Kerry not ruling out more troops for Syria

The base has since closed and the Afghan operation, while prolonged into at least 2017, has been dramatically scaled back, cutting off a huge source of foreign income for the Central Asian state.

Over four days, at official events in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, Kerry will seek to reassure them they have not been abandoned.

U.S. ties with the landlocked region’s only democratic country soured in July when Kyrgyzstan annulled a strategic partnership with Washington after the US State Department awarded a prize to a jailed human rights defender.

“State secretary Kerry in Bishkek will participate in the opening of a new campus of the American University of Central Asia, as well as the new building of the U.S. embassy in Kyrgyzstan”, the ministry told RIA Novosti. “Kerry has the leverage to impress upon Central Asia’s leaders that upholding human rights is in their interest, and a priority for Washington”.

“It is not an action focused on [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, it is focused exclusively on Daesh and in augmenting our ability to rapidly attack Daesh”.

“President Obama has made a very strong and forceful and simple decision entirely in keeping with his originally stated policy that we must defeat and destroy Daesh”, Kerry said, using the Arabic term for Islamic State.

U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a public letter to Kerry on Friday urging him to push for the release of political prisoners in each of the countries he visits. For the first time since 2011, those talks involved Assad’s ally Iran. It is expected that Secretary Kerry will meet with the leaders of each country.

“We’ve not seen any real indication of ISIL (another name for ISIS) activity in Central Asia but the recruitment is worrisome and that is what we watch”, the United States diplomat said.

“I think the danger posed by the Islamic State is in fact less than the danger posed by the regime”, he said, warning that persecution provokes radicalism.

“There’s this kind of Soviet system of close regulation of religious practices, and that’s more likely to cause people to turn to resort to violence and rebel against the state”, Lemon added.

Also watching is China, whose restive Xinjiang region borders Kyrgyzstan and which is present in several Kyrgyz industries, including energy and mining.