Coup in Kyrgyzstan, Drugs from Afghanistan, and the US
en.fondsk.ruÐ?rbis Terrarum
19.04.2010
Anatoly ALIFEROV
While the Kyrgyz interim government was searching for the bank
accounts of ousted President K. Bakiev, and Belorussian President A.
Lukashenko invited him to settle down in Belarus, Moscow bloggers
published a sensational finding: they unearthed evidence that the coup
in Kyrgyzstan was backed by the US and that the whole intrigue
revolves around the transit of drugs from Afghanistan.
On April 18, Oriental Review, an English-language blog based in
Russia, published a text titled «Kyrgyzstan Destined To Become Another
Narco-State?». It points to the facts that drug crops in Afghanistan
surged since the dispatch of the US and NATO forces to the country and
that the neighboring Kyrgyzstan became the key transit hub on the
route – known as the Great Heroine Way – via which drugs from
Afghanistan are delivered to Europe and Asia.
The author of the text wrote: `Most likely the illicit profits
proceeding from narco-trafficking were the main sources of spectacular
enrichment of Bakiev’s clan during his presidency in 2005-2010. There
were numerous evidences that the very arrival of Kurmanbek Bakiev to
power in March 2005 as a result of `Tulip revolution’ was financed and
supported by prosperous international narco-mafia’. The blogger
maintains that in 2010, just as in 2005, `the geostrategic interests
of the US and the international narco-mafia happily merged again… It
was only logical for the US establishment to use the services of
narco-barons to overthrow Bakiev, who demanded from the US more and
more pay-offs for his loyalty¦’. A similar view was expressed by
writer and commentator Alexander Prokhanov in the April 16 broadcast
of the Ekho Moskvy radio station: `The revolution in Kyrgyzstan was…
a revolution organized by the drug business. It replaced Akaev’s
regime with Bakiev’s one, and now Bakiev’s regime ` with the regime of
the notorious Roza. Kyrgyzstan remains the key route of
drug-trafficking to Russia’.
Drug barons are extremely influential in Kyrgyzstan. There are
estimates suggesting that the areas used to cultivate poppy in the
republic are comparable in size to those in Afghanistan. This is just
one of the pertinent circumstances. Another is that Kyrgyzstan hosts
the Gansi Air Base operated by the US Air Force at the Manas airport
in Bishkek. The Base is an important transit point for the supply of
US forces in Afghanistan. The third pertinent circumstance is that
Kyrgyz human rights watch groups have stated a number of times that
the base also serves as a transit hub in a global drug trafficking
network. When one of such statements was made in September, 2009,
China’s People’s Daily cautiously expressed agreement with the view
held by Kyrgyz human rights activists ` it quoted experts as saying
that the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan could be used by the foreign
military to transit drugs from Afghanistan.
The Oriental Review blogger substantiated his claim concerning the
common interests of the US and the international drug mafia in the
case of the coup in Kyrgyzstan by pointing to the fact that remained
unnoticed so far but can actually be regarded as material evidence. On
April 7, Great Britain’s The Daily Telegraph featured a set pictures
taken at the time of the recent bloody riots in Bishkek. One of them
shows an insurgent firing a Kalashnikov assault rifle near a
government building. A striking detail that can be discerned in the
picture is `the HWS (holographic weapon sight) attached to the AK gun
in the hands of an opposition fighter’ which is `the product of the US
L-3 Communications EOTech Corporation, 500 series, retail price 600
USD each one (four average monthly salaries in Kyrgyzstan)’.
A Kyrgyz opposition supporter fires an automatic weapon near the main
government building during a protest against the government in
Bishkek. Picture: AFP/GETTY
Based at the University of Michigan, EOTech has been a supplier of
holographic weapon sights since 1996. According to the US
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), exporting the weapon
requires licenses from the US Department of State and from the US
Department of Commerce. Upon being tested by the army, a number of
such sights were supplied to the forces in Afghanistan and a few more
` to the US police. The device has never officially exported to
Kyrgyzstan or Russia. Therefore, a machine gun with the US-made sight
could not be seized by an insurgent from the Kyrgyz special forces
during the riots. Thus, The Daily Telegraph picture provides evidence
that the coup in Kyrgyzstan was materially supported using a US
military base sited in Afghanistan or in Kyrgyzstan. Naturally, this
had to be a violation of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations
and of the US arms export regulations. Well, obviously the game was
worth it. Afghanistan’s poppy output rose by a factor of 40 (!) – from
185 to 8,200 tons a year – over the first six years of the US
occupation. It is a safe bet that major developments are brewing at
the Afghan-Kyrgyz direction.