The December 6 killing of a Kyrgyz citizen at the American airbase outside Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, is the most serious of several recent events that have shaken relations between the United States and its key military ally in Central Asia. In response to the shooting, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev has asked that US troops be held accountable to Kyrgyz law. Local analysts, however, say that it is unlikely that the position reflects a desire to reconsider Kyrgyzstan's alliance with Washington.
In a statement about the killing, the US base said that an American guard shot an ethnic Russian fuel truck driver, Alexander Ivanov, twice in the chest after Ivanov threatened the airman with a knife at a checkpoint. The day after the incident, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded that the airman be tried in Kyrgyz courts, despite a 2001 base agreement that subjects US troops only to American military regulations.
In a statement released on December 18. the US embassy in Bishkek rejected the Kyrgyz government's request "The United States exercises jurisdiction over them [US troops] and will determine what action, if any, would be appropriate in each instance," the document read. "This is consistent with the status of all U.S. servicemen deployed abroad around the world."
The US investigation is continuing, the statement said, and Kyrgyz law enforcement officials have been invited to attend the airman's questioning and to submit queries.
Speaking on state television channel KTR on December 18, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev took a harder line than in previous statements, calling for the "annulment" of US troops' immunity to Kyrgyz laws, local news outlets reported. Bakiyev said that in the coming days the government would propose changes to the 2001 agreement, including proposals on the legal status of US forces, the reports stated.
On December 15, Kyrgyzstan's parliament passed a resolution calling for the government to review the "expediency" of the base's presence in Kyrgyzstan, saying that the shooting "added to the list of incidents connected with the airbase that have provide a negative perception of the US image among our country's population," according to the Kyrgyz parliament's website.
One such irritant came in November, when a Kyrgyz commission blamed US forces for a September collision between a departing Kyrgyz passenger aircraft and an American tanker plane. The collision led to an emergency landing and a fire that caused a reported $3 million in damages. The US investigation into the accident is ongoing.
More recently, on December 13 Kyrgyzstan's air traffic control body announced that US forces owed it $15 million in service fees, and threatened to stop servicing US aircraft if the debt remained unpaid.
"US-Kyrgyz relations are experiencing some ups and downs," said independent analyst Abdujalil Abdurasulov. However, he said, Bakiyev's reaction to the shooting was mostly due to fear that "the opposition would criticize him for not doing enough to tackle this issue." Keeping the US facility is in the government's interest "because they are earning quite a lot on [it]," he said.
Under the terms of an agreement reached with the US in July 2006, Kyrgyzstan receives $150 million in annual fees and other assistance for allowing the US Air Force to use the Manas base. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Alexander Knyazev, a professor of political science at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University, agreed that it was unlikely Kyrgyzstan would expel the US in the near future. But he suggested US forces might be pushed out in a more "evolutionary" manner over the medium term.
"There is a general tendency, not only in Kyrgyzstan, but in the whole region, of a change in relations with America," he said. "The earlier euphoria has totally disappeared."
The base, arguably the most visible barometer of Kyrgyz-American relations, looked on the brink of expulsion once before, when in July 2005 the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) called for a timetable for the departure of US forces from Central Asia. The SCO is a security body consisting of Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, and three other Central Asian states, and the announcement was seen as a Russian and Chinese move to push the United States out of the region.
Bakiyev later confirmed his commitment to an ongoing US military presence in Kyrgyzstan, but reopened negotiations in early 2006 to increase the yearly fee for lease of the base from the original $2 million.
Diplomatic relations outside the base have also been rocky. As the talks on the base payment continued into July, two US diplomats were expelled from the country for allegedly inappropriate contacts with local civic groups. The Americans responded by revoking the diplomatic credentials of two Kyrgyz embassy officials in the US.
Also, in recent weeks, three American organizations funded by the US government the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, and IFES have been called into the Kyrgyz General Prosecutor's office for consultations.
General Prosecutor's office spokesperson Toktogul Kakchekeyev said that many local organizations had been "writing one thing but doing another," and that the conversations with the US groups were a routine procedure to ensure that they were acting in accordance with Kyrgyz law. "No one is trying to unleash a conflict with the US," he said.
A November 30 US embassy statement on the topic said that the three organizations worked with the Kyrgyz government and local NGOs "openly and transparently under existing bilateral agreements." It did not address the content of the meetings themselves.
According to Knyazev, Bakiyev is wary of the role non-governmental organizations (NGOs) played in the March 2005 ouster of his predecessor, Askar Akayev. To avoid the same fate, Knyazev said, Bakiyev is seeking to "restrict" their activities based on "the examples of Uzbekistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan."
Abdurasulov agreed, noting that the political opposition, which staged mass protests in early November calling for Bakiyev's resignation, includes representatives of NGOs that have received funding from the US for various projects. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. "It would be logical for them [the government] to try to decrease the amount of support that comes from the United States to what they perceive as the opposition," he said.
But despite the recent bumps in the road for US-Kyrgyz relations, Abdurasulov expected "no drastic change in foreign policy."
"It has to do more with domestic politics rather than the US-Kyrgyz relationship," he said. "This interaction between opposition and government is influencing the entire [government] policy, including foreign policy."
Editor's Note: Daniel Sershen is a freelance journalist based in Bishkek.
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