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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Mark Adams who wrote (9468)11/8/2001 9:49:41 PM
From: KyrosL  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
Mark,

Turkey doesn't have a border with Afghanistan, and is rather far. Here is a link with a description and map of Afghanistan:

cia.gov

Without overflight rights from Pakistan, the war ends tomorrow. Pakistan is making very serious noises that it wants the bombing stopped real soon, so the need for a base is urgent right now. After a month, we have been able to place less than 100 troops on the ground. How many do you think will be needed to build from scratch a modern airbase and defend it in the middle of a hostile landlocked country thousands of miles from any existing US bases? I read that supplies to our troops on the ground move by donkey or horse right now. I wonder how long it will take to build the base you propose under these conditions -- my wild guess is at least a couple of years. Modern aircraft are delicate machines. It took many weeks to prepare a base of operations for a couple dozen Apache helicopters in Albania during the Kosovo war -- they were never used and one or two crashed during training. Albania was within spitting distance of plenty of NATO bases and had a convenient coast line and ports to boot.

I think the building versus buying decision is a no brainer: pay Uzbekistan whatever they want to use their bases; it will be far cheaper and quicker than if we try to build it from scratch in Afghanistan; we will depend on Russia as well as Uzbekistan, but that's inevitable after Pakistan drops out anyway. After the Northern Alliance secures the Mazar-e-Sharif base, I don't see why we can't relocate most of the operations there.
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