Saving Cold War-era munitions stocks is a questionable practice at best. On March 15 a former military ammunition depot in Albania's Gerdec-Vora municipality, less than 9 miles from the capital, Tirana, was set alight by a massive fire, apparently by private contractors neutralizing the ammunition. The conflagration caused explosions that could be heard in the neighboring Macedonian capital, Skopje, 100 miles away. According to the government, the catastrophe killed 24 people, injured more than 300 and damaged or destroyed 2,306 buildings. The government declared the site a disaster zone and evacuated 4,000 local residents.

Now Uzbekistan has suffered a similar tragedy. Grievous as the losses were, had the explosions spread, it could have decimated one of the country's three refineries.

According to the official UzA state news agency, fire broke out July 10 at about 11 p.m. near the Uzbek Ministry of Defense's military helicopter base in Kagan, 7.4 miles from Bukhara, the regional administrative center. Servicemen on the base attempted to extinguish the fire by themselves but were unsuccessful. At about 1:48 a.m., artillery shells stored at a nearby army depot, a legacy of the Soviet era, began exploding.

Eyewitnesses said the two strongest blasts occurred at about 2:30 a.m., "mushroom clouds" were seen from as far away as Bukhara, with inhabitants feeling the blast and windows reportedly being shattered. Defense Ministry officials said the fire had been extinguished by 4 a.m. According to a resident of Bukhara contacted by the news agency ferghana.ru, however, "In the beginning there were about 30 blasts in a row, and then they continued with less intensity until 10 o'clock in the morning."

UzA reported, "According to preliminary data, three people perished in the explosions, which injured 21 people. All those injured received the necessary medical aid." Ministry for Emergency Situations personnel and local officials handled the evacuation of Kagan, a town of 50,000 people. Soon after the emergency began, Bukharan law enforcement personnel, in conjunction with military forces, cordoned off Kagan and evacuated all civilians living close to the military depot, while witnesses said the local authorities quickly organized meals, shelter and medical assistance for the evacuees.

That the munitions were there at all was a legacy of Moscow's ill-conceived war in Afghanistan, as during the period, Kagan, built in 1972, was a major logistical center for Soviet military forces operating there. As Soviet operations against the Afghan mujahedin relied heavily on airpower, massive assault helicopter rocket stockpiles were stored at Kagan along with other military munitions.

After the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union, subsidies from Moscow ended and the Kremlin simply walked away from its military commitments in the former Soviet republics, leaving them to deal with the decaying military equipment on their own. In the most notable example of a newly independent state seeking foreign assistance to remove its Soviet-era military debris, Kazakhstan partnered with both the United States and the Russian Federation to remove its Soviet nuclear arsenal, returning it to Russia in exchange for security assurances and financial compensation from both Washington and Moscow. In most cases, conventional munitions, such as those at Kagan, were simply overlooked and left to deteriorate.

While there was no direct mention of criminality or terrorism involved in the Kagan explosions, a government commission including Uzbekistan's State Security Service, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and government agencies has been formed to investigate the incident.

The tragedy could have been worse, given Kagan's proximity to Bukhara. Kagan is an important railway hub, and the management of Uzbekistan Havo Yullari (Uzbek Airlines) as a precaution canceled all Tashkent-Bukhara and Bukhara-Tashkent flights.

The conflagration focused the authorities' attention on the 50,000-barrel per day Bukharskii nefteperarabatyvaiushchii zavod, or Bukhara Refinery, located in Karaulbazar, 15 miles from Kagan. Uzbekneftegaz, operator of the facility, quickly issued a news release stating the facility was undamaged.

Had the Bukhara Refinery been crippled or destroyed, it would have represented a major blow to Uzbekistan's petrochemical industry. The $400 million Bukhara Refinery, built in 1997 by a joint venture including France's Technip and Japan's JGC, refines condensate as well as crude oil, producing gasoline, gasoil, LPG and fuel oil with feedstock delivered by pipeline from the Kokdumalak oil and gas field, Uzbekistan's largest oil producer.

The Bukhara Refinery was the first refinery built in the Commonwealth of Independent States after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and has an annual capacity of 2.5 million tons. Along with the Soviet-era 106,000 bpd Ferghana and 66,000 bpd Alty-Arik refineries, the three sites are responsible for virtually all of Uzbekistan's refined petroleum output, currently producing about 222,000 bpd of crude oil and condensate products. The three refineries supply most of Uzbekistan's local demand for refined oil products, but Uzbekistan will continue to import some oil products until planned plant expansions are completed.

Undoubtedly focusing the government's attention is the fact that the day before the Kagan explosions Uzbekneftegaz announced that the Bukhara Refinery, after a $1.5 million modernization of separate technological lines, by the end of the year would begin production of high-grade Jet A-1 aviation fuel to replace its previous production of lower-grade TS aviation kerosene. Last year the Bukhara Refinery produced 300,000 tons of TS aviation kerosene.

According to the chief of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Vyacheslav Volokh, the organization is considering aid to Uzbekistan following the Kagan explosions. Founded in 2002 and based in Moscow, the CSTO includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, as well as Uzbekistan. For Moscow, Tashkent's message is simple -- come and collect your trash.