Yankees, go home! Kyrgyzstan liquidates US air base
On Monday, the elected president of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, said that the US airbase at Manas airport would be closed. Atambayev said that he considers the location of any military facilities on the territory of Bishkek International Airport to be absolutely unacceptable, saying literally the following: “Bishkek Airport is civilian, and it should be engaged in civilian traffic. I have bad associations when I land on the airfield where military aircraft are located. ” Atambayev motivates the closure of the airbase primarily by considerations to ensure the security of his state and his unwillingness to make Kyrgyzstan an object of possible attack from the enemies of the United States. Atambayev did not rule out that in the event that the next American operation in the territory of Eurasia began, for example against Iran, his country could be the object of a strike from a state that had been subjected to American aggression. The statement about the imminent closure of the American military base was one of Atambayev’s first statements after winning the presidential election held in Kyrgyzstan on Sunday, in which Atambayev gained more than 60% of votes, overcoming the competition of more than a dozen more or less serious opponents.
Over the past 5 years, the impending liquidation of the airbase is already the second voluntary or unwitting, but very major success of Moscow’s foreign policy in Central Asia in terms of weakening US influence in the region. In 2006, the Americans had already left their air base in Uzbekistan.
Despite Atambayev’s assurances that the elimination of the airbase is not related to the fact that Kyrgyzstan is under any pressure from Russia, its closure is a significant event in stories Kyrgyzstan and largely determines the further development of the country.
Talk about the possible closure of the air base has been going on for quite some time. In 2009, the former president of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, had already promised to close it, but he backtracked after the Americans agreed to raise the rent for being in Manas three times. This agreement backfired Bakiyev with violent popular unrest in Kyrgyzstan, as a result of which Bakiyev had to leave the presidency, since one of the accusations against him and his family was the accusation of profit from making illegal deals with jet fuel around the airbase.
Recall that last month V.Putin and A.Atambayev held a conversation, during which Atambayev said that Kyrgyzstan was interested in joining the Customs Union, after which Kyrgyzstan was officially announced this desire. This fact once again proves that the construction of the Eurasian Union is going very fast, because there have been no serious conversations about the possible entry into its structures of any other countries besides Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, until recently.
Gathering a single Eurasian space is, of course, a very difficult process, which has encountered and will face small obstacles and some resistance from representatives of regional and local elites who have their own selfish interests, who managed to cash in on pulling away the remnants of the Empire that collapsed in 1991 and did not want to part with their contented and prosperous position. That is why Atambayev pays special attention to the fact that Kyrgyzstan will “consider in detail each item” of the agreement on joining the Customs Union.
One of these points will be a point related to the smuggling of Chinese goods from the territory of Kyrgyzstan, which is one of the main sources of income not only for local oligarchs, but also for the state itself. Kyrgyz traders addicted to Chinese smuggling are, of course, very frightened by their country's entry into the customs union. They do not understand what awaits their business in the future. These people can certainly be understood. During the years of its independence, Kyrgyzstan completely lost its own light industry in the normal sense of the word, firmly hooked on the Chinese sewing needle. However, the situation is far from a dead end. Getting out of it is banal: Kyrgyzstan is quite able to play the role of a sewing workshop for the entire unified space now being created. This allows both its geographical position (the possibility of using local cotton raw materials), and the country's availability of labor resources, as well as the possibility of using the remnants of the Soviet light industry located in Kyrgyzstan. Even now, things made in small-scale productions of Kyrgyzstan compare favorably with their Chinese counterparts not only in quality but also in price. In addition, Kyrgyzstan is fully capable of claiming the title of a tourist Mecca for citizens of the future Union, - the nature of Kyrgyzstan is unique. What is worth one Issyk-Kul! The economy of this small country could well exist at the expense of these two industries. Where would all the contradictions and tensions that are now in the region go? It is far from a secret that the root of most conflicts does not even lie in interethnic and interfaith contradictions, but in elementary poverty of the population, unemployment, forcing people to survive, using, among other things, illegal ways of earning, namely the smuggling of not only Chinese rags, but drug and weapons.
Integration of Kyrgyzstan into a single economic space is able to offer a real solution to most of the problems that Kyrgyz have to deal with over the past 20 years. And the refusal of the authorities of this country to cooperate with the overseas military, which is, in fact, the surrender of a small but very significant piece of its territory to a country that is only ready to take, not giving in return anything but miserable green pieces of paper, which are far from Kyrgyz residents are much more beneficial to Kyrgyzstan than harm, resulting in the loss of a few million dollars, which very soon will return to the Kyrgyz as a result of their involvement in the integration processes on the territory Eurasia.
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