Doug Lorimer
The day after his landslide victory in the Kyrgyzstan's July 17 presidential election, Kurmanbek Bakiyev told a press conference the presence of a US military base in the Central Asian republic should be reconsidered. Bakiyev was the leader of last March's "Tulip Revolution" — a pro-democracy uprising that forced the previous president, Askar Akayev, to flee to Moscow, where he claimed the uprising had been organised and financed by Washington to install a pro-US regime.
The March 24 uprising was sparked by widespread anger among Kyrgyzstan's 5 million inhabitants over electoral fraud, government corruption and widespread poverty.
Akayev had been the country's president since 1990, when it was a constituent republic of the USSR. Shortly after, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Akayev was re-elected in multi-party elections.
Akayev's regime followed the recipes prescribed by the International Monetary Fund to restore capitalism in Kyrgyzstan. As a result, the tiny republic now has the largest debt per capita in Central Asia and almost 60% of the population live below the poverty line, according to World Bank figures.
Following 9/11, the US military were allowed to use the Manas airport base in Bishkek to conduct military operations against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Rent paid by the US to use the base has reportedly provided millions of dollars to Kyrgyzstan's state budget. Akayev supported Washington's global "war on terror" and was applauded by the US for his suppression of "Islamic extremism".
In September 2003, however, Akayev agreed to allow Russian military forces to be deployed at Kant airbase, just 46 kilometres from the US base. This was seen by Western analysts as a move by Akayev to cultivate closer ties with Russia as a counter to US influence.
In an interview with Associated Press in Moscow on July 1, Akayev said Washington wanted to project its influence in Central Asia and was apparently vexed by his efforts to balance US, Russian and Chinese interests in Central Asia. "I did everything to balance the interests of the three great powers. But the United States doesn't want a balance. Americans want [others] to have a clear orientation on Washington."
US conspiracy?
Akayev's claim that the US had organised his overthrow was based upon reports that Washington had provided support to the Kyrgyz opposition through pro-Western non-governmental organisations. The February 25 Wall Street Journal, for example, reported that one of the main NGOs working with the opposition, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, was being funded by the National Democratic Institute in Washington, which is financed by the US government.
US President George Bush later hailed Akayev's ousting as part of the "march of freedom around the world" that included the US- organised elections in occupied Iraq. He told the general assembly of the Organisation of American States on June 6: "In the last year-and-a-half — think about this — we've witnessed a Rose Revolution in Georgia, an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, a Purple Revolution in Iraq, a Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, a Cedar Revolution in Lebanon — and these are just the beginnings. Across Central Asia, hope is stirring at the prospect of change — and change will come."
In the July 17 presidential election, Bakiyev won 89% of the votes cast. Human rights commissioner Tursunbai Bakir Uulu, known for his Islamist orientation, finished a distant second with 3.73% and Akbaraly Aitikeyev, the head of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, followed him with 3.63%.
Bakiyev had served as prime minister under Akayev in 2000-02, but had resigned after police fired on opposition protesters. He then moved over to the opposition, leading protests in March that culminated in an opposition takeover of government buildings in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, and Akayev's flight to Moscow. Bakiyev took over as interim prime minister, pending the new presidential elections.
At a July 18, news conference, his first after winning the election, Bakiyev told reporters: "This election can be called a convincing victory of the popular revolution." He then went on to say that Kyrgyzstan intended to review the presence of US troops on its soil. He made no mention of the presence of Russian troops.
The Kyrgyz news agency AKI quoted Kyrgyzstan's ambassador to Moscow, Apas Jamagulov, as saying on July 18 that the US base at Manas would be "gradually" shut down, while stressing that the Russian base, at Kant, would remain operational.
At a July 5 summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — an alliance comprising Russia, China and all of the former Soviet Central Asian republics except Turkmenistan — the leaders of these six member-states issued a call for the US to set a deadline for removing its troops from air bases in two of the SCO's member-states, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Originally set up in 1996 to deal with border disputes between its member states, the SCO has transformed itself into a regional security alliance, including organising joint military exercises.
US officials responded angrily to the SCO call. On July 14, General Richard Myers, the top US military officer, accused Russia and China of bullying the Central Asian states into issuing the call. "Looks to me like two very large countries were trying to bully some smaller countries", Myers told reporters at the Pentagon.
Bakiyev's support for the SCO call, however, would not require no "bullying" from any outside powers, but simply that he reflect the sentiments of the majority of the Kyrgyz people. Three years ago, the US BusinessWeek magazine reported that an April 4, 2002 US State Department study had found that "that most people in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan oppose an extended US military presence".
US officials have made no comment on Bakiyev's post-election support for the SCO call. However, on July 20, the Pentagon announced that US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld would visit Bishkek on July 25-26 to meet with Kyrgyz defence minister Ismail Isakov.
'Next oil frontier'
In his July 14 comments on the SCO call, Myers said that having bases in Central Asia "is important to the United States for lots of reasons, not just for operations in Afghanistan". He failed to elaborate what these other reasons are. However, they were outlined several years ago in BusinessWeek.
The May 27, 2002, edition of BusinessWeek ran a cover story — "The Next Oil Frontier"— in which it reported: "American soldiers, oilmen, and diplomats are rapidly getting to know this remote corner of the world, the old underbelly of the Soviet Union and a region that's been almost untouched by Western armies since the time of Alexander the Great.
"The game the Americans are playing has some of the highest stakes going. What they are attempting is nothing less than the biggest carve-out of a new US sphere of influence since the US became engaged in the Mideast 50 years ago.
"The result could be a commitment of decades that exposes America to the threat of countless wars and dangers. But this huge venture — call it an Accidental Empire — could also stabilise the fault line between the West and the Muslim world and reap fabulous energy wealth for the companies rich enough and determined enough to get it."
"From incidental sums fewer than five years ago", the report added, "the amount of US investment in the region has jumped to $20 billion... Major investors include ChevronTexaco Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp., BP PLC, and Halliburton."
The BusinessWeek article explained that key to these companies exploiting the oil and gas wealth of Central Asia is the construction of pipelines that lead south to the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean, where it can be shipped by tanks to the energy-hungry Japan and China. However, Washington wants pipelines "that will help its friends in the region and freeze out its enemies — especially the Iranians".
That, of course, means the construction of oil and gas pipelines that run south through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The big US oil companies have had such pipeline projects on their drawing boards since the mid 1990s but have been held up by the continuing warfare in Afghanistan — first between the Pakistani-trained Taliban and the rival Islamist and warlord factions grouped in the Northern Alliance, and now between the US-led occupation forces and the remnants of the Taliban.
"What is fast evolving is a policy focused on guns and oil", the 2002 article in BusinessWeek observed. "The guns are to protect the local regimes from Islamic radicals and provide a staging area for attacks on Afghanistan. The goal is 'to get rid of terrorism, not just get it out of Afghanistan', says A. Elizabeth Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The guns, of course, will also protect the oil ..."
From Green Left Weekly, July 27, 2005.
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