Afghan war gives US a chance to hunker down in Muslim world

Behind a veil of secret agreements, the US is creating a ring of new and expanded military bases that encircle Afghanistan and enhance the armed forces greater ability to strike targets throughout much of the Muslim world. Since September 11, according to Pentagon sources, military tent cities have sprung up at 13 locations in nine countries neighbouring Afghanistan, extending the network of bases in the region.

WILLIAM M. ARKIN

From Bulgaria and Uzbekistan to Turkey, Kuwait and beyond, more than 60,000 US military personnel now live and work at these forward bases. Hundreds of aircraft fly in and out of so-called ‘‘expeditionary airfields.’’

The new build-up is occurring with almost no public discussion. Indeed, it has passed virtually unnoticed outside the region — in part because of operational security and force protection considerations in Afghanistan and in part because of agreements between Washington and host governments not to discuss the bases in public. But the reasoning behind these agreements underscores the risk: Though Washington has obtained the support of the ruling regimes, including some inside the former Soviet Union, virtually all bases are in countries where an American military presence stirs resentment among Islamic extremists.

‘‘I swear to God that America will not live in peace before all the army of infidels depart the land of the Prophet Mohammed,’’ Osama bin Laden said in his first video recording released after September 11. US policy-makers have tended to dismiss such statements as propaganda, but some analysts think they reflect widespread Muslim sensitivities that the US has been slow to appreciate. In the view not only of Osama but also of many Islamic sympathisers, the continued presence of American forces in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 constituted ‘‘defilement’’ of Muslim holy places. Without accepting this reasoning as a justification for terrorism, some analysts believe US officials underestimate the impact that prolonged stationing of American forces may have in the Muslim world — especially since it is highly visible there, though it has attracted little attention in the West.

The Arab media in particular are filled with speculation and conspiracy theories about the ultimate purpose of the US presence. Many see it as evidence of an American desire for hegemony and control. ‘‘The old basing structure, honed to fight the Soviet Union,’’ is gone, says defense analyst James Blaker, author of a Pentagon study of overseas bases. ‘‘But does the new one open us up to counteractions?’’

The American build-up in the region began long before September 11, and it has been paralleled by a shift in the focus of terrorist groups. As the United States built a network of facilities in a half dozen Persian Gulf states after the Gulf War, terrorism increasingly focused on large US targets, from the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the USS Cole in Yemen to the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. In the words of novelist John le Carre, who set some of his stories in the Muslim world, ‘‘What America longs for at this moment, even above retribution, is more friends and fewer enemies.’’ Instead, ‘‘what America is storing up for herself is yet more enemies,’’ he said in an essay that appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail. ‘‘Because after all the bribes, threats and promises that have patched together this rickety coalition, we cannot prevent another suicide bomber being born — and nobody can tell us how to dodge this devil’s cycle of despair, hated and, yet again, revenge.’’

Since the end of the Cold War, the US military presence overseas has changed profoundly. A 1999 Army War College study found, ‘‘While permanent overseas presence has decreased dramatically, operational deployments have increased exponentially.’’ The Pentagon pulled out of 700 facilities in Europe and abandoned the containment ring of bases around the old Soviet Union. In sheer numbers, it reduced the overseas presence to about 60% of what it was when President Reagan took office. Most of the numerical reduction took place in Germany, as forces were demobilised and the military shrank its Cold War size there by two-thirds.

The far more significant change, however, came in the way troops were used abroad. In earlier times, members of the armed forces were routinely ‘‘stationed’’ overseas, usually for tours of several years and often accompanied by their families. Now they are ‘‘deployed,’’ with the length of tour more uncertain and dependents almost never allowed. On any given day before September 11, according to the Defense Department, more than 60,000 military personnel were conducting temporary operations and exercises in 100 countries.

Beyond the burdens it places on those involved, the new system draws the military into situations that are murkier and potentially riskier. Consider the case of Master Sergeant Evander Earl Andrews, the first American casualty of Operation Enduring Freedom. Andrews, an 18-year Air Force veteran, died in a construction accident. He was one of more than 2,000 civil engineers deployed in the region building and fixing up bases.

The Defense Department initially said Andrews was at a ‘‘forward deployed location’’ supporting the Afghanistan war. Eventually, it divulged that the location was Al-Udeid, Qatar. Al-Udeid is a billion-dollar base. Its 15,000 foot runway is one of the longest in the Gulf. Construction began after an April 2000 visit by Defense Secretary William Cohen.

Qatar already housed equipment for an Army brigade and, in 1996, hosted 30 Air Force fighters on an ‘‘expeditionary’’ deployment. Although the original justification for gulf bases such as Al-Udeid was preparedness for renewed action against Iraq, a senior defense official said last year the Qatar facilities were ‘‘not focused at one particular country or another, but part of a system we would like to have in place.’’

Issues of decision-makING, jurisdiction and authority held by te host country are spelled out in documents called status of forces agreements. As of September 11, the US had formal agreements of this sort with Qatar and 92 other countries. Since September 11, new arrangements have also been established with Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

How long will the US remain? No one inside the Pentagon or at Central Command headquarters has a timetable, but it may be instructive to recall that the Persian Gulf bases have now been occupied for more than a decade. They were constantly upgraded and improved during the 1990s, setting the stage for the current deployments. The process went forward on a largely ad hoc basis, focused on practical arrangements and conditions in each country.

Then, as now, what seems to have been missing was a broad conceptual view of what the whole effort might add up to, or what its more distant implications might turn out to be.

(LA Times-Washington Post)