By Amir Mateen from The International News, Jang Group, Pakistan

WASHINGTON: US military planners are preparing for a long stay in the region around Afghanistan, confirming fears about the Americans digging themselves in like in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War. American warplanes will begin arriving at an air base being built in Kyrgyzstan as early as next week in what could be the first prolonged US military presence in the former Soviet Union, a senior Pentagon official said on Thursday.

Ostensibly, the moves will allow US forces to keep looking for terrorists in Afghanistan. But the presence of US troops in the back yards of Russia and China for the long haul could cause worry to the regional countries. That the region offers the world's largest oil and gas reserves after the Middle East gives credence to the conspiracy theories about larger US designs in the region.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghanistan born consultant of the Bush government, had advocated all along establishing a permanent US air base in Central Asia while he was at the Rand think tank in 2000. Now he has been made President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan. His visit to the region starting from Friday is being watched carefully for the larger US strategy. He will also visit Pakistan after visits to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, army troops from the 101st Airborne Division are already replacing Marines, specifically because of their ability to remain for a prolonged period.

The 101st Airborne contingent includes more military police than the Marines could provide, as well as a force trained for "longer term" garrison protection, a Pentagon official said. About 200 US troops arrived in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek in late December. On Christmas Day, reports USA Today, the country's official news agency issued a little-noticed announcement that the Pentagon "had asked for" 37 acres to build an air base near an airport west of the capital. A Pentagon official said four to six KC-135 air tankers might arrive next week, and a squadron of F-15E fighter jets could follow by the end of the month. The US presence "is going to be longer than temporary", the official told USA Today.

The air force's low-keyed move into Kyrgyzstan comes as the bombing of Afghanistan winds down. A Pentagon official said the air force was pulling out some of its AC-130 gunships from undisclosed bases in the region this week and it could pull out a squadron of F-15E fighters next week. Last month, Kyrgyz First Deputy Interior Minister Sadyrbek Dubanayev said, "It is not worth creating a hullabaloo over the landing of the US Air Force."

But that is exactly what the US presence could create, the newspaper quotes a congressional source as saying. The US Air Force established a temporary base in Uzbekistan, but Uzbek leaders never consented to offensive operations from there. Kyrgyzstan, which borders China, gives the military an offensive base that will allow warplanes to reach Afghanistan without crossing the airspace of Pakistan, which is facing a border stand-off with India. Kyrgyzstan occupies strategic real estate. The new base will be less than 200 miles from China and oil fields in Uzbekistan. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not objected to the base, but the congressional aide said Russia could grow nervous the longer US forces remain there.