Word: bakiyev
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...While U.S. flights into and out of the, uh, transit center were initially suspended following the violent ousting of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev on Wednesday, April 7, limited operations into Afghanistan have resumed, Pentagon officials said Thursday. Acting Prime Minister Roza Otunbayeva has said U.S. operations there can continue for now, although some of her fellow opposition leaders want the U.S. lease terminated or at least shortened. (See pictures of the Kyrgyzstan government's ouster...
...Wednesday decide to evict the U.S. military in the days to come, the current surge of U.S. troops into Afghanistan will be slowed, but it won't be stopped. Those who have taken power, many of them friendly to Moscow, didn't like how the U.S. dealt with Bakiyev during lease-renewal negotiations last spring, believing that the Obama Administration had legitimized an autocratic regime. Still, the country appreciated the increased rent - from $17 million to $63 million annually - as well as a U.S. pledge to spend a further $67 million improving the airport, which serves as Kyrgyzstan...
...former Soviet republic, and Moscow has been irritated by the U.S. presence in what it calls its "near abroad" - former Soviet territories - since the U.S. began operations at Manas in 2001. In Moscow in February 2009, perhaps spurred by the offer of a $2 billion loan from Russia, Bakiyev publicly complained that the U.S. wasn't paying enough for its use of the base. That same month, the Kyrgyz parliament voted to end the U.S. presence, though ultimately the lease was renewed with the hefty rent increase. (Read a brief history of Kyrgyzstan...
...mountain ranges. For centuries, it was part of the main Silk Road highway that connected China to the west; the ancient bazaar city of Osh to this day bears traces of its commercial past. In 751 A.D., near the modern day town of Talas - where it's reported anti-Bakiyev unrest first broke out on Apr. 6 - a vast army sent forth by the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad defeated an expeditionary force of the Chinese Tang Dynasty. Historians suggest that this decisive battle solidified Central Asia within the orbit of the Muslim cultural world rather than that of China...
...Bakiyev replaced Akayev with a stated agenda of reforming the country and ending corruption, but did little to act on those promises. His regime continued an earlier practice of playing foreign powers against each other - accepting lavish handouts from both Washington and Moscow to accommodate their military installations on its soil, while also tying up lucrative infrastructure projects with Chinese state companies. Yet, by some estimates, half of Kyrgyzstan's economy is tied to the black market; there are signs also of deepening links with organized crime and drug running from Afghanistan and Tajikistan. International monitors questioned the fairness...