Eurasia Security Watch: No. 221

.style3 { color: #434172; } .style4 { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; } .style5 { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; color: #5C6276; } .style6 { text-decoration: underline; } KYRGYZSTAN ERUPTS
Inter-ethnic tensions are on the rise in Kyrgyzstan nearly a month after President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was forced from power by violent street protests. Bakiyev, who has fled and subsequently been charged by the interim government with “mass killing,” but the country remains in a state of unrest. Squatters have begun grabbing land outside the capital and on April 19th hundreds of them attacked villages of minority Meskhetian Turks scattered outside the capital. They targeted Russian and Turkish homes, burning some to the ground and seizing farmland. Longstanding tensions between the majority Kyrgyz and the country’s Uzbek community, which comprise some 15% of Kyrgyzstan’s population, also risk flaring, if the interim government does not quickly impose its writ. Elsewhere, the arrest of Kyrgyzstan’s former top police official in Russia, subsequently extradited back to the former Soviet republic, demonstrates that Moscow has decisively thrown its support behind the interim government.

Meanwhile, more details have emerged about the events that led to Bakiyev’s overthrow on April 7, 2010. Mounting disaffection with the Bakiyev regime, fed partly by a media campaign against him in Kyrgyzstan’s Russian-language media, culminated in the seizure of a state building in Talas, where the interior minister was captured and beaten. In Bishkek, ahead of scheduled protests, police clashed with a crowd of hundreds, which grew to thousands after they successfully repelled the police. The crowd seized key government facilities and marched on the Kyrgyz White House, where elite troops fired on the crowd, killing dozens. However, the crowd remained and Bakiyev fled to his southern stronghold in Osh and then on to Kazakhstan and Belarus, where he remains today. (Moscow also denied Bakiyev asylum). (Washington Post, April 27 2010.; Eurasianet.org, April 19 and April 20, 2010)

SCUDS TO HEZBOLLAH A GAME-CHANGER
Israeli President Shimon Peres recently accused Syria of passing Scud missiles to the Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, who went to war with Israel in 2006 from its stronghold in southern Lebanon. Syria is long known to have been a transit point for arms and supplies to Hezbollah from the group’s Shi’ite patron and Syria’s ally, Iran. But Scud missiles, with a 40 mile range and a 2,000 pound warhead, represent a significant escalation in the terrorist group’s armaments and the transfer is being considered a “game changer” by Israeli officials. The missile would “radically alter the balance of military forces in the region” and “allow Hezbollah to target all of Israel from deep within Lebanon, extending the range to which the Israelis would have to penetrate in order to attack their launch sites,” writes Dr. Daniel Goure in a piece for the Lexington Institute. Goure believes that in the event of a conflict, Israel would have to rely on ground forces to eliminate the launchers, which would draw them deep into Lebanon and could possibly trigger a conflict with Syria or Iran. (The Lexington Institute, April 20, 2010)

GEORGIA SEIZIES HEU… AGAIN
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili revealed at an April nuclear security summit in Washington that Georgian authorities had seized highly enriched uranium the previous month as it was entering his nation. Saakashvili said only a small amount of uranium was secured but that it was enriched to 70 percent, far beyond what’s required for civilian purposes. The Georgian president also said several foreigners were taken into custody and placed the finger of blame for the lax security on Russia, which is “occupying” two breakaway separatist regions in Georgia’s north. “If you are legally in occupation then you are responsible for controlling proliferation.”

The March seizure is only the latest in a long string of thwarted nuclear smuggling incidents in the former Soviet republic. In 2006, Oleg Khinstagov, a Russian merchant from North Ossetia, and three Georgian citizens were arrested for attempting to sell 100 grams of uranium-235 enriched to nearly 90 percent. Khinstagov was secretly tried in Tbilisi and sentenced to eight years in prison. In 2003, meanwhile, an Armenian national was arrested for attempting to smuggle 170 grams of HEU across the Georgian border. Like the 2006 incident, that uranium was suspected to have come from Russia’s nuclear fuel production facility at Novosibirsk, Siberia. (Global Security Newswire, April 22, 2010; International Export Control Observer, March/April 2007)

IRAN AND UAE SPAR OVER GULF ISLANDS
Tensions between Iran and the United Arab Emirates have again flared over the status the Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs, a set of three islands in the Arabian Gulf claimed by the UAE and controlled by Iran. Earlier this month, the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, was quoted by the UAE news agency as saying: “Occupation of any Arab land is occupation… Israeli occupation of Golan Heights, southern Lebanon, West Bank or Gaza is called occupation and no Arab land is dearer than another.” Iranian officials were outraged at the comparison to Israel and demanded a retraction. “The repetition of such statements will ensure the intense reaction of the Iranian people,” said a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry. However, no retraction was forthcoming and Al-Nahayan reiterated his call on April 25th for Iran to end its “occupation.” (Riyadh Arab News, April 26, 2010)