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Nick Turse, America's Shadowy Base World -- actual news
Posted by: joan.Russow on http://PEJ.org Tuesday, February 09, 2010 - 02:18 PM
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Nick Turse, America's Shadowy Base World -- actual news
From TomDispatch - this afternoon, a news-making piece, revealing for the first time the actual number of U.S. and allied military bases in Afghanistan -- 400 -- and the number of (largely U.S. financed or built) Afghan security bases, 300, as well as the staggering Pentagon base-building program that is behind them: Nick Turse, "The 700 Military Bases of Afghanistan, Black Sites in the Empire of Bases"
"In the nineteenth century," begins Pentagon expert and author of The Complex, Nick Turse, "it was a fort used by British forces. In the twentieth century, Soviet troops moved into the crumbling facilities. In December 2009, at this site in the Shinwar district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province, U.S. troops joined members of the Afghan National Army in preparing the way for the next round of foreign occupation. On its grounds, a new military base is expected to rise, one of hundreds of camps and outposts scattered across the country."
The new base at Shinwar will be but one of approximately 400 U.S. and allied bases that have been built, in one of the great military construction sprees of modern history in the backlands of Afghanistan. TomDispatch regular Nick Turse, who has followed Pentagon base-building activities closely in the Greater Middle East, reveals that number -- and the number of Afghan security forces bases as well -- for the first time in print anywhere. Until now, American base-building in Afghanistan, enormous as the project is, has remained in the shadows. Now, in this piece, a reporter finally comes to grips with its dimensions and outlines them for the rest of us. With Turse, you survey the U.S. mega-bases in Afghanistan and how they are being upgraded, as well as the forward operating bases and small outposts. And above all, you get a sense of the enormity of what is being built there and the staggering cost of it all. In his news-breaking piece, Turse concludes: "After nearly a decade of war, close to 700 U.S., allied, and Afghan military bases dot Afghanistan. Until now, however, they have existed as black sites known to few Americans outside the Pentagon. It remains to be seen, a decade into the future, how many of these sites will still be occupied by U.S. and allied troops and whose flag will be planted on the ever-shifting British-Soviet-U.S./Afghan site at Shinwar."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/<WBR>archive/175204
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