Article...US 'army of ghosts' billeted in former Soviet air base...
By David Rennie in Tashkent
(Filed: 12/10/2001)
portal.telegraph.co.uk
THOUSANDS of American troops sent to the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan have become a ghost army, hidden from view by a regime that took a gamble by letting them arrive in the first place.
Neither US officials nor their Uzbek counterparts are saying anything about the forces gathering at the Soviet-era airbase of Khanabad, on a dusty plain 125 miles north of the Afghan border.
Locals and foreigners alike have been kept miles away from the new arrivals, behind multiple security cordons and road blocks manned by machinegun bearing Uzbek paramilitaries.
Some 1,000 American soldiers are to be based in Uzbekistan, but their role has been limited to support and rescue missions in Afghanistan.
The handful of local civilians being hired by the American military have become ghosts themselves. Local translators who enter the base at Khanabad have been told they must stay there, unless given special permission to leave by American commanders.
Such precautions are understandable. Uzbekistan, the first part of the old Soviet Union to play host to American forces, is 90 per cent Muslim and has suffered fatal bomb blasts and cross-border armed raids, blamed on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is closely linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
The presence of American troops has angered the country's small minority of fundamentalists, while even moderate Islamic clerics have publicly expressed sorrow at attacks on their Muslim "brothers" in Afghanistan.
But Uzbekistan's gamble appears to be paying off. The mood on its streets is remarkably peaceful.
A Western diplomat said: "At the moment, there is no widespread anti-American sentiment here. It is calm and people who sent their children home are now regretting it."
He added: "Ninety-nine per cent of Uzbek Muslims are tolerant, generally educated people, who do not believe that this is a war between the West and Islam." |
