KZBlog

The world news has covered this story pretty well. The President of Kyrgyzstan announced on a trip to Russia a few weeks ago that he would revoke the rights for the NATO airbase in Manas which has been serving coalition troops in Afghanistan. The US government responded with surprise as they had heard nothing before that announcement.The government of Kyrgyzstan quickly confirmed that it would close the base citing two reasons: first, the U.S. has consistently failed to pay rent in full and that a variety of incidents, including the shooting of a local truck driver, created ill will. Other observers have claimed that Russia resented a US/NATO presence in Russia views as its sphere of influence and offered Kyrgyzstan aid money in exchange for closing the base.

Registan has an interesting, and from the comments, controversial editorial by Jeffrey T. Renz, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Montana. Renz is primarily targeting Alexander Cooley, whose editorial on Eurasianet argues that the US itself is to blame for losing Manas.