Just a day before Richard Boucher, the Assistant Secretary for Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, was due to give the keynote speech at the American University commencement ceremony, a small but indignant crew of anti-U.S. protesters set up shop in the Old Square in front of the University calling for the U.S. military to close their air base at Manas, to not bomb Iran, and to generally piss off. Though Boucher was nowhere near the University at the time, the protest was expertly planned to get the attention of the media, who probably outnumbered the protestors themselves. It was another in a series of anti-U.S. protests organized by the remnants of the Kyrgyz Communist Party, which staged numerous other protests in front of the gates of the Manas base and the U.S. Embassy. The protesters also took up the cause of the widow of the ethnic Russian truck driver who was shot to death by an American guard at the airbase. The details of the case are still foggy, but it was clearly a horrible accident, and the U.S. government ended up giving the widow $50,000 in compensation. She and her Communist buddies feel more is needed to right this injustice, and the U.S. government really should boost the comp considering the precarious state of their reputation in the country right now. Nevertheless, the protest at the University that day proved an interesting distraction and reminded us how much of a lightning rod our little campus can become when the political atmosphere gets charged.
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