US lacks Central Asian bases to combat threat

The United States hasn’t reached any agreements with Central Asian states bordering Afghanistan for bases or other facilities to use in counterterrorism operations there against Islamic State and al-Qaeda, senior defence officials say.

US officials had held ‘‘extensive conversations’’ with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and other countries, and expected to have more, Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defence for policy, said at a Senate hearing yesterday.

US forces ‘‘need to build out more capability so we’re not just reliant on facilities we have in the Arabian Gulf’’, Kahl said. The closest major US facilities, in Qatar and Bahrain, are more than 2400 kilometres away.

He said US intelligence estimated that Islamic State-Khorasan (Isis-K), the Afghanistan faction of the terror group, could build the capacity to plan and conduct international operations within six months if unchecked.

The Biden Administration has expressed confidence that its ‘‘over-thehorizon’’ counterterrorism operations – primarily air strikes launched from outside Afghanistan – are sufficient to disrupt Isis-K and al-Qaeda, and ultimately destroy them.

The US maintained air facilities in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan at various times during the Afghanistan war, but those agreements have long since lapsed.