Official Denies Seeking Permanent Afghan Bases

A senior State Department official on counter-terrorism denied today that the U.S. is involved in talks with the Afghan government to establish permanent bases in Afghanistan after 2014, when American forces are supposed to be out of the country.

"We've been very clear about this. We do not intend to have permanent bases in Afghanistan that would threaten others in the region. We've been very forthright about that," Daniel Benjamin, ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism, told reporters during a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C., this morning.

A report earlier today in the British newspaper The Guardian claimed the U.S. and Afghan governments have been engaged in "acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement … likely to see U.S. troops, spies and air power based in the troubled country for decades."

Benjamin, who said he had not seen the Guardian story, told Military.com that he hadn't been looped into any discussions regarding an American presence past 2014.

In public statements, State and Defense department officials have been adamant the U.S. does not want to establish "permanent bases" in Afghanistan, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying in March that the U.S. has "no interest in [them], but if the Afghans want us here, we are certainly prepared to contemplate that."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has likewise rejected "permanent" U.S. bases in Afghanistan, including to Afghan President Hamid Karzai directly, according to a State Department cable released by Wikileaks. The cable states that Clinton and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry passed on Karzai's offer of Bagram and Kandahar air bases as permanent locations for U.S. forces.

The Guardian claims that U.S. officials acknowledge the desire for a long-term military presence in Afghanistan, even if the bases are not called "permanent."

"There are U.S. troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently," the paper quoted one American official as saying.

Benjamin's denial of the report appears to include a qualifier that echoes remarks made by Karzai in February, when he claimed the U.S. wanted permanent bases in Afghanistan but that they would not be "used as bases against other countries" and that Afghanistan's neighbors would not have to feel threatened.

Later that same month, during a media roundtable with reporters, Karl Eikenberry said he expected a U.S.-Afghan security and military partnership to continue, though the U.S. "will not rely on permanent bases, nor insist on a presence that could be a threat to any of Afghanistan's neighbors."

This would not be the first time that the U.S. and Afghanistan did a workaround over the phrase "permanent bases." Nearly five years ago, when he was asked about the U.S. setting up permanent bases in Iraq, President George W. Bush said it was too soon to discuss the possibility, but noted how the U.S. was handling the idea of a long-term presence in Afghanistan.

"Now, we entered into an agreement with the Karzai government," Bush said during an Oct. 25, 2006, press conference. "They weren't called permanent bases, but they were called arrangements that will help this government understand that there will be a U.S. presence so long as they want them there."