerbaijan. Baku also bought 50 missiles from Israel for use in its Lynx Modular Rocket Launcher systems.
Georgia bought 70 Ejder armored personnel carriers from Turkey and 32 tanks from Ukraine, 20 T-72s and 12 T-84s.
Kazakhstan completed its receipt of 79 armored personnel carriers from Russia, of the same variety (BTR-80A) that Azerbaijan did, as well as three ANSAT light utility helicopters and 12 Mi-8 and Mi-17 attack helicopters, all of which were bought in 2007.
Kazakhstan also last year signed agreements with Russia for 10 S-330 surface-to-air missile air defense systems and Su-27, MiG-27 and MiG-23UB combat planes.
From Israel, Kazakhstan completed its acquisitions of weapons from Israel bought in 2006 and 2007, including 18 Lynx rocket systems, six Semser 122mm self-propelled guns, and 18 CARDOM 120mm mortars for use on armored personnel carriers.
Kazakhstan also acquired 40 uparmored Humvees from the United States.
Turkmenistan bought six Smerch multiple rocket launch systems, two Tarantul fast-attack boats and ten T-90 tanks, all from Russia.
Erica Marat has a good analysis of the U.S. counterterrorism center in Batken, Kyrgyzstan, and says that, at least from the Kyrgyz perspective, it has less to do with geopolitics than with Bishkek's fear of Uzbekistan:
As one representative of the Kyrgyz defense ministry told Jamestown, military officials in Bishkek hope to maintain a military battalion in the southern part of the country to respond to “local conflicts.” The terminology assumes that such conflicts would be initiated by Uzbek troops. There is a widely held view among the Kyrgyz military that Tashkent is developing its military forces with the aim of one day acquiring Kyrgyzstan’s water reservoirs and protecting the ethnic Uzbek population living in Osh and Batken by military means.
Which, of course, is probably not what the U.S. intends for the center:
The official reason underlying the need for the new center is rooted in the terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan, and differs from an unofficial viewpoint that suggests the Kyrgyz elites want to militarily protect the southern part of the country more from their neighbor.
Over the weekend, I think we've all learned to take Georgian media reports with an extra grain of salt, and this report seems a bit hard to fathom: Apparently a Georgian newspaper is reporting that the country is planning to sell 12 of its Su-25 aircraft. Via GeorgiaTimes:
The media cites to the Ministry of Defense and say the merge was caused by dissatisfaction with training level of military pilots, failing to hit targets at maneuvers.
"The pilots have counter-arguments," the media says.
I imagine they would. Anyway, according to Jane's, those 12 Su-25s would represent the entire inventory of the Georgian air force's fixed-wing combat aircraft. (In fact, the Su-25 was produced in, of all places, Tbilisi.) So it seems a little skepticism is called for until we hear more reports.
