I didn’t get many specifics from Pentagon when I asked about alternatives to the soon-to-be-lost Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan for resupplying U.S. troops in
“„What, then, are the alternatives? Well, the United States used to have another Central Asia base at Karshi Khanabad, Uzbekistan[K2]. But getting access to K2 means making nice with dictator-for-life Islam Karimov, not a pleasant prospect. The United States has also used the airport in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, as a refueling stop. Tajikistan shares a border with Afghanistan, but since its independence, that country has had a pretty volatile history(for that matter, Kyrgyzstan isn’t the placid “Switzerland of Central Asia” that its boosters once hoped for).