BY NORM DIXON
Under the cloak of the "war on terrorism", the United States is rapidly moving to establish a permanent military presence across the strategic Central Asian region which, until the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, was off-limits to US military and political influence and economic exploitation.
Military ties with Washington are now being forged, or strengthened, with former Soviet Central Asian and Caucasian republics. US military bases are being constructed. Thousands of US troops are also digging in for a long stay in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The best known of Washington's new facilities is the Kandabad air base, near Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, where US warplanes and 2000 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division have been stationed throughout the war on Afghanistan. In return, Washington has promised to protect the repressive Uzbek regime's security and has given more than US$100 million in military aid.
In Kyrgyzstan, a large base is being built at Manas International airport, 30 kilometres from the capital Bishkek. The US military is erecting facilities that will house 3000 personnel, reported Associated Press on January 9. Manas will, according US military spokespeople, become a "transportation hub" and will service jet fighters, cargo planes and air-to-air refuelling aircraft. Kyrgyzstan authorities have approved unrestricted US use of the base, including permission for it to be a launch pad for combat missions.
In Tajikistan, US military aircraft are operating out of Kulyab, near the Afghan border. A US military team has visited Tajikistan to assess three potential sites for US bases. On January 9, Washington dropped restrictions on the sale of US arms or the provision of training to Tajikistan. The US State department said the move was "in the interests of foreign policy and national security".
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have also offered Washington locations for US military bases and allowed access to Afghanistan for US special forces.
In Afghanistan, the US is constructing a large base near Kandahar, designed to handle a high volume of air movements. Around 1000 soldiers from the US Army's 101st Airborne Division have replaced the 1500 marines who established the base. Army troops are typically deployed to hold territory for extended periods. According to the January 9 New York Times, the Kandahar deployment "could easily double in size if the number of prisoners grew sharply, or if American forces were needed to capture terrorists".
US troops are also deployed at the Bagram air base, near Kabul, and at the Mazar-i-Sharif airport, in northern Afghanistan.
In the course of its bombing blitz on Afghanistan, Washington set up operations at four air bases in Pakistan, from which marines and army commandos, search-and-rescue teams and support have been operating.
US forces share the Jacobabad base, 480km northeast of Karachi, and Pasni base, 290km west of Karachi, with the Pakistan military. At Jacobabad, US forces have carried out major construction and repairs and installed radar facilities.
Military ties
Washington also has exclusive use of the Dalbandin airfield, 275km southwest of Quetta, which it uses as a forward refuelling base for special operations helicopters. The Shamsi airfield is also used by US special operations forces.
Washington has also been strengthening military ties with other Central Asian and Caucasian states. Armenia and Azerbaijan have allowed the US military use of their air space. As a reward, the Bush administration lifted a 10-year ban on US military aid to the two countries.
NATO officials arrived in the former Soviet republic of Georgia on January 11 to prepare for large military exercises later in the year. NATO troops from the US, Britain, Germany, Greece and Turkey will join hands with armed forces from the countries that constitute the NATO-aligned Partnership for Peace: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine and Partneship for Peace's newest member, Uzbekistan.
The Washington Post on January 6 reported that Cold War-era trade restrictions on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would soon be lifted. Kyrgyzstan and Georgia were exempted in 2000. While the restrictions were imposed in 1974, supposedly on the basis of the Soviet republics' poor human rights records, US officials admit that the only thing that has changed is that the ruling elite of these countries no longer call themselves "communist" and are now pro-US.
Military cooperation with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan began in the late 1990s. Military exercises involving troops from the five former Soviet Central Asian republics and the US have taken place since 1997.
Around 290 military officers and politicians from Central Asian countries have been trained at the US-German sponsored George C. Marshall European Centre for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, since it opened in 1993. Many have risen to the top ranks of their countries' military and government.
"We have soft-pedalled a number of our traditional concerns on human rights. That's part of coalition-building. You do it for a larger good, which is the defeat of terrorism", Lee Hamilton, former Democratic Party chairperson of the US House of Representatives international affairs committee, told the January 6 Washington Post.
Chain
Washington's new military assets provide new links in a chain of facilities that include Camp Bondsteel in Kosova, bases and facilities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman in the Persian Gulf, as well as the Incirlik air base in Turkey (where many of the US warplanes that continue to bomb Iraq are based).
The US has quietly constructed a US$1.5 billion base at al Adid, which boasts one of the longest runways in the region. US navy battle groups permanently prowl the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean. The Pentagon has approved the long-term positioning of two aircraft carriers and ships with thousands of marines aboard in the northern Arabian Sea.
Los Angeles Times correspondent William Arkin described the expansion of the US presence on January 6: "The US is creating a ring of new military bases that encircle Afghanistan and enhance the armed forces' ability to strike targets throughout much of the Muslim world. Since September 11 ... military tent cities have sprung up at 13 locations in nine countries neighbouring Afghanistan ... Altogether, from Bulgaria and Uzbekistan to Turkey, Kuwait and beyond, more than 60,000 US military now live and work at these forward bases. Hundreds of aircraft fly in and out of so-called 'expeditionary airfields'."
The facilities place US forces within striking distance of Russia's and China's key defence installations, including China's nuclear testing facility at Lop Nor and the Russian spacecraft launching centre at Baykonur in north-west Kazakhstan. It is almost certain that sophisticated spy technology will be secretly installed in the new US bases. The rich Caspian Sea oil fields are also within easy reach.
US hegemony
The entrenchment of the US presence comes despite the clear military victory Washington has won in Afghanistan: the Taliban regime has long collapsed and its forces have been thoroughly routed; Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda fighters have either been killed, captured or have fled to Pakistan; and a pro-Western government has been installed in Kabul. Surely, US forces should be heading home?
That would be the case if Washington's only goal was to end the Taliban's harbouring of al Qaeda fighters bent on destabilising US puppets in the Middle East and Gulf states and launching terrorist attacks against the US. But that was never the main reason for its one-sided attack on Afghanistan, merely the convenient justification.
Some on the left will point to a permanent US presence in Central Asia as evidence that Washington wants to control the Caspian oil fields so that US big business can exploit them. While that undoubtedly is an important factor in US policy-makers' thinking, it is not the decisive one.
Since the end of World War II, the US ruling class has pursued as its overarching strategic goal the maintenance of its overwhelming military, economic and political dominance over any rivals and the prevention of the emergence of other great powers that could challenge that position.
The 1992 draft of the Pentagon's Defense Planning Guidance (prepared by the Paul Wolfowitz) stated bluntly that the US must "discourage ... advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or ... even aspiring to a larger regional or global role ... [To achieve this, Washington] must retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing ... those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which seriously unsettle international relations."
The massive build-up of US military might in Europe, Asia and the Middle East after 1945 was not simply directed at containing the Soviet Union, crushing Third World revolutions and controlling natural resources such as oil — as vital to US interests as they were. It was also aimed at enmeshing its major capitalist rivals — Britain, France, Germany and Japan — within US-dominated military alliances designed to prevent them developing independent armed forces. It is no accident that US military spending is greater than the combined military budgets of Russia, Japan, China, France, Britain and Germany.
Washington's military, political and economic domination of the oil-rich Middle East — now extending to Central Asia and the Caucasus — has a similar motive.
The US economy could survive without Middle Eastern oil and the US is always seeking to reduce or diversify the 25% of its oil imports that come from that region. Most of the oil consumed by the US is sourced from the US itself, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.
Washington has sought to dominate the Middle East because its capitalist rivals in Europe and Japan are heavily dependent on oil from this region and, before long, so will China. As Walter Russell Mead, a senior analyst at the US ruling-class Council on Foreign Relations, explained to US listeners on National Public Radio in October: "One of the reasons that we are assuming this role of policeman of the Middle East, more or less, has more to do with making Japan and some other countries feel that their oil flow is assured... so that they don't then feel more need to create a great power, armed forces and security doctrine... You don't start getting a lot of great powers with conflicting interests sending their militaries all over the world."
From Green Left Weekly, January 23, 2002.
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