Central Asia Archive

As much as NATO coalition partners’ contribution to the Afghanistan War has been criticized over the years, it bears noting that as long as the war is a multilateral effort, Russia can’t hold negotiations over supply routes entirely hostage to its bilateral spats with the U.S. That said, the fact that the tone out of Moscow regarding supply routes in general has been pretty conciliatory of late suggests to me that Russia was authentically on board with the Kyrgyz government’s decision to renew the Manas lease. That reflects the fact that the last thorny irritant left over from the Bush […]

According to Defense News, the only real change at the Manas base supplying the Afghanistan war will be in its name: instead of calling it an air base, it will now be called an transit corridor. Besides the nomenclature, though, the military activities, mainly basing tankers for refueling missions, will continue. According to RIA Novosti, Russia’s okay with the sleight of hand, with President Dmitry Medvedev calling the “transit center” a contribution to the fight against the joint terrorist threat. The fact that the lease was only extended for a year strongly suggests we haven’t heard the last of this. […]

So in the end, Kyrgyzstan’s threat to close the Manas air base we’ve been using to supply the Afghanistan war effort was just a bargaining ploy. A successful one, at that, since it almost quadrupled the yearly lease we’re paying, while apparently rolling back the terms to now include the transit of only non-military supplies. (Question: What are we going to shoot at the bad guys in Afghanistan once we can’t ship in any ammo anymore?) Some folks might read this as a U.S. victory over Russian meddling. But the fact that the terms of the lease have now been […]

It was reported this week in the Boston Globe that President Barack Obama, as part of a broad nuclear arms reduction initiative, will call for the creation of an international supply house for uranium that will be open to nations that want to pursue peaceful nuclear power projects, but denied to anyone wishing to make a bomb. While not specifically aimed at nuclear “rogues” Iran or North Korea, the idea is obviously meant to put to the test their claims, at least in Iran’s case, that their nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful. According to an unnamed administration official quoted in […]