Bob Brown believes unrest may be linked to Russia

It has been almost 15 years since Bob Brown visited Kyrgyzstan, but he sees a possible common thread between the political climate in the 1990s and the country’s current unrest: Russia.

When Brown, former Montana Senate President and Secretary of State, traveled to Kyrgyzstan, his trip stemmed from the U.S. government’s desire to form a relationship with the recently independent country.

In the mid-’90s Kyrgyzstan hadn’t long been freed from Soviet control, and the U.S. government wanted to prevent Russia from regaining its dominance in Central Asia.

“Our government thought it was a bad idea for those breakaway provinces to get back into” Russian control, said Brown, now a senior fellow at the University of Montana Maureen & Mike Mansfield Center.

The National Guard already had a State Partnership Program in place to pair U.S. states with foreign countries to form sister-state relationships. Brown suspects Montana was chosen as Kyrgyzstan’s sister state because of similarities between the two.

“We’re both isolated. We’re both mountainous. We have a lot in common geographically,” he said.

The U.S. government wanted to send representatives from Montana to Kyrgyzstan to cement the new relationship but didn’t want the country to get the wrong idea, Brown said. Rather than just sending military personnel, the government wanted to send a civilian.

“Our Pentagon didn’t want people in Kyrgyzstan to think the military ruled the roost in any of our states,” he said. “They thought if we just sent a two-star general ... it would give the wrong impression.”

Then-Gov. Marc Racicot wasn’t able to go, nor was then-Lt. Gov. Judy Martz, Brown said. At the time Brown was president of the state Senate and next in line in the state’s leadership.

“I said, ‘Heck yes. I’d like to go,’” he said.

While he remembers formal ceremonies, mutton and toasts, Brown also recalls Kyrgyzstan’s desperate poverty.

Manhole covers in the capital, Bishkek, were stolen and sold as scrap metal, leaving gaping holes in the streets because there was no money to replace them. Brown was reprimanded for handing out dollars from his wallet to young people in the street.

“They gave me a stern lecture. You just don’t do that,” he said. “But what’s a dollar to me?”

Although Kyrgyzstan at that time was considered one of the region’s more stable countries, there was still a sense of unrest, Brown said. A stabilizing force in the area has long been the Manas Air Base near Bishkek, which Brown called “an important military base” for the United States.

The base is used both as the launch point for refueling flights over Afghanistan and as a troop transit point. Troop transit flights had been diverted for several days because of the Kyrgyz revolution, but the U.S. Embassy said Monday those flights have returned to normal operation and that the refueling flights are continuing.

Brown suspects Russia has more than a passing interest in the upheaval because of interest in Manas.

“I think the Russians are pretty enthusiastic about what is going on in Kyrgyzstan, and there is pretty good evidence they’re behind a lot of this stuff,” he said.

He suspects that the Kyrgyz people “are not sophisticated enough” to operate the base and that Russia would jump at the chance to take control of Manas.

“I’m not sure that the unrest in Kyrgyzstan is an entirely local thing,” Brown said. “I think it probably has been encouraged by the bad guys in the Muslim world [i.e. al-Qaida terrorists] and Russia.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.