In 180 days, the United States will have to vacate its Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase in Uzbekistan.
WASHINGTON — The Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan has notified the State Department that U.S. military aircraft and personnel must leave an Uzbek air base that has been an important hub for American military operations in Afghanistan, a Pentagon official said Saturday.
Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said the notice was received Friday at the U.S. Embassy in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.
Flood said he did not know whether the Uzbeks stated a reason for evicting U.S. forces from Karshi-Khanabad air base, commonly referred to as K2.
The Washington Post, which first reported the eviction notice, said no reason was given and that U.S. forces would have six months to leave.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy confirmed that it received an Uzbek notice Friday but would not say what it contained. A base spokeswoman declined comment.
The Uzbek government in recent months had tightened restriction on use of the base, including banning night flights.
This has been coming for a while, and I don’t think that the Uzbek move is part of a negotiating tactic. The US will have to look for another way to fly into and out of Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan is probably the best option, although I’m not all that sure how keen the Kyrgyz government will be to expand operations at the US base in Manas. Following the election there, they’ve been trying their hardest to run a balanced foreign policy, staying close to Russia, the US and China. It’s a very tricky act to pull off, and I don’t think offering to allow the US to run even more flights through Kyrgyzstan will help them to maintain that balance.
Other than Kyrgyzstan, though, I’m not really sure how the US on its own can run large numbers of flights into Afghanistan. Perhaps we’ll see a move towards integrating the US presence into Afghanistan into the NATO presence, allowing the US to use bases under the NATO aegis (there are are already German bases in Uzbekistan and French bases in Tajikistan servicing the NATO mission in Afghanistan). The shift to a beefed up NATO presence could be justified relatively easily following Afghanistan’s fairly succesful election and, of course, it would be politically far simpler for Central Asian countries to allow a NATO base than a US base (although still, not all that simple…).
Another interesting question to address, once the US no longer has an airbase in Uzbekistan is – how will this impact on America’s relationship with the Karimov government? Now that the US no longer needs worry about keeping an airbase in Uzbekistan, and neither can it use it as a carrot to dangle in front of Karimov in return for good behaviour, will the Bush administration become a harsher critic of the Karimov regime? And, what will happen to the $22 million of aid that Uzbekistan was expecting to receive?
UPDATE (from Nathan, who is now on the left coast): Harry’s Place has a good post on the subject, and Smash has more as well.
UPDATE II (again from Nathan): The NYT story says that the (assumed?) reason for the eviction notice is the US position on the refugees in Kyrgyzstan.
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I haven’t been a huge fan of Bush foreign policy, but I have to admit that it’s been generally commendable with regards to this current crisis in Uzbekistan, IMO:
The Washington Post:
The United States was given the notice just hours after 439 Uzbek political refugees were flown out of neighboring Kyrgyzstan — over Uzbek objections — by the United Nations…
…”We all knew basically that if we really wanted to keep access to the base, the way to do it was to shut up about democracy and turn a blind eye to the refugees,” said the senior official, on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy. “We could have saved the base if we had wanted.”
Let us hope that finally the Bush administration will now recognise the true nature of the Karimov regime. It is symptomatic of the complete failure of Western policy in Central Asia that rather than withdraw with some dignity, the US has managed to hand the dictator Karimov the propaganda coup of kicking out the World’s greatest power.
This is not about the response to the Andizhan massacre. To the end the US was muted on human rights in Uzbekistan and still has not called for full elections including the opposition. This is about the Karimov regime’s decision to turn to Gazprom and the Russians, not the US, to develop Uzbekistan’s oil and gas fields. This deal involves Uzbekneftegas and was brokered between the President’s daughter, Gulnara Karimova, and Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek born Russian oligarch who bought 27% of Corus (British Steel).
The Karimov regime are determined to keep complete control of the economy so they can continue their massive looting for personal enrichment. They were concerned that Western companies could build centres of wealth not under their direct control. They have therefore decided to turn to Russian and Chinese state companies for investment. These companies operate the system of oligarch corruption that the Karimov regime understands.
This is the explanation for Central Asia’s “Diplomatic Revolution” as Uzbekistan turns decisively away from the USA towards Russia and China. There will now be massive pressure by Karimov on Tajikistan and Kirghizstan – both tiny countries dependent on Uzbekistan for energy supplies – to follow suit.
OK, let’s be honest. This quote by the “senior official”
“We all knew basically that if we really wanted to keep access to the base, the way to do it was to shut up about democracy and turn a blind eye to the refugees,”
is disingenuous. Like Bush’s post-invasion turnaround in his justification for invading Iraq after not finding WMD, this official is retroactively trying to vindicate a failed policy–and a very embarassing slap in the face from a small, struggling Central Asian nation–even after DOD’s blatant and desperate attempts (according to several mainstream news reports) to convince the Uzbek government to keep the base. Most likely, DOD was dead-set on keeping the base, was willing to turn blind eyes galore on human rights abuses in favor of realpolitik (which would be consistent with its past actions), but was contradicted by a more dovish State Department under Condi, which is trying to make US foreign policy conform somewhat to Bush’s grand rhetoric about democracy.
If the “senior official” was sincere, the US would have made a positive and proactive statement by withdrawing the base to make its point, rather than toadying up to the regime in the vain hope that it would ignore all of State’s rights-based criticisms and ultimately provocative efforts to help the refugees in Kyrgyzstan.
Don’t be so naive as to take these quotes at face value. Look at where the “senior official” stood and imagine the cleverist rhetorical trick he could use to put a heroic gloss on a truly embarassing outcome.
Also, kudos that (someone claiming to be) Craig Murray visits your site!
I believe that “senior offical” was from the State Dept, not DOD… at least that’s what they say in the NY Times.
Ok, I agree it’s naive to take administration quotes at face value, however given the very delicate geo-political position the USA is in, I think it did a fairly decent job – in this specific case.
We could have withdrawn from the base voluntarily and espoused our prinicples for doing so… I have been hoping we’d do this for some time. However, the fact that we got kicked out in response to our support of the Uzbek refugees doesn’t make us look too bad either, after all. The administration can say to the world “look at what we sacrificed for human rights! We realy wanted this base but human rights and democracy are more important!” Whether it’s genuine or not is another story, but it sounds good.
Like I mentioned before, I’m not a fan of Bush foreign policy, however given the huge blunders it’s made over the years this response to the Andijan crisis has been respectable by comparison, IMHO.
And let’s face it, there’s not much influence the US has over a government as intransigent as the Karimov regime.
Personally, I don’t think it’s that embarassing that they’ve asked us to leave. In fact, it’s what I had hoped would happen because it so clearly reveals the Uzbek government’s hand. It’s not as if those who pay attention couldn’t read the writing on the wall, but it seems to take an absurdly clear sign for policy makers to get their acts together.
I think I’ve been a fairly consistent advocate of doing what good can be done. And I’ve yet to be convinced that the 2001-2005 relationship was doing much harm. Severing the military relationship (I do imagine that either an Uzbek or a NATO decision will result in an end to training programs as well) cuts out the last avenue through which the West could hope to create any positive change. And, since this move definitely can be read as an insult to the United States and a sign that Uzbekistan is working against the stabilization of Afghanistan, a much heavier hand is fair game now.
And I clearly don’t think that the quoted official is just putting a happy gloss on the situation. Like I said, I don’t think this is that embarassing a situation, and I think the official is being genuine. Instead, I think that the quote is a positive indication that the DoD has finally and rightfully been subordinated to State.
Look at where the “senior official” stood and imagine the cleverist rhetorical trick he could use to put a heroic gloss on a truly embarassing outcome.
I don’t doubt that factions, especially in the DoD, wanted to shut up and keep the base. I also don’t doubt that factions, especially at State, wanted to criticize the refugee situation and the Karimov regime in general. The significance here is that State won– and ultimately the responsibility has to go back to the President. People who are interested in a foreign policy based on democracy promotion should admit that, grudgingly or not.
I don’t think that the outcome is all that embarassing. “Truly embarassing?” Being thrown out by the bozos of the Karimov government? Not at all. I’d wear it like a badge of honor, myself.
I still hold that the comment was post facto “glass half full” rhetoric.
Our foreign policy is really in trouble if you can say that “State won”. The truth is, it was a tie, and the Uzbeks broke the tie. There were two foreign policies going on simultaneously. The ideal outcome on the whole would have been for State to criticize, for the DOD to continue offering goodies for using the base, and hope that the Uzbeks don’t remove the base. In the event, by acting against DOD’s interets, the Uzbeks made it appear as if State won.
I guess having two contradictory policies is better than having a really bad one. But to give credit for this?
The upshot: 1) DOD must be livid with State right now; Rummy will be reckoning with Condi sometime soon.
2) Neocons don’t like to be personally insulted, much less by 3rd world dictators. IAK may have signed his own death warrant by pissing off the wrong guys.
Ha! Good riddance I say. I never thought that place was worth the grief to begin with. Oh, and State fighting to lead the charge for democracy and DoD resisting. Please, that doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Craig:
Put a cork in it.
Yes, the aforementioned quotation came from State Department, not DoD. Believe it or not, there are a number of people in State (and not just DRL) who genuinely have recognized the Karimov regime for what it is. And, in this rare case, we saw a confluence of external factors that tipped the scales in favor of this group…for once.
The US will be keen to emphasise recent disagreement over Andizhan/refugees, to try to retain some dignity. But the causes in fact are much deeper, and relate to the failure of a policy of constructive engagement with a regime that is more recalcitrant even than Lukashenko, and was never going to reform.
The US tried for too long to paper over the cracks and argue in international fora that Karimov was reforming and just needed time. I believe that, for a while, wishful thinking led the US actually to believe this.
The result was a position, particularly on defence and intelligence co-operation, that became untenable and appeared to expose a massive hypocrisy at the centre of the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy and freedom.
It is I think important to realise that for Karimov it was the threat of economic freedom, not just political freedom, which turned him away from the US. Uzbekistan is much closer to a North Korean insular model than the South East Asian model that the US seemed to mistake it for.
The policy of constructive engagement (or “critical engagement” to use Jack Straw’s phrase) was myopic, morally corrupting, ineffective, visibly hypocritical and unsustainable. Let us hope it is now buried.
I think Craig Murray is probably right in his 1st post that the Karimov regime is motivated by a desire to keep control of the economy for their personal gain. However the last statement in your 2nd post is most definitely wrong.
If your 1st statement is true then ‘constructive engagement’ would seem to be the only policy with any hope of convincing Karimov to impliment policies for the good of the majority of Uzbeks.
I would think a policy of condemnation from an ‘ivory tower’ would be ‘myopic, morally corrupting, ineffective, visibly hypocritical and unsustainable’.
I think Rumsfeld and the DOD saw the writing on the wall for a while now. I’m pretty sure that Rumsfeld knew that we’d lose K-2 at the time he visited Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan last week. In fact, I’d bet he hastily made arrangements for the trip right AFTER he realized K-2 would be closed. No one seemed panicked when Uzbekistan made the formal announcement.
In retrospect, maybe we didn’t do so bad in Uzbekistan. I mean, which policy is right when dealing with a dictator as erratic as Karimov? Engagment or isolation? In the end we’re doing both. But we can now genuinely say that we tried to engage the Karimov regime and got nowhere.
Now that we’re out of Uzbekistan, in many ways I’m glad that we were there.
getting an old thread, but I want to reply to Mark.
I doubt we disagree about where we want Uzbekistan to go – it needs a healthy dose of capitalism, with lots of Western investment, and, yes, lots of American influence.
Uzbekistan has the potential to move quickly from very poor to middle income country.
But that hasn’t been on the cards uncer Karimov who turned his back on capitalist reform about ten years ago. The private sector realised that – there was no major new US investment in Uzbekistan in 2001-5. It was only the US government that deluded itself that working with karimov could change him.
Whether or not it was “worth a try” is debatable, but beyond doubt it didn’t work. And some aspects of co-operation with Karimov were morally polluting.
I wasn’t in an ivory tower. I was in the thick of it.
I think we are in agreement in most areas. I guess I am intrepreting a diplomat being ‘in the thick of it’ as ‘constructive engagement’. But I have never been a diplomat so I could be wrong here. Thanks for the response.