The latest U.S. – Kyrgyz dance around basing rights at Manas Air Base is bringing in new experts all the time. Unfortunately, too many of them don’t seem to know what they are talking about. Take Columbia’s Professor Alexander Cooley, who writes in both the International Herald Tribune (“How the U.S.Lost Its Kyrgyzstan Air Base,” February 10, 2009) and Eurasianet (“The Five Lessons of The Great American Air Base Debate,” February 12, 2009). Cooley has the diagnosis: the Russians outbid the Americans. In his Eurasianet piece, he argues that the U.S. lost the base because the U.S. refused to pay rent, that, after the renewal of the basing agreement in 2006, the Krygyz resented the fact that the U.S. counted foreign and humanitarian aid against the sums agreed to be paid, the base squandered public relations opportunities by, among other things, keeping its people on base, and that the shooting of an ethnic Russian truck driver created an irreparable rift.
These are old canards repeated by some Kyrgyz officials. Sendarak barat. One wonders why Cooley didn’t conduct some interviews in Fatboys Café, where he might have discovered these facts:
Fact No. 1. Manas is a coalition base. True, the Americans put up the funds and have the larger presence. But it is and remains a coalition base to support the NATO effort in Afghanistan.
Fact No. 2. The United States pays roughly $53 M annually in rent, landing fees, and parking fees. When the basing rights were renegotiated in 2006, everyone, whether on the American side or on the Krygyz side, understood that the “rent” would be dispensed as aid.
Fact No. 3. The base-related philanthropic efforts are significant. Cooley looked into the Village Partnership. What he failed to look into were: two schools remodeled; five orphanages remodeled and supported; two schools for the disabled built or remodeled and supported; the establishment of the Children’s Cardiac Center that provided training and education to Kyrgyz surgeons and free heart surgeries to 137 children who would have died without them; other surgeries to those who could not pay; financial support to widows and Great Patriotic War veterans; twenty homes built for the poor; food, clothing, and coal distributions to the needy from Karakol to Jalalabat.
Fact No. 4. Fueling arrangements are handled by a U.S. contractor. Following the Tulip Revolution, and the accusations of corruption, the contractor opened its books to both U.S. and Kyrgyz inspectors. They found no irregularities.
Fact No. 5. The tragic shooting death of the Kyrgyz-Russian truck driver by a U.S. airman was thoroughly investigated by both U.S. and Krygyz authorities. The U.S. held the airman in the Kyrgyz Republic beyond his normal departure date until the investigation was completed and the Kyrgyz investigators were satisfied. (Kyrgyz politicians were not.) The investigation showed that the driver had come after the U.S. air policeman with a knife. A threat with a knife within seven meters is a deadly threat.
Fact No. 6. The payroll from the Manas base is the second largest in the Kyrgyz Republic. While the contractors may be American, the sub-contractors are Kyrygz citizens. How, one wonders, will the Kyrgyz government replace the lost income?
In the end, we have to conclude that the U.S. was not “out-bid.” The Americans and other NATO nations understand that payments may be made with accountability or without accountability. The Russians understand this, too, but are willing to pay without accountability if it means that they may remove the embarrassment of a NATO base, however minimal it may be, from its back yard. That is not to say that there will be no form of accountability. Russian “debt forgiveness” included a quid pro quo of a large percentage of a joint stock company. Its aid will go to build a hydroelectric dam that, should the Kyrgyz government default on the Russian loan, will pass to Russian ownership. And then there is always that peanut butter and polonium sandwich.
Jeffrey T. Renz
Clinical Professor of Law
The University of Montana
Missoula, Montana 59812
Jeff.renz@umontana.edu
{ 15 comments }
I don’t understand. Maybe I am missing something, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence in this post that the US was not, in fact, “out bid”.
Even more perplexing is that I’ve seen Cooley referred to as an expert on American military bases. Hell, he even wrote a book on it. Shouldn’t an expert know that Manas is a coalition base?
Fact 4 sounds like a statement from a Pentagon spokesperson (Bush era). Do you really expect the readers of this blog to have forgotten what everyone knows about the jet fuel contracts? It is not disputed that the Akayev family profited hugely from jet fuel supply at Manas.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/14/news/fuel.php
Furthermore, I agree with the first post, I don’t really understand what you are talking about generally.
Cooley’s article is pretty good. Perhaps Jeff should get out of Fatboys occasionally. Of course its about money (and a bit of geopolitics). But mostly about money. What else would it be about? Community relations? Local employment? Give me a break…
Incidentally, I haven’t seen anything new on the fuel contract recently. Probably something the fatboys research team might want to look at.
Incidentally, the base is coalition in name only – are there even any non-US troops there? I don’t think so. Anyway, the us has always managed the government relationship, not NATO.
I think Alexander Cooley has a much better understanding of the issues surrounding Manas than you do, Mr. Renz. Most of your facts, while technically correct, don’t matter. As Mr. Cooley said in his excellent piece for Eurasianet, the Americans did a poor job of presenting their base more broadly to the Kyrgyz community (see his fifth lesson). Even if the Americans were technically ‘correct’ in these situations, their failure to engage the local population and media ensured that the initial anti-American reaction to these incidents would ultimately endure in public opinion.
I’m confused… there’s a really important issue that’s being overlooked because of this “Manas business.” Fatboy’s was taken over in the spring of 07 and was renamed. Has it been renamed Fatboys again??
Cooley makes very good points about American failures in the battle for public opinion in Kyrgyzstan. Too often, there was silence from American authorities. They left a void that was then filled by outrageous rumors that painted Americans in a bad light.
However, Cooley’s assertion that the American government could have gotten cooperation from the Kyrgyz government without basing the agreement on economic terms is absolutely ludicrous. If the Americans had said the Kyrgyz shouldn’t think about financial compensation, but should instead view allowing an American base on their soil as an example of the “Kyrgyz Republic’s commitment to the broader international campaign in Afghanistan”, they would have been quickly laughed out of the country.
Cooley’s belief that giving more of the money directly to the Kyrgyz government would have reduced corruption and patronage in Kyrgyzstan is draw-droppingly naive.
In the IHT piece, Cooley accuses the US of funnelling money to “regime insiders” via official American aid programs (presumably through USAID), but doesn’t offer any evidence to back up this serious accusation of corruption by American aid officials. Also, if the US has been paying off Bakiev’s regime (by favoring payments that don’t go directly to the Kyrgyz government), how can they have been outbid by the Russians giving the money directly to the government? By Cooley’s calculations, this money will be more “transparent” and thus “regime insiders” won’t be able to use it for patronage purposes. In what alternate reality does Cooley live in that he thinks the Kyrgyz government operates in a transparent and accountable way? Of course Bakiev would prefer that foreign money be sent directly to the government with no strings attached as to how it’s spent. He is in need of funds to keep his patronage network functioning. The Russians, bless their siloviki hearts, understand that. The Americans, rather annoyingly, want to direct money toward development programs (that Bakiev can’t control).
The US has been outbid and outmaneuvered by the Russians, but it’s difficult to understand what Russian foreign policy is in Central Asia (other than, “reassert Russian pride and glory”). They want to prevent Uzbekistan from selling natural gas directly to the West, but have entered into agreements to fund hydroelectric projects in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan that the Uzbeks view as a threat to their water supply. Perhaps, the Uzbeks will cozy up to the US now, to gain more leverage with the Russians.
A lot of facts to which I have not heard and if you honestly, I still in shock.
This author of this post is inexplicably irate, apparently without the benefit of actual understanding of the situation.
On point of fact, the presence of the Manas air base contributes $64 million, and not $54 million as suggested above.
Also, General Petraeus said only a few weeks ago that the investigation into Alexander Ivanov’s death has been reopened, so the findings of the original probe are clearly not as clear-cut as you suggest.
Manas is a coalition base, but this seems a pretty trivial distinction as only very few of the more than 1,000 full-time personnel at the base are not Air Force troops.
Where to even begin with the claim that there were no irregularities in the payments for services at Manas? One pointer here, though, would be that hanging around in (now closed) expat bars is probably not the best place to get reliable information on this kind of thing.
So, pretty much all we have is a totally subjective judgment_ since we cannot be privy to all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans_ about whether the U.S. was outbid or otherwise. Even if you don’t believe that to be the case, it is obvious from repeated remarks by Kyrgyz government officials that this was all about the money.
In the totally narrow-minded, short-term perspective of the current Kyrgyz regime, $450 million in the state coffers right now beats $150 million distributed into the economy annually for the indefinite future. In that respect, Moscow offered a better deal, which assured Bakiyev a war chest for his incipient presidential campaign.
You might do interviews at Fatboy’s, or you might try getting outside expat watering holes and, you know, talking to actual Kyrgyz people.
Of course the US was outbid. You think maybe that hydroelectric dam might come in handy given the power situation in Kyrgyzstan?
In the long term, choosing Russia as a strategic partner rather than the US is entirely logical too. The US is going home sometime in the next decade just as soon as we get worn out in Afghanistan and either declare victory or just give up. Russia and China aren’t going anywhere.
I am very sad to hear that Fatboy’s was taken over, and hope it retains some of its character. I did not enjoy the ridiculous prices of the English-language magazines, but the availability of regular old sandwiches in Central Asia is surprisingly limited. I do enjoy Central Asian food, even that soggy-bread thing in Dushanbe, but you need comfort food every once in a while.
I am not clear about why having been to Fatboy’s while it was still Fatboy’s gives me a deeper understanding of why Manas is coming to another crisis point.
On this dam/hydropower plant thing, it requires some clarification for anyone that thinks it might solve Kyrgyzstan’s problems in the immediate future. The agreement with Russia talks about a four-period period in which to raise the credit to build Kambaratinsk hydroelectric plant. Construction itself, granted it ever starts, could only probably ever expect to begin a few year later, while the completion date is anybody guess. Once a dam is supposedly completed, it will take more than a decade _ possibly up to 15 years _ for the reservoir to fill up; during which time untold damage will probably be unleashed on downstream nations like Uzbekistan, which will in turn retaliate by cutting off gas supplies.
Overall, even in the best case scenario, this project could only start producing energy in, on the generous side, about 20 years time, which hardly meets Kyrgyzstan’s urgent demands. And the costs will almost certainly have spiraled out beyond the risible $1.7 billion figure by that stage anyway.
This has _DISASTER_ written all over it, and Bakiyev, being the complete moron that he is, has fallen for it hook, line and sinker.
WOW, “conduct some interviews in Fatboys Café,” how’s that for in depth research on a problem in Kyrgyzstan!
Anyone that would even suggest such an approach, unless completely tongue-in-cheek, is not worth listening to.
Dosterum, collegilarum, edjelarum jana bashkelarum,
The comments seem to run along three themes: that the U.S. was outbid; that there was corruption with respect to fuel contracts; and that only an idiot would do research in Fatboy’s or its successor. Let’s take them in reverse order. On any given morning in Fatboy’s you would have encountered the Red Star Industries representative (probably not a bad source considering Red Star handled the fuel contract); the coordinator of philanthropic efforts at the base and the man responsible for those 137 heart surgeries (again, not a bad source if you are thinking of criticizing public relations in general and philanthropic efforts in particular); several employers at the base; and those responsible for oversight of various U.S. funded contracts. The commentator on corruption in the fuel contracts is largely correct, if you consider only the first two years. After the first two years Aalam and Manas were out of the picture and Red Star was in. After the Tulip Revolution the Kyrgyz government felt that the base ought to pay again for the fuel because their former President’s family walked off with much of the money. Not a bad approach but not one likely to succeed. When I buy groceries at the local store, they don’t usually ask me to pay for them again if the clerk raids the cash register after I leave. After Red Star took over, as I said, their books were both transparent and clean. Finally, I would agree that the U.S. was outbid. But outbid how? I would suggest that the U.S. refused to participate in financial arrangements that would lead to diversions of funds from their intended purpose. The Russians, on the other hand, had no such reservations. That is certainly one way that one may be outbid in Central Asia.
I appreciate the debate. It’s a key reason why I like Registan.net. Ladna,
Jeff
I’m with the first comment. I don’t follow how the facts support the thesis.
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