How the U.S. lost its Kyrgyzstan air base

In this March 1, 2005 file photo, a U.S. military personnel member is seen at the airfield as a transport plane taxies at the U.S. air base in Manas international airport 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. Kyrgyzstan's government submitted a draft bill to parliament Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009 to revoke the country's hosting of a U.S. base that is an important component of the Afghanistan military campaign. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File)

The recent decision by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan to close the U.S. military base in the small Central Asian country should come as no surprise to Washington's new foreign policy team. Since its establishment in the fall of 2001, the U.S. air base at Manas has been founded upon the granting of narrow economic incentives to the host country - and not on the Kyrgyz Republic's commitment to the broader international campaign in Afghanistan.

What began as a relationship based on economics is about to end for financial reasons. Though the loss of Manas will deal a short-term blow to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, staying is not worth the new Kyrgyz asking price.

In 2001, the U.S. established the base, located just outside of the capital Bishkek, to support coalition operations in Afghanistan. American planners initially secured Kyrgyz cooperation by agreeing to pay the Manas Airport Authority, controlled by the then-president, Askar Akayev, and his inner circle of kleptocrats, international civil aviation rates for the daily take-offs and landings of military aircraft at the airport, an unusual fee structure for a standard operation. Most importantly, between 2001 and 2005 the United States paid hundreds of millions of dollars for base-related service and fuel contracts to companies that were controlled by Akayev's family.

None of these base-related revenues were accounted for by the Kyrgyz government or reported in national budgetary statistics, though they did line the pockets of the regime. A subsequent FBI investigation revealed that money from the contracts had ended up in offshore bank accounts controlled by the Akayevs. At a time when USAID was officially funding good governance and transparency projects in the Central Asian country, U.S. payments associated with Manas were sinking down a black hole of patronage, insider dealings and corruption

After the ouster of Akayev in the so-called Tulip Revolution of March 2005, the new Kyrgyz government argued that the U.S. base had benefited the Akayev family, not the country. The newly elected President Bakiyev demanded a one-hundred fold increase in rent, from $2 million a year to $200 million, and asked for back payments for money that were embezzled by the Akayev regime. After nearly a year of arduous negotiations, the two sides in July 2006 compromised on a new annual base rights package totaling $150 million. This included a new $18 million rental payment for Manas as well as various other U.S. assistance programs to Kyrgyzstan. These revenues once again went to regime insiders.

Though the United States refused to officially acknowledge that this money was tied to the base, Kyrgyz officials viewed the agreement as a quid pro quo and even complained that the financing appropriated for activities like USAID-sponsored democratization and the Peace Corps should not be counted as part of the basing rights package.

Soon after the agreement, a number of base-related incidents that unfavorably reflected on the U.S. presence emboldened Kyrgyz officials to make demands for additional payments. The most serious of these took place in December 2006, when a U.S. serviceman shot and killed a local truck driver outside of the main gate, asserting that he was an armed terrorist.

When it was revealed that the deceased fuel-truck driver, an ethnic Russian and long-time employee of a base contractor, was not even carrying a weapon, the Kyrgyz media portrayed the U.S. military as reckless and callous, while American officials refused to cede legal jurisdiction over the serviceman and then abruptly whisked him out of the country without punishment. As the popularity of the base waned in the aftermath of these diplomatic missteps, the U.S. was portrayed as a hypocrite and Kyrgyz officials demanded that the terms of the relationship be renegotiated.

Given the importance of the economic dimension to the Kyrgyz, it is hardly surprising that Bakiyev's cash-strapped government was finally swayed to break its agreement with the United States when the Russian Federation promised even greater benefits. At their summit meeting in Moscow, Bakiyev secured from President Dmitri Medvedev an economic package in excess of $2 billion, including an emergency $300 million loan, $180 million in debt write off and $1.7 billion worth of financing for Kyrgyzstan's hydroelectric sector, more than the prevailing unofficial quid pro quo of sundry assistance programs offered by Washington.

Though the United States has the resources to match and exceed the Russian package, it should not participate in a bidding war over Manas. Any significant increase in compensation granted to Bishkek will signal to other global U.S. base hosts that they, too, can unilaterally abrogate and renegotiate access arrangements and use the interest of geopolitical rivals such as Russia and China for short-term economic leverage. The long-term damage to American interests worldwide would be great.

Instead, U.S. officials in their last-minute discussions can offer to organize a multilateral conference for Kyrgyz debt restructuring and forgiveness, and encourage EU member states active in the Afghanistan campaign to expand their economic engagement with the Central Asian country. They should emphasize that trans-Atlantic commitments are credible, unlike those being offered by a cash-strapped Moscow that may not be in a position to deliver on its pledges (and which failed to do so for neighboring Tajikistan as part of their 2004 bilateral basing accord).

Moreover, without the presence of the Manas base, Bishkek itself will have far less leverage in its future dealings with Russia. On the other hand, alternative hosts such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan will become newly valued members of the international effort in Afghanistan and their bargaining position vis-à-vis Russia will be enhanced.

In Kyrgyzstan, the price of access for Manas has reached a level that is unacceptable, even for the world's only remaining superpower. But the Kyrgyz did not invent the rules of this bargaining game, they merely followed them to their logical conclusion.

Alexander Cooley is an associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the author of "Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas."

11 02 2009