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Kyrgyzstan: Not Washington's Crisis

By Doug Bandow on 6.17.10 @ 6:09AM

The U.S. cannot afford another lengthy deployment in another distant and unstable client state.

The scenes are sadly predictable. Ethnic conflict. Murdered innocents. Distressed refugees.

We have seen them all many times before around the world. But despite heart-felt pleas for Washington to do something, the Obama administration should keep the troops at home. The U.S. cannot afford another lengthy deployment in another distant and unstable client state.

Kyrgyzstan is one of the Central Asian Soviet republics that won independence when the Soviet Union dissolved. Kyrgyzstan's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was overthrown in a popular uprising in early April. Some 84 people died in the violence and Bakiyev first fled south, where he retained political support, before going into exile in Belarus.

Bakiyev was an opposition leader when he led a similar uprising against his authoritarian predecessor Askar Akayev, tagged the "tulip revolution." Unfortunately, the tulips soon wilted. A month before he was forced from office the State Department reported:

[R]estrictions on citizens' right to change their government; arbitrary killing, torture, and abuse by law enforcement officials; impunity; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of judicial independence; pressure on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and opposition leaders, including government harassment; pressure on independent media; government detention of assembly organizers; authorities' failure to protect refugees adequately; pervasive corruption.

Few in the West mourned Bakiyev's ouster, though both the Bush and Obama administrations had generally overlooked his flaws in return for access to Manas airbase. Some American defenders of the Afghanistan war spoke darkly of Russian involvement in his overthrow, but the Kyrgyz people had ample reason to dump him.

Since then hope built that the interim administration of Roza Otunbayeva would adopt liberal reforms. A new constitution was to be voted on later in June and a parliamentary election was supposed to take place under that constitution in October.

Now all bets are off. After the uprising there were a series of violent incidents across the country, many Kyrgyz versus Uzbek. Last week in Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city, the "violence escalated into more extensive fighting, burning, killing, and expulsions," according to journalist Vicken Cheterian.

Officially nearly 200 are dead and 1,600 injured, though unofficial estimates run higher. Uzbeks have been the principal victims, though Tartars and ethnic Russians also have been targeted. Some 80,000 or so people fled across the border into neighboring Uzbekistan before that government closed the border. Thousands more have been prevented from crossing.

The police have been unable to contain the violence; in fact, in some towns Uzbeks accused the security forces of joining in the killing. So the government has mobilized the army. Unfortunately, that force has received no training in dealing with civil strife and there is no guarantee that, if deployed, it would escape ethnic division as well. Mobilization, warned Paul Quinn-Judge of the International Crisis Group, "seems to be another indication that the interim government is running short on options."

The government in Bishkek appealed to the U.S. for military aid, including rubber bullets and by some accounts, denied by the American embassy in Bishkek, troops. Then the Kyrgyz authorities asked Russia for peacekeeping troops. Interim president Otunbayeva said: "we need the arrival of outside forces to calm the situation down." Ousted President Bakiyev seemed to agree, telling a press conference that international peacekeepers were necessary to "bring the situation back to normal."

Both Washington and Moscow said no. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the atmosphere in Kyrgyzstan "intolerable" but referred the issue to members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, made up of seven former Soviet states. The initial CSTO answer was to offer "comprehensive assistance," including military equipment, but not troops. However, Russian Nikolai Patrushev said that the meeting "did not rule out the use of any means that the CSTO has at its potential, depending on how the situation evolves."

The drumbeat immediately started for intervention. For example, Human Rights Watch proposed a UN-sponsored force, which almost certainly would include U.S. troops.

James Collins and Matthew Rojansky of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace want a joint NATO, CSTO, and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) force: "NATO and the U.S. must immediately engage with regional partners to help restore security." Moreover, "By holding out a hand not only to the Kyrgyz authorities, but to national regional partners, including the CSTO, and the OSCE, the United States and NATO can demonstrate the sincerity of their interest in regional security."

So far the Obama administration has said little. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley endorsed humanitarian assistance and said that "we seek a coordinated international response to the ongoing violence there."

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About the Author

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).

Letter to the Editor View all comments (10) | Leave a comment

Pointed Head| 6.17.10 @ 8:19AM

I teach "World History" I start with Cain & Able (Cain was a farmer) and show how the fight between farmers and nomads is a constant in history. (indeed our conflict with the Taliban can be seen as a continuation). This seems to be happening in Kyrgzstan.

ENOUGH ROPE| 6.17.10 @ 11:42AM

OBAMA, THE SMILING COBRA

Alan Brooks| 6.17.10 @ 1:26PM

"The U.S. cannot afford another lengthy deployment in another distant and unstable client state"

Yes, the days of nation-building are over.
This nation for instance is not a former- Jugoslavia where we go in and then go out like Wilt Chamberlain or something.

AMENBRO| 6.17.10 @ 9:46AM

Discount me cause I curse and elucidate in a colorful way if you will but the reality of the matter is:::::::::::::::::::::::::::

According to John Kerry, John Edwards, HARRY ASS REID, Nancy Pelosi, RANGEL, Patrick Leahy , SCHUMER, Bernie Sanders Karl Levin, WAXMAN, DICK Durbin, and last but not least, the DIMMEST BULB in the 12 PAK, SHOUT BAMMIE LAMMIE HUSSSSEIN OBAMA were supposed to just talk to these people and they would pack up and GO HOME. Apparently they didn't study the GREEK Mythological significance of ROMAN/GRECO columns & fireworks framed oratory by African American MILLIONAIRE front people for wannabe intellectual hoisted petards, as in cultural landmine defense against those that oppose their views.

IRAN, CHINA, ORGANIZED CRIME HIDING BEHIND A TURBAN ARE NOT STRATEGIC THREATS. Remember them hectoring us for years. The Soviet Union were our xenophobic fears' creation ;business's invention to foster the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Cold War was curable with NYQUIL.

Read GEOPOLITICAL strategist Admiral MacKinder or Spykman's modern variant of the same theme to realize exactly what the fornication is going on here people.

Quote from GEOPOLITICAL THEORY
He argued that in the "closed Heart-Land of Euroasia" was a strategically placed region, with great resources, that if controlled by one force could be the basis of a World Empire. James Kurth, in Foreign Affairs, has commented that it has taken two World Wars and the Cold War to prevent Mackinder’s prophecy becoming reality.
END QUOTE

The real CRIMINALS of the world have once again got our duly elected by moron's President receiving ELBOW & KNEECAP RUG BURNS while administering the same to US, American People. Jimmmmah Carter was BUNS UP kneeling while theworld's CRIMINALS were WHEEELIN & DEALIN, remember. If not ask an old fart like me, WE WILL EDUCATE YOU unlike academia.

Yup, just like BP as of yesterday, know not what they are bested by. CRIMINALS capable of enjoining the ignorant masses of the world to die for their benefit. Unlike you compassionate dipsticks who preen for your PEEEERS while uncompensatedly prostrating yourselves towards their elections.

OBAMA IS MERELY THE BASKETBALL PLAYING ISM THAT THEY FIGURED WOULD SHUT UP AMERICANS WHILE THEY PICK OUR POCKETS CLEAN.

The Wars & the real battle are mere distractions from the WAR within our once hallowed halls of justice.

An inconvenience the current clack of campaign hacks and oddball academians would prefer not to acknowledge in a realist way.

Dan Hirsch| 6.17.10 @ 9:47AM

Could anyone tell me what this means: " An unnamed administration official was quoted as saying: "if we get to the moment that unavoidably there has to be troops, we will be doing it in a cooperative way, not a zero-sum way. "

You do need to use tangible, concrete nouns and verbs...

My questions:

Cooperative? With whom? Do we have a history of bringing our allies to battles and then refusing to cooperate with them? (Yes, it's a short 16 month history. ref Israel, Britain, Poland, et al.) Or do we cooperate with our supposed foes? (Ref 16 month history of ridiculously restrictive and downright dangerous rules of engagement for our troops? Ref 16 month history of abetting the Mexican invasion, the Iranian suppression, the attempted Honduran coup d'tat, the snuggling upto Chavez, etc.)

"Zero sum?" means if I get one, somebody else loses one. Peace ain't a zero sum game if it is won, rather than purchased with cash. If I stop killing you and you stop killing me, we're both better off. But if I give you a bunch of cash, you'll take some time to spend it and then get back to killing me, and then get more cash, or me dead. Didn't these Obamamaniacs ever play on the playground at recess?

Don't tread on me....

hunter| 6.17.10 @ 10:53AM

Hell, Obumba don't even worry about our southern border. He don't care about his own..OOps, the white people in the border states. Why should he care about .. some ...stan? Why waste time??? He's a foreigner... a alien...

AMENBRO| 6.17.10 @ 11:01AM

It means we have euncks & uterineless people populating the tiers of defense not only you & I but most of the world depend upon to keep the criminals such as n.Korea from raping and pillaging in the fashion of Atilla.

Correct my mathematical conception but it is sad its come to common defense & preparedness being viewed as barbarian as opposed to what the denominator it numerates requires that vigilance.

My daddy nor momma never ever implied there would be days like these