American diplomats are escalating a charm offensive with Central Asian leaders this week as they work to secure a close-by spot to respond to any resurgence of outside militants in Afghanistan after the U.S. military withdraws. But even as high-level U.S. diplomats head to the region, they’re meeting with more doubts from Afghanistan’s neighbors about any such security partnering with the United States.
That stands in contrast to 2001, when Central Asian countries made available their territory for U.S. bases, troops and other access as America hit back for the 9/11 attacks plotted by al-Qaida in Afghanistan. There’s distrust of the U.S. as a reliable long-term partner, after an only partly successful war in Afghanistan and after years of widely fluctuating U.S. engagement regionally and globally, former American diplomats say.
There’s Russia, blasting out this week that a permanent U.S. military base in its Central Asia sphere of influence would be “unacceptable.” Meanwhile, the Taliban leadership, more internationally savvy than it had been in 2001, has been visiting regional capitals and Moscow this summer in a diplomatic push of its own, offering broad pledges that it will pursue regional security, peace and trade whatever comes of its fight with the Kabul government.
