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Kyrgyz unrest strands troops at Manas

Hundreds of U.S. troops are still stranded at a key air base in Kyrgyzstan following civil unrest there that resulted in personnel flights to Afghanistan being diverted through other countries, officials said.

About 400 U.S. troops are still stuck on the base waiting for flights home, even though U.S. officials said Friday that normal flight operations out of the Transit Center at Manas had resumed. A majority of those troops were Marines, many with Marines Combat Logistics Company 252, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., which recently completed a six-month deployment in Afghanistan, a Marine at Manas told Marine Corps Times in a telephone interview.

“Not knowing is the worst,” said the Marine, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We’re on day nine here, and we still don’t know when we’re going home.”

Flights resumed briefly Monday at the air base in central Asia, allowing a few hundred troops to be flown back to the U.S., said Air Force Maj. John Redfield, a spokesman with U.S. Central Command. The Marine at Manas confirmed those details, but said CLC-252 and elements of other units were originally told to expect to fly home on April 18 or 20, and now may have to wait substantially longer. Members of the unit at Manas were told to be ready, but no new flight dates had been given, the Marine said.

Among the initially stranded troops who have left Manas already are Marines with III Marine Expeditionary Force, out of Okinawa, Japan, who deployed to eastern Afghanistan with an embedded training team whose Sept. 8 ambush made international news after Army officers repeatedly declined to send them fire support and three Marines, a U.S. soldier and a Navy corpsman died, Marine sources said. Redfield said Tuesday morning that he could not immediately confirm that to be true.

A shutdown of flights was ordered last week after a civil unrest boiled over into a violent uprising in which at least 83 people were killed in the capital city, Bishkek, located about 16 miles southwest of Manas International Airport, which includes the U.S. base. The overthrown Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has been accused of corruption and enriching himself with U.S. and Russian aid money. Some Krygyzs also are angry Bakiyev allowed the air base to remain open last year after the U.S. agreed to increase its annual rent from $17 million to $63 million.

Redfield declined to say Tuesday that there is a transportation bottleneck at Manas.

“During the past week, we prudently scheduled flights into/out of Afghanistan through our alternate transit routes instead of Manas,” he said in an e-mail to Marine Corps Times. “These are contract flights, and it requires a certain amount of time to shift the scheduling and support that goes with these missions. We are working a solution and hope to have them en route to the United States in the coming days.”

Soldiers, airmen and Marines were among the initial few hundred troops who left the base Monday. Some left on military cargo planes at a moment’s notice, the Marine at Manas said.

“Some Marines were in the chow hall and they just left their food and went when they got the word” they could leave,” the Marine said. “They don’t mind — they just want to get home.”

More on Manas

• Interim Kyzgystan leader: Manas will stay

• Air Force Times: CentCom says no troop flights for now through Manas

• Air Force Times: Experts say role of Manas spurred Kyrgyz chaos