My heart goes out to Poland. How incredibly tragic. My heart goes out to the folks in Kyrgyzstan as well, and political upheaval is certainly a traumatic event for the people there.
I put this in the Afghanistan category, because as we speak, there are several thousand Polish troops in Afghanistan that could possibly be called back to deal with their crisis. When the entire leadership is wiped out by an unfortunate air crash, there are just too many possibilities of what could happen. There was not much support for the war in Afghanistan, and new leadership might change direction on Poland’s involvement in the war. I think it would be wise for today’s war planners to set in place some contingency stuff, if in fact Poland wants or even needs their troops back home.
So that brings up the question, who would replace those troops if they had to scoot? I brought this up a couple weeks ago in regards to NATO forces faltering and for whatever reason, having to leave the Afghan war. That contractors can be used to back fill, as NATO or ISAF finds replacement forces.
In Kyrgyzstan, there has been some political unrest that has impacted Manas operations. They actually halted all flights out of there today, and that is not good. If logistics cannot depend upon the Manas air base there, then other options will have to be looked at. The problem is though, that so much logistics goes through Manas, that there is a risk that operations will be negatively impacted in Afghanistan because of this hiccup. So will this mean that a new route or new air base will come on to the scene? Will transportation on land increase because of what is going on, and what will that mean for private industry?
I also called these incidents a Black Swan event, because they were not predicted, they will change the political landscape, and war planners will now have to look at contingency plans to deal with problems related to both of these countries. –Matt
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Poland’s President, Central Bank Governor Die in Plane Crash
April 10, 2010
By David McQuaid and Piotr Skolimowski
April 11 (Bloomberg) — Polish President Lech Kaczynski and central bank Governor Slawomir Skrzypek were killed yesterday along with several key members of the country’s political elite when their plane crashed in western Russia, where they were to mark the 70th anniversary of a massacre of Polish officers.
The 60-year-old president’s wife, Maria, and leaders of the country’s main opposition parties and military, including the Army Chief of Staff Franciszek Gagor, also died, Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said in a phone interview. The crash, which happened as the aircraft was on approach for landing in Smolensk, killed all 96 on board, according to Russia’s Emergency Ministry.
Under Poland’s constitution the duties of the president, which are largely ceremonial, will be assumed by the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski. He will set a date for a presidential election within two weeks and the vote must be held within 60 days. Komorowski is the candidate of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party and polls show he was poised to defeat Kaczynski in presidential elections, originally scheduled for the second half of the year.
“This is the most tragic event in the history of Poland outside wartime,” Tusk said in a televised speech. “Such a dramatic event is unprecedented in the modern world.”
Consequences
Executive power under Poland’s constitution is concentrated in the hands of the prime minister as head of government. The president has the power to veto legislation and make some appointments, including generals, judges, ambassadors and the governor of the central bank. Kaczynski, a former anti-communist dissident who promised Poles a “moral revolution,” came to power in October 2005.
“Two candidates for president are dead along with almost the whole leadership of the leading opposition party,” said Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski, a sociologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences. “It’s hard to imagine it won’t have consequences for the way politics is practiced in Poland.”
Piotr Wiesiolek, a deputy governor of the central bank, will temporarily assume the governorship. The central bank’s Monetary Policy Council will meet on April 12 to discuss how to proceed. The death of the governor won’t affect the zloty, which is up 6 percent against the euro this year, or the country’s financial stability, board member Anna Zielinska-Glebocka said in a phone interview.
Implications
“We do not see any negative implications for markets,” said Simon Quijano-Evans, head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Credit Agricole Cheuvreux, in an e-mailed note to clients. “Poland’s constitutional framework is solid and clearly states the steps that have to be taken in such a situation, and the economic system will continue to function in an orderly manner, with the central bank taking a very clearly- defined role.”
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said he was “saddened and shocked” to hear of the accident and that he “deeply regrets the loss of a highly esteemed” colleague.
Hundreds of Poles gathered in front of the presidential palace, lighting candles, laying flowers and praying. The roads leading to the palace were crowded with onlookers as the police blocked off the surrounding area. Churches around the country announced services to commemorate the dead.
“I thought it’s some stupid April Fool’s kind of a joke when I heard the news and I am in such a state of shock that I can’t stop crying,” said Maria Przyborska, a 54-year old teacher from Warsaw, who laid roses at the palace gates. “I didn’t vote for Kaczynski, but this was my president and I can’t understand how this could happen.”
World Leaders Respond
The delegation was to attend an anniversary ceremony commemorating the murder of thousands of Poles killed in the spring of 1940 by Soviet forces under Josef Stalin at the Katyn forest, close to the city of Smolensk.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on April 7 hosted a meeting with Tusk in an effort to heal the two countries’ difference over the massacre, making him the first Russian leader to pay his respects to the more than 4,000 Polish officers killed in the Katyn forest, a crime denied by the Kremlin for half a century.
U.S. President Barack Obama said he called Tusk to express his “deepest condolences to the people of Poland on the tragic deaths,” according to a statement. The “loss is devastating to Poland, to the United States, and to the world. President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United States as a leader dedicated to advancing freedom and human dignity.”
‘Grief and Mourning’
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered “a thorough investigation in full and closest cooperation with the Polish side,” according to a statement on the Kremlin’s Web site. He declared April 12 a day of mourning.
Medvedev also addressed the citizens of Poland on state television to say “all Russians share your grief and mourning. I want to express my deepest, most heartfelt condolences to the people of Poland, and my empathy and support to families and friends of the victims.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the deaths a “political and human tragedy for Poland, for our neighbor country,” in comments broadcast by N24 television out of Berlin. “I gladly remember that Lech Kaczynski invited me to the Polish national holiday on the 11th of November 2008, that was a very special gesture also for a neighbor country like Germany; we spent many, many hours talking about Polish and European history.”
‘Shocked’
Israeli President Shimon Peres said his country is “shocked by the report of the terrible tragedy that has struck Poland,” in a statement distributed by e-mail yesterday. Israel “shares in the mourning of the Polish people and the free world.”
Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown said “the whole world will be saddened and shocked as a result of this tragic death,” according to a statement.
The government of the largest of the 10 former communist nations to join the European Union since 2004 held an emergency cabinet meeting yesterday after the crash. The country, whose economy was the only EU member to avoid a recession during the credit crisis, will hold a week of national mourning, Komorowski said in comments broadcast by TVP INFO.
‘No Divisions’
“In the face of this tragedy we are all together; there are no divisions, no differences,” Komorowski said.
The plane, a Tupolev 154 built in 1990, clipped the tree line at about 10:50 a.m. yesterday Moscow time and broke in two as the pilot attempted a fourth landing amid heavy fog at a military airport near Smolensk, Rossiya-24 said, citing officials at the scene. Newswire RIA quoted an unnamed Russian security official as saying pilot error was a factor in the accident.
The Tu-154 model has been around since 1968. Russia’s largest airline, OAO Aeroflot, stopped operating the plane in January of this year, spokesman Oleg Mikhailov said in a phone interview yesterday.
“There hasn’t been an accident on this scale in politics since the airplane was invented,” said Wnuk-Lipinski. “It’s such a shock that I still find it hard to believe this has really happened.”
Body Found
Rossiya-24 TV showed live footage of rescue workers attempting to extinguish pockets of fire among the wreckage at the airport, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Moscow. The president’s body was found several hours after the crash, RIA Novosti reported.
“The plane was landing in bad visibility,” Andrei Yevseyenkov, press secretary for the Smolensk region’s governor told Rossiya-24. “Dispatchers at Severny military airport suggested that the plane land in Minsk (about 200 kilometers away) but the pilots took their own landing decision.”
Medvedev dispatched the Emergency Ministry’s Sergei Shoigu to the site of the crash and formed a special commission headed by Putin to investigate the cause. Tusk and Putin also met at the crash site and laid flowers by the wreckage. The two will talk with Russian officials conducting the investigation.
The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office is looking into whether bad weather, human error, a technical malfunction or other reasons caused the crash, according to a statement on the committee’s Web site. A criminal case has been initiated, it said. Both black boxes have been found and the “the plane is completely destroyed,” RIA Novosti cited Shoigu as saying.
Political Elite
Among the victims were key members of Poland’s biggest opposition party, Law and Justice, including current and former heads of the party’s parliamentary caucus, Grazyna Gesicka and Przemyslaw Gosiewski as well as the party’s main economic expert Aleksandra Natalli-Swiat, and deputy parliamentary speaker Krzysztof Putra.
The list also includes deputy parliamentary speaker Jerzy Szmajdzinski, who was the presidential candidate of the opposition Left Democratic Alliance. That means the crash killed the presidential candidates of two of Poland’s three largest parties. Kaczynski had already won the endorsement of the opposition Law and Justice party. He was to officially declare his candidacy in May.
‘Twist of Fate’
“These are all people who are on the front line for Poland domestically and internationally,” said Marek Matraszek, Warsaw-based head of CEC Government Relations, which advises companies in their relations with the government. “They will be very difficult to replace.”
Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last Polish president in exile during World War II, Janusz Kurtyka, the head of the Institute of National Remembrance, which investigates Nazi and Soviet crimes against Poles, were also on board the plane, according to a list of passengers posted on the government’s Web site.
Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, who led the country’s fight against Communism, called the crash a tragedy without comparison.
“I would say that we weren’t that close politically but that is irrelevant,” Havel said yesterday in an interview on Czech state-run television. “Even if it had been a different Polish president, to have all this occur together, it’s an unbelievable twist of fate.”
Story here.
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Polish ISAF Forces in Afghanistan (from Wikipedia)
Poland – 2,140 Polish forces are responsible for the south-eastern province of Ghazni. They are based in 5 different locations around the province: Warrior, Qarabagh, Giro, Four Corners and Ghazni. Also an unknown number of Polish special forces are deployed in the southern province of Kandahar. Polish contignent operates 70 wheeled armoured vehicles Rosomak and 40 Cougar (vehicles) on loan from US. Additionally 4 Mil Mi-24 and 4 Mil Mi-17 are in use. In December 2009 the Polish Ministry of Defence announced that in April 2010 it will dispatch addidional 60 Rosomaks, 5 Mi-17 and 600 troops which would bring the total number to 2,740. The contingent will also include 400 backup troops based in Poland who could be sent over at any given time bringing the total number of soldiers to 3,140. In March 2010, the Polish MoD announced that 1 battalion of the American 101st Airborne Division will be dispatched to Ghazni, under Polish command.
From ISAF website here.
From Wikipedia here.
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Why Poland has soured on Afghanistan
A recent poll found 77 percent of Poles want their troops withdrawn.
By Jan Cienski
November 4, 2009
WARSAW — When Joe Biden, the U.S. vice president, passed through Warsaw a couple of weeks ago, he larded unabashed praise on Poland for its participation in the war in Afghanistan.
“Polish soldiers in Afghanistan are not just soldiers,” gushed Biden. “They are warriors doing an incredibly difficult job.”
But the tribute didn’t have much of an effect in Poland, where a vast majority of the public has had enough of the Afghan mission. In an opinion poll conducted in September by the CBOS organization, 76 percent of Poles were opposed to having troops in Afghanistan, and 77 percent want the operation wrapped up immediately and soldiers withdrawn — a 12 percentage point increase from a survey taken in June.
The erosion of public support in Poland is a sign of a wider problem for the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Similar attitudes are cropping up in Europe and in the U.S., as people are beginning to tire of a war that has lasted more than eight years, with no immediate prospect of a successful conclusion. The lack of tangible benefits — such as contracts and improved relations with the U.S. — from Poland’s long mission in Iraq has also soured the country on its Afghanistan involvement.
Poland has been one of the most valuable Western allies in that fight. Unlike military contingents from France and Germany, Poland has undertaken a fighting mission in the unstable south of the country — its 2,000 soldiers are in charge of Ghazni province, which lies on the strategic highway between Kabul and Kandahar.
So far 15 Polish soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, and each death sets off a media frenzy that further lowers support for the mission.
“It confirms yet again that the mission in Afghanistan is one which has changed from a stabilization mission into open war,” Pawel Gras, the government spokesman, said after the last deaths — two soldiers killed in October by a roadside explosion.
The financial cost has also been steep. Despite the stress imposed on public finances by the economic crisis, the government intends to spend $219 million on its Afghan mission this year, while next year equipment costs alone are expected to come to $275 million.
The long war is beginning to strain both politicians and the Polish military. The former head of the army, Gen. Waldemar Skrzypczak, ran into a political firestorm this summer when he openly criticized the defense ministry for not sending adequate supplies and equipment to the troops in Afghanistan. He made the impolitic comments during the funeral of a captain killed in a gunfight with the Taliban.
Skrzypczak stepped down after Bogdan Kilch, the defense minister, reacted with outrage, saying that the general had violated the principle of civilian control over the military. But almost immediately after the outburst, the Polish government announced it was sending more equipment to Afghanistan.
For Poland, being in Afghanistan makes more strategic sense than its previous involvement in Iraq, where at its height Poland had about 2,600 troops and was in charge of a province in central Iraq. That war, which cost the lives of 21 Polish troops, was always seen as a way of building closer ties with the U.S., as well as potentially gaining lucrative contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.
In the end Polish companies did little business in Iraq, and Poles were embittered by the sense that little progress was made on issues like getting significant U.S. financial help in rebuilding the Polish military, and eliminating annoyances like Poles being forced to get visas to travel to the United States. When Donald Tusk, the current prime minister, won the 2007 elections, he pledged to withdraw Polish troops from Iraq, and they were pulled out a year ago.
While being in Iraq strained ties with allies like France and Germany, and produced few tangible benefits, the Afghan mission, undertaken under NATO auspices, is seen as a key part of Poland’s obligations to the alliance.
“That’s the price we’re paying to be in the Atlantic alliance,” said Gras. “The price so that, if there is ever a situation that there would be such a need, our allies would come to help us.”
That means that, unlike in Iraq, Poland will only think about pulling out as part of a wider rethink of the Afghan war by the Western allies.
“It’s hard to imagine an effective NATO without success in Afghanistan. If the alliance is to be a guarantor of security for its members, it has to leave that country with its head held high,” Klich said in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita newspaper.
Story here.
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US suspends Kyrgyzstan flights
April 11, 2010
The US has suspended all troop flights to Afghanistan from Kyrgyzstan, where tensions remain after a violent uprising against the president.
No reason was given for the indefinite suspension of troop flights from the Manas airbase – a decision taken by the US military in Kyrgyzstan.
The Manas airbase is a key transport hub for US-led operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Funerals are to take place later of some 75 people killed in the uprising.
The first funerals were held as a day of mourning for those killed was observed on Friday, with thousands of mourners gathering to lay flowers in the main square of the capital Bishkek.
More than 1,500 are also believed to have been injured in the violence.
Kyrgyzstan is now in the hands of an interim government led by former Foreign Minister Roza Otunbayeva.
Ousted Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said that although he still regarded himself as the legitimately elected president, with widespread support, he feared he would be killed if he returned to the capital, Bishkek.
Speaking from a secret location in the southern city of Jalalabad, he told the BBC that armed opposition supporters had targeted his office during Wednesday’s uprising, and were still trying to track him down.
‘Crucial’ base
US Central Command spokesman Maj John Redfield told the BBC that troop flights from the base just outside Bishkek would resume once conditions in Kyrgyzstan allow.
Meanwhile, the US would transport all forces to Afghanistan via Kuwait, he said.
The US base is crucial to US operations in Afghanistan, says the BBC’s Madeleine Morris in Washington – some 50,000 coalition troops passed through in March alone – but its lease is due to expire in July.
Russia also has an airbase in Kyrgyzstan, and the presence of both has been the focus of debate in recent months.
Mr Bakiyev told the BBC the opposition wanted to close the base down.
“I think that would be wrong. It’s really vital, not only for America but also for Kyrgyzstan and for the whole of Central Asia,” he said.
But Ms Otunbayeva said on Friday: “We will not touch the airbase. The existing contracts will remain in place.”
Foreign interference?
In his interview with the BBC from his powerbase in the country’s south, Mr Bakiyev said the uprising was a well-organised, covert operation.
TIMELINE: KYRGYZSTAN UNREST
March 2005: Protests over disputed parliamentary election, dubbed the Tulip Revolution, lead to fall of President Askar Akayev; Kurmanbek Bakiyev appointed acting president and PM
July 2005: Mr Bakiyev elected president by a landslide
May 2006: Mass protests demand constitutional reform and more action to combat corruption
October 2007: Referendum approves constitutional changes, which the opposition present as a step towards authoritarianism
December 2007: Mr Bakiyev’s Ak Zhol party wins parliamentary poll; opposition left with no seats
July 2009: Mr Bakiyev re-elected in vote criticised by monitors
January 2010: Opposition leader Ismail Isakov jailed for eight years for corruption, sparking opposition hunger strikes
April 2010: Clashes between police and anti-government protesters leave 75 dead
He said there had been foreign involvement in the uprising, but refused to point the finger at a specific country.
Mr Bakiyev he would stay in the country to prevent civil war that could erupt because of the deep divide between the north and the south of the country.
He also poured scorn on the interim government, saying it was unable to restore law and order, while he and his ministers were continuing to work in order to stabilise the country.
Mr Bakiyev has offered to talk to the opposition but Ms Otunbayeva has said she has no plans to do so and that the president must resign.
She said Mr Bakiyev had the opportunity “to leave the country”.
“We will guarantee his security, only his personal security, if he resigns,” Ms Otunbayeva said.
‘Incidents of violence’
On Friday, many of those mourning their loved ones blamed the deaths on Mr Bakiyev.
“Bakiyev must be tried and executed for all these crimes,” said Fatima Imanaliyeva, whose two friends were killed when security forces opened fire on protesters.
“We will never forgive him. This is our revolution,” she said.
Ms Otunbayeva has accused Mr Bakiyev’s supporters of continuing to orchestrate “incidents of violence” around the capital, saying that “several bombs” had been planted in Bishkek.
Russia appears to have given its backing to Ms Otunbayeva’s leadership.
She has already held telephone talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and the deputy head of her interim government, Almazbek Atambayev, had gone to Moscow “for talks on economic aid”.
Story here.