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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| In Central Asia, a new headache for U.S. policy |
| 2010-09-01 |
| BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN - Beset by mounting casualties on the battlefield and deepening disquiet at home over the United States' longest war, President Obama's Afghan policy now faces another big headache: the unraveling of central authority in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian nation that hosts a U.S. air base critical to the battle against the Taliban. Just a month after agreeing to extend for a year a $60 million lease on a U.S. air base here, Kyrgyzstan's generally pro-Western but increasingly impotent president, Roza Otunbayeva, has retreated from U.S.-backed security programs that Washington hoped would help fortify a fragile Kyrgyz government. These include a counterterrorism and anti-narcotics training center and an international police mission. The government's paralysis, most notable in its inability to control truculent Kyrgyz nationalists in the south of this former Soviet republic, does not pose any immediate physical threat to the U.S. air base, which is about 20 miles from the capital, Bishkek, in the north. But it does raise the prospect of prolonged and possibly bloody clashes ahead and strengthens forces inimical to Washington's interests in the region. What diplomats and local analysts describe as perilous political drift in Bishkek has been compounded by the approach of parliamentary elections in October, a vote that will probably amplify nationalist voices wary of the West and further enfeeble Otunbayeva. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #1 It is late so few will see this: Move our troops from Afgan to the forts situated along the southern border. |
| Posted by: bman 2010-09-01 23:11 |