A Secret Hub for the U.S. in Afghan War

In October, when U.S. military personnel were first spotted at Pakistan’s sprawling Shahbaz air base a short flying distance from the Afghan border, the Pakistani government hastened to assure militant Islamic protesters that the Americans were there for purely logistical and defensive purposes--not for combat.

In reality, however, the U.S. installation at Shahbaz has become the secret hub for Special Forces commando raids, covert CIA operations and a host of other activities aimed at rooting out Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and developing intelligence to thwart future terrorist attacks against the United States, according to military and other sources familiar with the operation.

Behind its screen of secrecy, the base appears to have played a central role in the air war in Afghanistan. Its proximity to the Afghan border has enabled U.S. commanders to react faster and keep planes in the air over targets longer than would otherwise be possible.

“Nothing beats turnaround time. Even planes flying off of aircraft carriers have hours of flying time before they are over targets in Afghanistan,” said William M. Arkin, a military analyst at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who has been studying the Shahbaz operation.

The Pentagon would neither confirm nor deny the use of Shahbaz as a base for offensive operations. “We can’t discuss specifics of our ongoing operation,” Navy Cmdr. Daniel Keesee, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said Sunday.

In the current assault on Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan, combat search-and-rescue units based at Shahbaz have apparently played a key role. They are the only such teams stationed close enough to aid downed helicopters and crews in the area, a source familiar with U.S. deployments in the region said.

The Air Force’s MC-130 Combat Talon planes from Shahbaz also have taken part in the current fighting.

Although media attention has focused on the U.S. use of bases in Uzbekistan, which also borders Afghanistan, the Shahbaz facilities are much better equipped to handle modern warplanes.

A tent city has sprung up at the base, near the southeastern city of Jacobabad, to house about 1,500 elite troops, according to Defense Department sources. Army, Air Force, Marine and CIA aircraft swarm the runways and crowd scores of fortified revetments.

Among them are the Air Force’s AC-130 gunships; the Army’s MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator helicopter, which is specially armed to support ground assaults day or night, in all weather; the CIA and Air Force fleets of unmanned Predator drones, which conduct aerial surveillance and fire laser-guided missiles; and a covey of reconfigured Air Force MC-130s.

The MC-130s have been operating inside Afghanistan since nearly the start of bombing Oct. 7, dropping leaflets, ferrying U.S. and coalition commandos in and out of Afghanistan and refueling covert helicopters.

Even the psychological warfare units that drop propaganda leaflets and run the “Commando Solo” airborne radio broadcasting program are using Shahbaz.

The ability to use Shahbaz as a base for gunships appears to have been particularly important for the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.

“If you can mount gunships out of Pakistan instead of more distant bases, you have a tremendously powerful force,” Arkin said.

Pakistan keeps a small guard force and a liaison officer at the base but otherwise has withdrawn.

At the core of the U.S. effort at Shahbaz are what the Pentagon calls “direct action” missions: short-duration strikes by planes, gunships and ground troops intended to seize or destroy a specific target or person.

Some of these actions have been at the center of recent controversies over civilian casualties, including the incident at Oruzgan, where up to 21 Afghan men were killed in a nighttime assault by U.S. troops targeting what they thought were Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters.

Officials say covert missions are necessary to root out the substantial number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters still dispersed in remote areas of Afghanistan and along the border with Pakistan.

Operations out of Shahbaz and other bases have gathered valuable intelligence on terrorist activities outside Afghanistan, they say. Information from such operations led to the arrest of an entire Al Qaeda cell in the Philippines, according to Pentagon sources.