When last year’s pro-democracy rallies forced US ally Kurmanbek Bakiyev out of office, most saw Kyrgyzstan moving toward Russia. It seems this may not be the case now, as President Rosa Otunbayeva has reportedly called for NATO’s aid in security in the south.
Kyrgyz officials cited the ethnic riots in southern Kyrgyzstan as a key reason they need NATO help for their military. Likewise, officials said the ethnically Uzbek regions were seeing a spread of “radical Islam.” NATO envoy James Appathurai reportedly pledged support.
Exactly how deeply this will go remains to be seen, but the pledge comes just one week after the release of a high profile human rights report on Kyrgyzstan. The report detailed Kyrgyz military support for the ethnic cleansing in the southern riots.
NATO’s willingness to intervene in another messy situation in Kyrgyzstan is surprising, though the US clearly has had designs on the region for quite some time. The support for adding to the capabilities of the Kyrgyz military will likely add to concerns that NATO is making the human rights situation in Central Asia much worse.
Uh, huh. Does Kyrgyzstan have oil? If so, they should consider NATO as in already. But before they do, they should take a look at how well things are going in Libya.
Does not have oil, but it is the best listening post deep into Russia/China space. It was rather clear before which way the revolution went. The moment it became clear when a new constitution was drawn by the people who organized the coup, and had it ratified in a referendum. Instead of setting up elections to elect parliament, and then work on consitution, this bunch decided first to fix the constitution to prevent any party to have a majority in parliament. They worked assiduously to have hundreds of small parties, and only party deals can form majority. The result? Last elections for parliament under this rule — when everything was said and done — resulted in only 10% of population electing their rulers. The math is simple: many parties were too small to make the treashold into Parliament, and the bunch of smaller ones togeter formed a coalition against the larger one. Done.