An Update Kazakhstan is going into Afghanistan!!!!
May 24, 2011 Kazakhstan is close to making it official -- the country's troops will return to Afghanistan. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted about it in December. Russian media jumped on her comments speculating on the role Kazakhstan's military might play alongside NATO forces in Afghanistan.
And after Kazakhstan's lower house of parliament approved deployment on May 18, the Taliban are warning Kazakh authorities to stay out of Afghanistan or face unspecified retaliation. Kazakhstan's contribution will not tip the scales in the Afghan conflict. Astana is offering as many as four servicemen variously described as being "officers" or "medics" -- perhaps both. Kazakhstan is not the first CIS country to send members of its armed forces to Afghanistan. Azerbaijan and Georgia have already done so and in greater numbers.
It is not the first time Kazakh troops have been in a theater of war alongside Western forces. Kazakhstan rotated several groups of de-miners through Iraq. But it is a symbolic gesture that balances Kazakhstan's relations with Russia, China, and the West. Kazakhstan held an early presidential election in April that Western allies grudgingly but rather quietly accepted, though incumbent Nursultan Nazarbaev received 95.5 percent of the vote. The event was made more unpalatable by the fact Kazakhstan had just held the OSCE chairmanship in 2010.
Radio Free Europe
So hes at it again playing all sides getting away with it, maybe just maybe not anymore,
Seems hes really annoyed the Taliban and Al quaeda, and an issued warning has been made:
(Reuters) - The Taliban has warned majority Muslim Kazakhstan that its decision to send troops to the NATO-led war in Afghanistan would have severe consequences and was not in its regional interest. The statement, distributed to media on Saturday, appeared to nod to a growing Islamist tendencies in ex-Soviet Central Asia, where militants enjoy support from the Taliban and have worried Kazakhstan and neighboring Russia.1
And even before the warning explosions there, seems his magic wears of on the Fundementalists:
ASTANA — A blast tore through a car Tuesday outside a security service building in the capital of Kazakhstan, killing two people in the second such incident in the usually stable Central Asian nation in a week. Initial reports attributed the blast to a suicide bomber, but the ex-Soviet republic's interior ministry later played down the terror link. The interior ministry said in a statement that two people died after a "spontaneous explosion" tore through the car.AFP
The blast came just a week after a suicide bombing outside the headquarters of the security service in the northwestern Kazakh city of Aktobe, which wounded three people including a member of the security services.
Such attacks had until now been rare in Kazakhstan, the most stable and prosperous of the Central Asian republics, whose vast mineral wealth has been overseen since the Soviet era by President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Seems this part of the world that needs watching soo much as this thread outlines is starting to stir.
Kind Regards,
Elf
