Twenty-First Century Blowback?

The construction projects are sprouting like mushrooms:
walled complexes, high-strength weapons vaults, and underground bunkers
with command and control capacities -- and they're being planned and
funded by a military force intent on embedding itself ever more deeply
in the Middle East.

If Iran were building these facilities, it would be front-page news
and American hawks would be talking war, but that country's
Revolutionary Guards aren't behind this building boom, nor are the
Syrians, Lebanon's Hezbollah, or some set of al-Qaeda affiliates. It's
the U.S. military that's digging in, hardening, improving, and expanding
its garrisons in and around the Persian Gulf at the very moment when it
is officially in a draw-down phase in Iraq.

On August 31st, President Obama took to the airwaves to announce
"the end of our combat mission in Iraq." This may, however, prove yet
another "mission accomplished" moment. After all, from the lack of a
real Iraqi air force (other than the U.S. Air Force) to the fact that there are more American troops in that country today than were projected to be there in September 2003, many signs point in another direction.

In fact, within days of the president's announcement it was reported
that the U.S. military was pouring money into improving bases in Iraq
and that advance elements of a combat-hardened armored cavalry regiment
were being sent there in what was politely dubbed an "advise and assist" (rather than combat) role. On September 13th, the New York Timesdescribed the type of operations that U.S. forces were actually involved in:

"During two days of
combat in Diyala Province, American troops were armed with mortars,
machine guns, and sniper rifles. Apache and Kiowa helicopters attacked
insurgents with cannon and machine-gun fire, and F-16's dropped
500-pound bombs."

According to the report, U.S. troops were within range of enemy hand
grenades and one American soldier was wounded in the battle.

Adhering to an agreement
inked during George W. Bush's final year in office, the Obama
administration has pledged to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the
end of 2011. U.S. military commanders have, however, repeatedly spoken of the possibility of extending the U.S. military's stay well into the future. Just recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates let the Iraqi government know
that the U.S. was open to such a prospect. "We're ready to have that
discussion if and when they want to raise it with us," he said. As the
British Guardian's Martin Chulov wrote
last month, "[T]he U.S. is widely believed to be hoping to retain at
least one military base in Iraq that it could use as a strategic asset
in the region."

Recent events, however, have cast U.S. basing plans into turmoil.
Notably unnerving for the Obama administration was a deal reportedly
brokered by Iran in which Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- whose forces
had repeatedly clashed with U.S. troops only a few short years ago --
threw his support behind Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, currently vying
for a second term in office. This was allegedly part of a regional
agreement involving Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah that could leave the
U.S. military out in the cold. A source informed the Guardian
that "Maliki told [his new regional partners that] he will never extend,
or renew [any bases] or give any facilities to the Americans or British
after the end of next year."

Even if the U.S. was forced to withdraw all its troops from Iraq,
however, its military "footprint" in the Middle East would still be
substantial enough to rankle opponents of an armed American presence in
the region and be a drain on U.S. taxpayers who continue to fund
America's "empire of bases." As has been true in recent
years, the latest U.S. military documents indicate that base expansion
and upgrades are the order of the day for America's little-mentioned
garrisons in the nations around Iraq.

One thing is, by now, clear: whatever transpires in Iraq, the U.S.
military presence in the Persian Gulf and surrounding environs will be
formidable well into the future.

Middle Eastern Mega-Bases

As the "last" U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraq under the glare
of TV lights in the dead of night and rolled toward Kuwait, there was
plenty of commentary about where they had been, but almost none about
where they were going.

In the Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. military helped push Saddam
Hussein's invading Iraqi army out of Kuwait only to find that the
country's leader, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, refused to return home
"until crystal chandeliers and gold-plated bathroom fixtures could be
reinstalled in Kuwait City's Bayan Palace." Today, the U.S. military's
Camp Arifjan, which grew exponentially as the Iraq War ramped up, sits
30 miles south of the refurbished royal complex and houses about 15,000
U.S. troops. They have access to all the amenities of strip-mall
America, including Pizza Hut, Pizza Inn, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Hardees,
Subway, and Burger King. The military talks little about its presence
at Arifjan, but Army contracting documents offer clues about its
intentions there. A recent bid solicitation, for example, indicated
that, in the near future, construction would begin there on additional
high strength armory vaults to house "weapons and sensitive items."

In addition to Camp Arifjan, U.S. military facilities in Kuwait
include Camps Buehring and Virginia, Kuwait Naval Base, Ali Al Salem Air
Base, and Udairi Range, a training facility near the Iraqi border. The
U.S. military's work is also supported by a Defense Logistics Agency
(DLA) distribution center in Kuwait, located not on a U.S. base but in
the Mina Abdulla industrial zone about 30 miles south of Kuwait City.

Unlike other DLA hubs, which supply U.S. garrisons around the world, the Kuwaiti facility is contractor owned and operated. Made up
of a walled compound spanning 104 acres, the complex contains eight
climate-controlled warehouses, each covering about four acres, one
250,000-square-foot covered area for cargo, and six uncovered plots of
similar size for storage and processing needs.

Typical of base upgrades in Kuwait -- some massive, some modest --
now on the drawing boards, recent contracting documents reveal that the
Army Corps of Engineers intends to upgrade equipment at Kuwait Naval
Base for the maintenance and repair of ships. In fact, the Department of
Defense has already issued more than $18 million in construction
contracts for Kuwait in 2010.

The U.S. military also operates and utilizes bases and
other facilities in the nearby Persian Gulf nations of Qatar, Bahrain,
the United Arab Emirates, and Oman.

During the 1930s, the British Royal Air Force operated
an airfield on Oman's Masirah Island. Today, the U.S. Air Force and
members of other service branches have settled in there, operating from
the island as well as other facilities by special agreement with the
sultanate. The Air Force is also supported in Oman by "War Reserve
Materiel" storage and maintenance facilities, operated by defense
contractor Dyncorp, in Seeb, Thumrait, and Salalah Port.

From 2001 to 2010, the U.S. military spent about $32
million on construction projects in Oman. In September, the Army upped
the ante by awarding an $8.6 million contract to refurbish the Royal Air
Force of Oman's air field at Thumrait Air Base.

U.S. efforts in Bahrain are on a grander scale. This year, the U.S. Navy broke ground on a mega-construction project
to develop 70 acres of waterfront at the port at Mina Salman.
Scheduled for completion in 2015, the complex is slated to include new
port facilities, barracks for troops, administrative buildings, a dining
facility, and a recreation center, among other amenities, with a price
tag of $580 million.

There are similar expenditures in neighboring Qatar. In 1996,
lacking an air force of its own, Qatar still built Al Udeid Air Base at a
cost of more than $1 billion with the goal of attracting the U.S.
military. It succeeded. In September 2001, U.S. aircraft began to
operate out of the facility. By 2002, the U.S. had tanks, armored
vehicles, dozens of warehouses, communications and computing equipment,
and thousands of troops at and around Al Udeid. In 2003, the U.S. moved
its major regional combat air operations center out of Saudi Arabia and
into neighboring Qatar where the government was ready to spend almost $400 million on that high-tech command complex.

From
then on, Al Udeid Air Base has served as a major command and logistics
hub for U.S. regional operations including its wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Last year, the Pentagon awarded a $52 million contract to
further upgrade its airfield capabilities, a $44 million deal to upgrade
other facilities there, and a $6 million contract for expanded
warehousing capacity. Nor does the building boom there show any signs
of abating. A report by the Congressional Research Service issued
earlier this year noted:

"The Obama
administration requested $60 million in FY2010 military construction
funds for further upgrades to U.S. military facilities in Qatar as part
of an ongoing expansion and modernization program that has been underway
since 2003 at a cost of over $200 million. The administration's FY2011
military construction request for Qatar is $64.3 million."

Jordan's Bunker Mentality

The Pentagon has also invested heavily in Jordanian military
infrastructure. One major beneficiary of these projects has been the
international construction firm Archirodon which, between 2006-2008,
worked on the construction of the King Abdullah II Special Operations
Training Center (KASOTC). It is a state-of-the-art military and
counterterrorism training facility owned and operated by the Jordanian
government, but built in part under a $70 million U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers contract.

In 2009, when that 1,235-acre $200 million Jordanian training center
was unveiled, King Abdullah II gave the inaugural address, praising the
facility as a world-class hub for special forces training. General David
Petraeus, then-head of the U.S. Central Command overseeing the Greater
Middle East, was also on hand to laud the facility as "a center of
excellence not only for doctrinal development and refinement of TTPs
[technology, tactics and procedures], but for strengthening the regional
security network emerging in this area."

Between 2001 and 2009, the Army awarded $89 million in contracts for
Jordanian construction projects. This year, it inked deals for another
$3.3 million (much of it for improvements to KASOTC). Recently, the
Army also issued a call for bids for the construction of subterranean
complexes at three locations in Jordan, the largest of them
approximately 13,000 square feet. Each of these underground bunkers
will reportedly boast a command-and-control operations center, offices,
sleeping quarters, cafeterias, and storage facilities. The project is
set to cost up to $25 million.

1,001 Arabian Contracts

According to a 2009 Congressional Research Service report, from 1950
to 2006 Saudi Arabia purchased almost $63 billion in weapons, military
equipment, and related services through the Pentagon's Foreign Military
Sales (FMS) program. Just last month, the U.S. announced
that it would conclude new arms deals with the Saudis which would equal
that sum -- not in another half century but in the next 15 to 20
years. Labeled a move to counter Iranian power in the region, the deal
for advanced tactical fighter aircraft and state-of-the-art helicopters
garnered headlines. What didn't were the longstanding, ongoing U.S.
military construction efforts in that country.

Between 1950 and 2006, Saudi Arabia experienced $17.1 billion in
construction activity courtesy of the Pentagon. In the years since,
according to government data, the Department of Defense has issued more
than $400 million in construction contracts for the kingdom, including
$33 million in 2010 for projects ranging from a dining hall ($6 million)
to weapons storage warehouses and ammunition supply facilities (nearly
$1 million).

Bases and "the Base"

In his 1996 "Declaration of War Against the Americans Who Occupy the Land of the Two Holy Mosques," Osama bin Laden wrote:

"The presence of the
USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the
Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve
in the world. The existence of these forces in the area will provoke the
people of the country and induces aggression on their religion,
feelings, and prides and pushes them to take up armed struggle against
the invaders occupying the land."

Since then, the U.S. and bin Laden's rag-tag guerrilla force, al
Qaeda ("the Base"), have been locked in a struggle that has led to
further massive U.S. base expansions in the greater Middle East and
South Asia. At the height of its occupation, the U.S. had hundreds of bases throughout Iraq. Today, hundreds more have been built in Afghanistan where, in the 1980s, bin Laden and other jihadists, backed and financed by the CIA, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis, fought to expel the Soviet occupiers of that country.

As early as 2005, the U.S. military was floating the possibility of retaining some of its Afghan bases permanently.
In Iraq, plans for similar permanent garrisons have recently been
thrown into doubt by the very government the U.S. helped install in
power. Whatever happens in either war zone, however, one thing is
clear: the U.S. military will still be deeply dug into the Middle East.

While American infrastructure crumbles
at home, new construction continues in oil-rich kingdoms, sultanates,
and emirates there, courtesy of the Pentagon. It's a building program
guaranteed to further inflame anti-American sentiment in the region.
History may not repeat itself, but ominously -- just as in 1996 when bin
Laden issued his declaration -- most Americans have not the slightest
idea what their military is doing with their tax dollars in the Persian
Gulf and beyond, or what twenty-first century blowback might result from
such activities.