By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
What the closure of Manas’ Transit Center means for Central Asia’s future.
Last Tuesday, a little noticed but major event signaled the end of an era in Central Asia. The United States closed its only Central Asian airbase in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, formally handing back control to the government of Kyrgyzstan, which has been increasingly aligning itself with Russia.
The Transit Center at Manas was especially important for U.S. and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) efforts in Afghanistan, as it was the first and last stop for soldiers entering Central Asia en route to fight in Afghanistan. Additionally, it was home to a logistics and refueling operation run by the United States Air Force for the war in Afghanistan. The base at Manas was set up in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks with Russia’s consent and has transported 5.3 million military servicemen from 26 countries in and out the Afghanistan conflict theatre. It became especially important as a transportation hub after 2005, when the United States was evicted from its other base in the region, in Uzbekistan.
The closure of the Transit Center is seen as beneficial in Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz parliament voted a year ago to give the United States until July 11 of this year to vacate the base, choosing this option over the $60 million a year rent that the U.S. paid Kyrgyzstan for the base. The resurgence of Russian influence in the region was the key factor in the departure of the U.S. from Manas. Upon being elected in 2011, Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev assured Russia, increasingly wary of American influence in its backyard, that he would shut the base. Indeed, the Russian media seems a lot more interested in the base’s closing than the Kyrgyz media, since Russia views the departure of American forces as geopolitically significant to its goals of reestablishing itself as the sole dominant power in Central Asia.
Read the full story at The Diplomat