So now it’s official: Kyrgyzstan ain’t bluffing. On Tuesday, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev caught the Pentagon off guard, saying his country planned to close Manas Air Base, a major logistics hub for supporting U.S. operations in Afghanistan.
A defense official tells the Wall Street Journal: “Frankly, we thought it was a negotiating tactic, and we were ready to call their bluff … But it’s becoming clearer that, no kidding, they want us out.”
Fingers are now pointing at Moscow. The New York Times reports that the State Department and the Pentagon have concluded that Kyrgyzstan was doing the Kremlin’s bidding by kicking out the Americans.
Yet there is this from The Nation…..
Russia granted transit rights to non-lethal U.S. military supplies headed to Afghanistan but only after apparently pressuring a former Soviet state to close an air base leased to the Americans. The signal from Moscow: Russia is willing to help on Afghanistan, but only on the Kremlin’s terms.
The bottom line seems to be that Russia is not trying to force the US out of Afghanistan at the moment. But they want the supply lines to depend entirely on their good pleasure.
By the way, non-lethal supplies is all the US really needs to ship in by truck. Ammunition and the like can easily be flown in by air as those are only a tiny part of the total supply needs. But fuel, concrete, and other such supplies really need to be shipped in by truck. It is just too expensive to fly those things in and in any case the US does not have enough cargo planes to support a large fighting force in the field.