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Kyrgyzstan: Another Colour
Revolution Bites the Dust
So what’s the real story behind the coup in
Kyrgyzstan ?
by Eric Walberg
Global
Research, April 13, 2010
The pretense that a president of a modest country like Kyrgyzstan
can play in big league politics is shed with the ouster of the tulip
revolutionary
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president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, after last week’s
riots in the capital Bishkek that left 81 dead and government buildings
and Bakiyev’s various houses trashed.
Bakiyev tried to have the best of both big power worlds, last year
brashly threatening to close the US airbase, vital to the war in
Afghanistan, after signing a cushy aid deal with Russia, and then
reversed himself when the US agreed to more than triple the rent
to $60 million a year and kick in another $100m in aid. As a result
he lost the trust of both, and found himself bereft when the going
got tough last week, as riots exactly like those that swept him
to power erupted.
It was the US that was there in 2005 to help him usher in a new
era of democracy and freedom, the “Tulip Revolution”,
but this time, it was Russia who was there to help the interim government
coalition headed by opposition leader and former foreign minister
Roza Otunbayeva pick up the pieces. As Otunbayeva looks to Kyrgyzstan’s
traditional support for help extricating itself from a potential
failed-state situation, cowed and frightened US strategists are
already advocating trying to convince the Russians that the US has
no long-term plans for the region, and that they can work together.
Recognising the obvious, writes Eric McGlinchey in the New York
Times, “ Kyrgyzstan is in Russia’s backyard, and the
fact that we depend on our airbase there for our Afghan war doesn’t
change that. Presenting a united front with Russia, however, would
help Washington keep its air base and avoid another bidding war."
This coup follows the same logic as the more dignified rejection
of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in February, and has given a
new lease on life to Georgian opposition politicians, who vow they
will follow the Kyrgyz example if their rose revolutionary president
continues to persecute them and spout his anti-Russian venom. Indeed,
the whole US strategy in ex-Sovietistan seems to be unraveling,
with Uzbekistan still out in the cold for its extreme human rights
abuses, and the recent inauguration in February of Turkmenistan’s
new gas pipeline to China. READ
FULL STORY
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Under the Disguise
of Counterterrorism: Obama Expands U.S. Military Ops in Africa
Global
Research, April 11, 2010
UPI - 2010-04-06
NAIROBI. Amid a surge in big oil strikes in Africa and the
threat of growing al-Qaida penetration in the north and east,
President Barack Obama is expanding U.S. military involvement
across the continent.
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| This has given weight to the U.S. Africa
Command inaugurated Oct. 1, 2008, which is viewed with growing
suspicion by many in Africa who consider its primary mission
is to secure oil supplies that America considers vital as
it cuts its reliance on the Middle East.
As of 2008, Africa reportedly surpassed the Middle East as
the main oil supplier to the United States. By 2020, Washington
expects one-quarter of its oil imports will be from Africa.
"When President Obama took office in January 2009, it
was widely expected that he would dramatically change, or
even reverse, the militarized and unilateral society policy
that had been pursued by the George W. Bush administration
toward Africa and other parts of the world," Africom
critic Daniel Volman noted in an April 2 report for Inter
Press Service.
"After one year in office, however, it is clear that
the Obama administration is following essentially the same
policy that has guided the U.S. military toward Africa for
more than a decade.
"Indeed, the Obama administration is seeking to expand
U.S. military activities on the continent even further,"
wrote Volman, director of the African Security Research Project.
Many in Africa note that U.S. concern about Africa more or
less coincided with major oil discoveries in West Africa.
They fear what one commentator described as "creeping
U.S. militarism" as has taken place in the Middle East
and Asia and America's history of supporting African tyrants
to bolster Western influence during the Cold War.
The expansion of U.S. military activity has spawned fears
that Africa was in line to become the next battleground in
the conflict with al-Qaida and its jihadists.
The Obama administration's fiscal 2011 budget request for
security assistance programs in Africa includes $38 million
for arms sales to African states under the Foreign Military
Financing program.
It also wants $21 million for training African officers in
the United States plus $24 million for anti-terrorism programs.
READ
FULL STORY
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US
troops attack Afghan bus, killing four and wounding 18
wsws.org
By Keith Jones
13 April 2010
US troops opened fire on a passenger bus travelling on a highway
in the Zhari District of Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province early
Monday morning, killing at least four people, including a woman
and a child. Eighteen other passengers were wounded.
This latest shooting of civilians by US occupation forces sparked
an angry protest. According to Western news sources, some 200 people
blocked the highway near where the shooting occurred. They burned
tires, fired guns in the air, and chanted slogans denouncing the
US occupation and the US-installed government of Hamid Karzai.
“The Americans are constantly killing our civilians and the
government is not demanding an explanation,” protester Mohammad
Razaq told the Associated Press. “We demand justice from the
Karzai government and the punishment of those soldiers responsible.”
The AP report went on to quote residents of nearby Kandahar City
voicing their anger at US and NATO forces’ disregard for civilian
life and demanding that they leave Afghanistan. “They say
they want to bring security,” said Haji Zahir. “It is
all lies, lies. They kill Afghans. That is not the way to bring
security.”
NATO, which refused to identify the nationality of the troops that
attacked the bus, issued a statement saying it regretted the deaths,
but then went on to justify them. It said that shortly before dawn
Monday its troops had opened fire on a “large vehicle”
as it approached a “slow-moving” multi-vehicle “ISAF
route-clearance patrol.”
NATO forces, the statement asserted, had tried to warn off the approaching
vehicle “once with a flashlight,” “three times
with flares,” and finally with hand signals, but “these
were not heeded.” Only after bringing the bus to a halt with
one or more volleys of gunfire—a BBC video shows the bus’
windows riddled with bullet holes—did the NATO forces discover
that the “large vehicle” was a bus.
Eyewitnesses denied this account, saying the bus was trying to stop
when it was raked with gunfire.
NATO forces in the Kandahar region, both US and Canadian, have a
long and bloody record of opening fire on any vehicle (truck, car,
bus or motorbike) that they deem has come too close for their safety
to be guaranteed.
This practice, which simultaneously expresses the arrogance, fear
and colonialist character of the occupation force, has resulted
in a mounting toll of civilian deaths. READ
FULL STORY
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