TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - Kyrgyz President
Almazbek Atambaev was due to head for Moscow on
Thursday for his first official bilateral visit to
Russia after his inauguration on December 1 last
year.
Setting the tone for the visit,
Atambaev, while meeting with students at Osh State
University in southern Kyrgyzstan, said he was
going to raise with his Russian counterparts the
issue of Russian arrears in payments to Kyrgyzstan
for the use of various military facilities located
across the country.
According to Kyrgyz
observers, Russia has at least four military
facilities in Kyrgyzstan, including an airbase in
Kant (on the
outskirts of the capital
Bishkek) which is under the Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-dominated
regional security alliance that includes
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
Belarus and Armenia.
The other Russian
military facilities include a torpedo testing site
at Issik Kul Lake, a military "communication
center" at Kara-Balta and a "radio-seismic
laboratory" at Mailii-Suu.
While the base
at Kant is exempt from rental payment since it is
under Kyrgyzstan's participation in the CSTO, the
other three facilities are not.
According
to Atambaev, for the past four years, Russia has
been falling behind in payments and the total debt
to Kyrgyzstan stands at US$15 million.
Previously, the Kyrgyz and Russian
governments agreed that Russia would pay in kind
for the use of the facilities in the form of
training Kyrgyz military officers in Russian
military institutions and by providing military
equipment and arms to the Kyrgyz army.
However, according to Kyrgyz observers,
for the past three years, Russia has not kept its
part of the deal while the last shipment of
military equipment provided to Kyrgyzstan as part
of this deal in 2007 was in the form of decrepit
Soviet-made military trucks manufactured in 1984.
The fact that Russia has not been paying
its dues was also confirmed by the Kyrgyz Ministry
of Defense, whose spokesperson Aizada Igibaeva
said recently that since 2008 Russia had not paid
the rent for its use of the three facilities and
as such the total Russian debt to Kyrgyzstan
exceeded $15 million.
Moreover, some
prominent Kyrgyz politicians, including General
Ismail Isakov, former defense minister and a
member of parliament from the ruling Social
Democratic Party, are also not happy with the
Russian airbase at Kant and have demanded that
Atambaev renegotiate the terms of the lease.
According to Isakov, the existing terms of
use of the Kant airbase have been a heavy economic
burden to Kyrgyzstan's budget since the base is
not only offered rent free but also the Kyrgyz
government has to foot the bill for telephony and
other communal services which on an annual basis
amounts to 15-16 million Kyrgyz so'm (roughly
$400).
Apparently, this amount is a big
deal for many Kyrgyz MPs at a time when they have
been unable to pass the national budget for 2012
for the past two months in view of the various
austerity measures the government has proposed.
Isakov went further, saying it was
unacceptable that Kyrgyzstan paid the daily
expenses of the Russian military base and as such
it was the only case in recent world history when
a host nation not only provided a military
facility free to a foreign power but also paid for
the daily expenses. Isakov opined that it was high
time that Kyrgyzstan increased the rental payments
for the other three facilities.
According
to various Kyrgyz officials familiar with this
issue, the government has repeatedly tried to
settle this issue with its Russian counterparts,
however, so far negotiations have been moving too
slowly.
Russia has tried to convince
former Kyrgyz leaders that its bases would
"guarantee Kyrgyzstan's sovereignty and
territorial integrity" against possible aggression
from its bigger neighbors, like Uzbekistan and
Kazakhstan, and also against incursions of the
Taliban and other militant groups from Afghanistan
and Tajikistan.
However, as recent
developments have shown, Kyrgyzstan's two larger
neighbors, especially Uzbekistan, do not even
slightly seem to harbor any intention to occupy or
invade Kyrgyzstan under any pretext.
The
fact that Uzbekistan did not even consider sending
troops to Osh and Jalalabad provinces of
Kyrgyzstan when violent pogroms against ethnic
Uzbeks broke in June 2010 could be a good
validation of this argument.
Atambaev is
not the first Kyrgyz leader to try to set the
record straight with the Kremlin over the rented
facilities in Kyrgyzstan. In 2008, former
president Kurmanbek Bakiev proposed to unite all
Russian military facilities under one command and
also to substantially increase rental payments.
However, he did not remain in office long
enough to see through his plans and had to flee to
Belarus after the bloody revolution in April 2010
that toppled him.
Apart from Russian
military facilities, Kyrgyzstan also hosts a US
military airbase at Manas International Airport in
Bishkek that was opened in 2001.
As such,
Kyrgyzstan is the only country in the world that
hosts both Russian and US military bases -
something that would have been unimaginable during
the Cold War in any part of the world.
Though unlike Russia, the US government
has a perfect record of making prompt payments for
the lease of Manas - paying $150 million every
year in hard cash. Besides that, the Pentagon has
also awarded Kyrgyz-Russian Fuel Company a
lucrative contract to supply 50% of the aviation
fuel to US military at the Manas that brings in
around $4.5 million every month.
It is
also believed that in the past US government paid
millions of dollars to former Kyrgyz presidents
Askar Akaev and Kurmanbek Bakiev just to buy their
goodwill and make them personally interested in
keeping Manas airbase in Bishkek.
Atambaev
has been trying to get his message across to the
Kremlin that he wants Russia to honor its part of
the deal and pay its dues, he has also frequently
stated that he is not going to renew the lease
agreement with the US over the rent of the Manas
airbase, citing various reasons.
One
official reason is a possible military
confrontation between the US and Iran.
Previously, Iranian leaders have said that
in the event war broke out, Iran would launch an
all-out attack on all US military bases in the
region, including Manas.
However,
speculation is galore on the true motives behind
Atambaev's frequent and usually unprovoked public
statements that he is bent on closing Manas - he
might be trying to substantially increase the
rental and also make the US pay "certain
royalties" to him, just like the US did to former
presidents.
Another reason might be that
Atambaev is trying to use US airbase as a
bargaining chip in his dealings with Russia to
extract more military assistance and economic
benefits from the Kremlin in the form of the
continued supply of Russian petroleum products to
Kyrgyzstan at duty-free rates and the delivery of
the long-promised Eurasian Union Stabilization
Fund's soft loan to the amount of $106 million.
Currently, there seems to be a broad-based
consensus in Kyrgyzstan that Atambaev has to be
firm and demand that Russia pay its dues.
Recent similar disputes between Russia and
other Commonwealth of Independent States countries
like Azerbaijan and Tajikistan seem to favor
Atambaev's position to demand increased payments
and to change the terms and conditions of the
lease agreements of the military facilities rented
by Russia in Kyrgyzstan.
But the "million
dollar question" is whether Atambaev will be able
to remain as assertive as he was when he met Osh
State University students a week ago when he sits
with Russian counterparts.
Fozil
Mashrab is a pseudonym used by an independent
analyst based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
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