Roza Otunbayeva and the US

As I've been noting since the apparent success of the whatever-color-this-one-will-be-named-for Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, I'm not a Central Asianist. I doubt if I've actually ever met and talked to more than two or three Kyrgyzstanis (though I know Americans who've served there in diplomatic or military capacities). Oddly enough, one of those two or three that I've met and talked to seems to be the new Acting Prime Minister of the interim "People's Government" that controls the capital of Bishkek and perhaps at least the northern part of the country.

Roza Otunbayeva was Kyrgyzstan's first Ambassador to the United States back in the 1990s after the implosion of the Soviet Union. I was running my own newsletter at the time, and was approached by some retired US diplomats about possibly starting one on Central Asia. Nothing ever came of it except for a series of meetings with Central Asian diplomats, including on one occasion, Ambassador Otunbayeva. She's since served as Foreign Minister on a couple of occasions, was instrumental in the Tulip Revolution of 2005, and later went into opposition.

She seems to have a reputation for professionalism in a country increasingly dominated by corrupt local criminal gangs factions. She certainly knows the United States well. But there seems to be a perception among many Central Asia experts that the US supported the increasingly repressive and corrupt Bakiyev regime in order to hold on to the base at Manas, which was threatened with closure by the Kyrgyz Parliament last year (my posts on Manas are collected here); I hope if the new government manages to consolidate, US support for Bakiyev doesn't translate into a new anti-Americanism. Otunbayeva's knowledge of the US is a plus; but once again we have allied ourselves with a pretty edgy regime for broader geopolitical reasons, and may pay a price.