The blog In From the Cold has a post about Jill Metzger, who was the US Air Force Major who “disappeared” in Bishkek back in September of last year. The incident caused a fair amount of consternation, even more speculation about what exactly happened, and is still formally under investigation. Most recently, Major Metzger’s frequently changing duty status has been the subject of discussion, as Spook86 reports:

While the official inquiries continue, Major Metzger will be placed on the Temporary Disability Retired List (TDRL) for the next 18 months, as we noted earlier this week. By our count, this represents the fourth “change” in Metzger’s duty status over the past month; initially, sources told military corruption.com that the Major would be permanently retired with a disability pension resulting from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that stemmed from her captivity. When that touched off a storm of protest, her status kept changing. Within the span of a single week, Major Metzger’s mother told the press that her daughter would be taking a leave of absence, then described it as medical leave. The TDRL version came from Metzger’s father, a retired Air Force officer, who spoke with Air Force Times earlier this week.

All in all, I guess one could take the attitude that she’s now out of Kyrgyzstan, and what happens now is irrelevant. However, given that she originally claimed to have been kidnapped, a very serious accusation which does not reflect well on Kyrgyzstan, a little more investigation is very welcome. It also does nothing to improve the reputation of the US forces based at Manas: the shooting of a fuel truck driver by soldiers in December 2006 has already caused considerable ill-will towards the American presence due to US refusals to consider Kyrgyz requests to put the soldier in question on trial, as well as the very limited compensation (approximately USD 1,000) offered to the driver’s family.