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| The Alliance |
| Press can't find the Americans in Uzbekistan... |
| 2001-10-04 |
In a region braced for an American war in Afghanistan, all that's missing are visible signs of the Americans. Thousands of U.S. troops and warplanes are reportedly on their way here, to staging areas in former Soviet republics along Afghanistan's northern border. But from dusty airfields in southern Uzbekistan to a strategically located base near the Afghan border in Tajikistan, there is no evidence of a significant U.S. military presence. And inside Afghanistan, the opposition forces that hope to join U.S. troops to oust the ruling Taliban militia say they have not seen a single U.S. soldier. More than three weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington prompted the expectation of U.S. retaliatory strikes against Osama bin Laden and his hosts in Afghanistan, it has become clear that this is a different kind of war. Instead of organizing massive troop buildups and very public preparations such as those undertaken a decade ago during the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon has mobilized more than 30,000 soldiers to the region without saying where they're going. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |