Richard Holbrooke, the U.S.'s envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had a press conference today in which he briefly discussed his recent trip through the ex-Soviet 'stans and Georgia. He's trying to drum up support from those countries for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, and although Holbrooke's portfolio is primarily diplomatic and civilian, it seems most of the support he discussed in the former USSR was military:
In the case of Kyrgyzstan, which doesn’t have a common border with Afghanistan – the very important Manas Transit Center, which will be – which we will renew the arrangements some in the next few weeks, and I wanted to launch that process. We’ve very grateful to the Kyrgyz’s Government for that support.
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In Tashkent, of course, we talked about the Northern Distribution Network and its importance to us. Most of the supplies coming through that entry point into Afghanistan – the Northern Distribution Network – come through Uzbekistan. In Kazakhstan, we talked about improving and increasing our over-flight facilities and improving rail transit, which is an issue we’re interested in. And in Tajikistan, we talked about also northern distribution issues. And in addition, we talked about resources. Water is a huge problem, as you all know, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Tajikistan has one of the greatest water potentials in the world, and President Rahmon described that to us in some detail. And we have, on a separate basis we have got a water resources task force now set up in the Department to examine how we can additionally help the countries of the area, and particularly Pakistan with the water issue.
And finally, after the four Central Asian Republics, we went on to Georgia. Now, Georgia – and we visited the Georgian battalion outside Tbilisi which will – will be deployed next month to Afghanistan.
The U.S. Marines, who are advising the training and who do this as a profession, said these are among the best troops that they’ve ever seen. These – many of these troops fought in Iraq with the coalition. Those of you who know Georgia, know that it’s a mountainous country with terrain features that are sometimes similar to Afghanistan. They have a tremendous fighting tradition. And they are going into Afghanistan with no national caveats, and after they unpack and get acclimatized, they will be integrated into the Marine operations in Helmand.
On a per capita basis, right now, they are – they appear to have the highest per capita troop contribution of any country in the world. They’ll be up to about 950 troops when this battalion gets there. It’s an extremely important deployment and we are grateful for it. President Saakashvili and I had discussed this a year ago and started the process which has led to the deployment, and he accompanied me on this trip to the training mission. I was not there on any other subject. We did not discuss U.S-Russian relations. We did not discuss issues involving their future relationships with NATO. This was an Afghanistan-related trip.
But I want to express with great strength on behalf of the entire U.S. Government how much the United States Government appreciates the Georgian contribution. It came by coincidence on the same day that the government in the Netherlands fell. No, this is an important deployment and it’s gotten far too little attention.
A "tremendous fighting tradition"? Sounds like a bit of a euphemism...
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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