Transit Center at Manas

[4] In February 2009, the Kyrgyz Parliament voted to close the base after the two governments failed to agree on a higher rent for the property.[16] In December 2001, the 86th Contingency Response Group out of Ramstein Air Base in Germany arrived at Manas to open the airfield for military use as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.The last F-16 mission was flown on 19 November 2004 at which time the F-16s were withdrawn to their homebase of Volkel Airbase in the Netherlands, while the KDC-10 flew the personnel back to Eindhoven Airport."[19] In April 2006, Kyrgyzstan's new president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, threatened to expel U.S. troops if the United States would not agree by 1 June to pay more for stationing forces in the Central Asian nation.On 6 September 2006, U.S. Air Force officer Maj. Jill Metzger went missing after being separated from her group while visiting a shopping center in Bishkek.[20] On 6 December 2006, U.S. serviceman Zachary Hatfield fatally shot Alexander Ivanov, a Kyrgyz civilian, at a truck checkpoint at the base.The killing drew widespread condemnation from Kyrgyz authorities and they quickly demanded that Hatfield's immunity from local prosecution be revoked.[24] More detailed data about the hearings on the Hatfield case were published in late December 2010 via the web site Russian Reporter, which issued a series of dispatches from the State Department and U.S. embassies, supposedly originating from the WikiLeaks archive.The paper reported that Lichte was given the power of referral because he was not previously involved in the investigation of the case, nor in the chain of command relating to Hatfield.[30] Referring to the closure of Manas Air Base, Pentagon spokesman Geoff S. Morrell directly accused Russia of "attempting to undermine [American] use of that facility"."[33] However Russian President Dmitry Medvedev distanced his country from the announcement, saying that it was "within the competence of the Kyrgyz Republic" to decide how the Manas base functioned.[38] According to a Kyrgyz government spokesman, the facility will officially cease to be an air base in August 2009, after which point its legal status would be altered to a logistic center.[9] According to Bill Gertz, US State Department officials reportedly overheard that China had asked the government of Kyrgyzstan to close the base to U.S. use in return for $3 billion in cash (a sum equal to a tenth of all Chinese foreign aid given from 1950 to 2009).The 376th Expeditionary Security Forces and augmentees were initially called to combat duty when a Kyrgyz military armored personnel carrier (APC) was taken from a National Guard facility in Bishkek by revolutionaries and was driven to the transit center with the intent to enter the base and stop any fleeing members of the former government.On 8 November 2011, newly elected President Almazbek Atambayev announced that he would attempt to close the base when its lease ran out in 2014.