Twenty-five kilometers northwest of Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek lies Manas International Airport. The 45-minute drive is rather laborious considering that the city it serves is not exactly one of the world’s behemoths.
However, such seclusion does have its advantages: comparative isolation keeps noise levels low; couple that with a 4.2-kilometer runway designed to accommodate heavy Soviet bombers, and you have an ideal site for a military base.
In 2001, 10 years after Kyrgyzstan’s independence, the old Tupolev-154s and Yak-40s that lay scattered around the airfield were hastily shifted aside to make space for the arrival of the United States’ military.
Just a 90-minute flight from Kabul, Manas was chosen as a key logistical hub for Operation Enduring Freedom, the United States’ mission to create a stable and prosperous Afghanistan.
As a comparatively stable country untroubled by Islamic extremism, Kyrgyzstan presented an attractive alternative to Pakistan, whose Khyber Pass to Afghanistan was frequently closed by militant raids or political gridlock.
Over its 13 years of existence, the Manas Air Base (officially the Transit Center at Manas) hummed to the roar of C-17 transports and KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft, which were responsible for transporting more than 5.3 million soldiers to and from Afghanistan – over 1,000 troops per day – and facilitating 33,000 in-air refueling missions.
The era marked the zenith of U.S. power, one in which even this small Central Asian republic felt the repercussions of decisions in distant Washington.
The Army and Democracy
The American base coincided with an improvement in Kyrgyzstan’s lot. Over the 13 years of its operation between 2001-2014, the economy grew five-fold in dollar terms, with GDP rising from $1.5 billion to $7.5 billion.
Bishkek initially extracted a rent of $2 million a year from Uncle Sam, but over time successive governments bargained the Americans higher. Before it closed, $60 million a year flowed into the country’s coffers, in addition to a $7,000 fee for each flight that took off.
Added to that, all the fuel was bought locally, and many of the jobs on the air base went to Kyrgyz citizens. U.S. troops would also assist in humanitarian projects, such as renovating schools.
This was the United States at the zenith of its power, its reach expanding into a region bordering Russia, China and Iran. Kyrgyzstan found itself in an unfamiliar role at the heart of geopolitical competition.
Alongside the military came the aid. By 2005, Washington was budgeting $12 million a year for “democracy building endeavors.” Such was the proliferation of Western-funded organizations entering Kyrgyzstan that President Askar Akayev is said to have called the country a land of NGOs.
Following the wave of “color revolutions” that took place across the post-Soviet world, high-minded commentators in the U.S. (and many worried observers in Moscow) saw Kyrgyzstan’s own revolutions in 2005 and 2010 as milestones on the “global march to freedom.” Some even dubbed Kyrgyzstan the Switzerland of Central Asia.
Unwelcome Guests
Not everyone was appreciative of the growing American presence. The sums pouring into Kyrgyzstan, while helping to boost GDP and foster a free press, were doing little to improve ordinary people’s lives. Just as in Afghanistan, much of the money flowed into very few hands.
Manas International Airport, which collected the lease payments and the landing fees, was owned by Akayev’s son, Aydar. The pattern repeated with his successor: by 2010, Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his family were making $8 million a month from fuel sales to the base.
Kyrgyz citizens soon began to make links between their corrupt leaders and the mishandling of U.S. funds.
Meanwhile, relations between soldiers and civilians became more tense after an American soldier was kidnapped in 2006, after which U.S. personnel were forbidden to leave the base. Later that year, amid this atmosphere of heightened security, a Kyrgyz citizen was shot dead during an altercation at one of the base’s security checkpoints.
By 2015, 53 percent of the Kyrgyz population had come to see the U.S. as a threat.
Russian Pressure
The Russian mass media, which still penetrated deep into the post-Soviet world, had an important role in shaping these attitudes. A 2009 documentary fueled speculation that U.S. jets were dumping fuel in the pristine mountains and polluting the Kyrgyz countryside.
Meanwhile the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs made oblique claims that the presence of the base might put Kyrgyzstan in the firing line in case of a conflict between Tehran and Washington.
It was a marked change from 2001, when U.S. President George W. Bush had called his Russian counterpart, the newly elected Vladimir Putin, to ask for his blessing before moving in to Manas. Putin, at the time keen to curry favor with the U.S. as cover for his own “War on Terror” in Chechnya, initially acquiesced. But the Kremlin soon began to view American troops in what it perceived as its unique sphere of influence with increasing disquiet.
By 2003, Russia had its own base, some 40 kilometers east of Manas at Kant, on the site of a former Soviet airfield and pilot training facility. Over the next decade, it began to apply increasing economic pressure on Bishkek, agreeing to write off over $500 million in Kyrgyz debt in 2012, and dangling the carrot of Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) membership, promising to make it easier for the legions of Kyrgyz migrant workers to find employment in Russia.
Such largess came with a condition: the Americans had to go.
Finally, in Almazbek Atambayev, the Kremlin had a man they could rely on. He was elected president in late 2011 following Kyrgyzstan’s 2010 revolution and the year-and-a-half-long interim presidency of Roza Otunbayeva. Atambayev made the removal of U.S. forces from Manas a key plank of his election campaign.
The United States was put on notice. In 2013, a rubber stamp vote in parliament gave them a year to make themselves scarce.
Kyrgyz-U.S. Relations Today
The implications of the closure of Manas were apparent at the time. As Akhilesh Pillalamarri wrote in an op-ed for The Diplomat in 2014, “For the United States, the closure of Manas … makes it increasingly clear that it does not have a clear, long-term plan to engage with the region, which ranks low on its list of geopolitical priorities. In effect, it is conceding the region to Russia and China.”
Edward Lemon, ra esearch assistant professor at Texas A&M University, argues that U.S. policy toward the region has become more focused since the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. The U.S. “has shifted attention almost exclusively to the region’s most powerful states, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan,” he said, adding that increasing authoritarianism in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan also helped explain the lack of American engagement.
While the United States continues to disburse around $50 million in yearly aid to Kyrgyzstan, it has become increasingly clear that the emphasis on democracy, human rights, and governance is not bearing fruit.
This has become no more obvious than in the media. Independent journalism in Kyrgyzstan has become increasingly embattled, with investigative sites such as Temirov Live and news portals like 24.kg having their offices targeted earlier this year. Two Temirov Live journalists were sentenced to five and six years in prison recently. Kloop, one of Kyrgyzstan’s most prominent investigative outlets, was ordered to liquidate itself.
Kyrgyzstan passed a foreign agents law in April, similar to those passed in Russia and more recently in Georgia, which requires any NGO that receives funding from abroad to register themselves as “foreign representatives.”
“I thought that people might protest against this like in Georgia,” says Aizhana Osmonalieva, senior coordinator at the Bishkek American Center, a U.S. State Department initiative promoting cultural exchange between the U.S. and Kyrgyzstan. “But there were no rallies or anything like that. People just kind of agreed to it. I was surprised. It made me think something is changing in the minds of people. A couple of years ago, when people were not supportive of the laws or the government, they would go to the streets.”
Outbid By Russia and China
Lemon notes that, despite these shifts, U.S. strategy has changed little due to its low ranking on the priority list for policymakers.
“The current U.S. Strategy towards the region was released in 2020 under Trump and has not been changed under Biden,” he says. “Key priorities of exploiting resources, supporting democracy and governance, countering terrorism, and attempting to bolster the region’s independence from China and Russia have carried over between administrations.”
Despite this continuity, the U.S. has made little headway in the pursuit of these goals in Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek joined Moscow’s EAEU in 2015, and despite a recent crackdown, hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz continue to head to Russia to work. The country also continues to rely on the Kremlin for 80 percent of its oil. Meanwhile, Chinese-made cars increasingly swarm Chinese-built roads, while Bishkek racks up ever-higher debts to Beijing.
It all amounts to a bleak picture, but Osmonalieva remains confident about the robustness of American soft power, especially amongst the youth. She claims that young people, particularly in the capital, tend to look more fondly on the United States.
“They see it as a great power: a country where you can get a good education, where you can do your career. There are quite a few opportunities there for people from different types of families, not only elite ones.”
This is backed up by recent figures showing that in the 2022/23 academic year, over 1,200 Kyrgyz were granted student visas, a 76 percent rise on the previous year.
Nevertheless, the numbers are far lower than those that study in Russia, China, or even Turkey. Neither do U.S.-educated students have much political influence, with all of Kyrgyzstan’s heads of state either having studied in Kyrgyzstan or in Moscow.
A Missed Opportunity?
Ultimately, increased U.S. engagement in Kyrgyzstan was mere happenstance. While the base at Manas put the region on the map, Washington viewed Kyrgyzstan primarily through its proximity to Afghanistan and as a springboard for advancing its goals there. Attempting to reshape Kyrgyz politics was not on the agenda, and more overt attempts to do so may well have expedited the U.S. ouster, as it did when the Americans were evicted from their other Central Asian base, Karshi-Khanabad (K2), in Uzbekistan in 2005.
But perhaps there is a more global story to tell about U.S. influence in the region. Central Asia has long been a region where empires come and go. The Manas base marked the apogee of American influence: a time when U.S. aircraft could not only fly unopposed in former Soviet skies, within spitting distance of Iran and China, but also acting as a model for governance.
A decade on, as those three powers coalesce, the brief American incursion here in the early days of the third millennium is likely to go down as a mere footnote in history.
Donald Trump’s re-election in the United States, to the extent that it is noted at all, is noted more for its indirect effects.
“People are rushing to go and get their visas before [Trump] brings in stricter policies for people from developing countries,” says Osmonalieva. “The portion of people who have gone there illegally, often through Mexico, are the ones who will be most concerned.”
But what about how the return of Trump will affect Kyrgyzstan?
“I think it will pretty minimal.”