Americans covertly training Kazakh troops

The Times
March 30, 2002
From James Doran in Almaty, Kazakhstan

A PLATOON of American special forces is covertly training Kazakh troops in counter-terrorism techniques as part of a widening campaign against the threat of fundamentalist attacks in the former Soviet Central Asian states.

Twelve US specialist soldiers, most of whom are normally based in Denver, Colorado, started instructing about 200 regular Kazakh soldiers and teenage conscripts in basic training and anti-guerrilla operations at secret locations last month.

A spokesman for the US Embassy in Almaty said: “Soldiers attached to US special forces engaged in an information exchange and training with the Kazakh Mountain Chasseur Battalion on February 22.

“The exercises were concerned with individual soldiering techniques and soldiering in mountainous terrain.”

He added that the “military to military co-operation” with Kazakhstan is expected to continue. US troops involved in the training programme said that the scheme had been effective but arduous as the Kazakh Army is poorly equipped and disorganised.

Its men are young and inexperienced and have been trained only with ageing weapons, most of which were left by the former Soviet Army, which had a large presence in the Almaty area in preperestroika Kazakhstan.

“Jimbo”, a sergeant with the US force, forbidden from giving his real name, said that many of the Kazakh troops were “kids who knew close to nothing” about combat techniques when they were delivered to the US training camp last month.

“Most of them are very young conscripts,” he said. “It is not any kind of an army. But that is why we are here, I guess.” But some of Jimbo’s own comrades also appear inexperienced, young and wide-eyed.

One US soldier in his early twenties, who must also remain anonymous, said that many young American troops who had only recently finished their basic training, volunteered for special forces missions in Central Asia in an effort to get “close to the action”.

“There are guys who wanted to be there (in Afghanistan). Everybody wants to fight for their country. If this is as close as they can be right now, that’s good,” he added.

The American forces arrived in late February and are pulling out this week after more than a month of manoeuvres.

They plan to return to Kazakhstan later in the year to conduct further training missions.

Kazakhstan, particularly the Almaty region, has a long history of producing fierce fighters.

At the end of the Second World War, a handful of Kazakh soldiers held back advancing German tanks and were credited with saving Moscow from Nazi invasion.

But all that remains in Almaty today of the Kazakhs’ once-proud military past are a few former Soviet helicopters, parked, albeit under guard, behind blocks of crumbling Soviet-built civilian flats in the city.

The US training campaign comes after the apparent failure of an attempt by Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s President, to create the country’s own special forces unit to provide support for the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

Advertisements ran in national newspapers late last year urging “patriotic” former soldiers to join the proposed battalion. The idea seems to have faded away without explanation, however, to be replaced by the US training mission.

US officials examined airbases in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan in November last year, but they ruled out leaving a force in Kazakhstan as the country does not border Afghanistan and its airbases have fallen into disrepair since independence.

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Nieuwe Oorlog 2002 | Ander Nieuws week 15