RummyLeaks: U.S. Used Several Bases in Uzbekistan
EURASIANET.org
by Joshua Kucera
February 10, 2011
The story of the U.S.’s ill-fated airbase at Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan, is well known. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. quickly got permission from Uzbekistan to set up operations at the base, known as K2, for its attack on Afghanistan. K2 was a key operations hub until 2005, when the U.S. State Department objected to how the Uzbekistan government fired on protesters in the eastern Uzbekistan city of Andijan, killing several hundreds. Shortly thereafter, Uzbekistan kicked the U.S. out of K2.
What has long been rumored, though, is that the U.S. was using some other bases, as well. And now we appear to have official confirmation of that, for the first time, from an unlikely source: Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. secretary of defense during that period. Rumsfeld, in an unusual move to coincide with the release of his new memoirs, Known and Unknown, has posted many relevant documents — mostly formerly classified government memos — on his website. (The Danger Room blog calls it “Rumsfeld WikiLeaking Himself,” which I will shorten to RummyLeaks for future reference.) It makes for fascinating reading: go to the search page and type in “Uzbekistan,” for example, and 32 documents pop up.
One of the more intriguing ones is an itemized accounting (pdf) of what the U.S. was paying Uzbekistan for the use of K2. Rumsfeld released the document to support his argument with Senator John McCain and others over paying Uzbekistan for K2 even after the U.S. was evicted (about which more soon in an upcoming EurasiaNet piece). But in it, there appears to be confirmation that the U.S. also used bases at Shakhrisabz, Jizzak and Kokaidy. …
