Do you think Bagram, Jalalabad, & Kandahar Air Field will eventually become duty stations like Korea for a one year assignment or even two?

We (the U.S.) continued new construction contracts on Balad Air Base (a.k.a. LSA Anaconda) until four months before it was closed down.  My son was there as an Air Force augmentee to the Army unit doing the final shutdown.  They asked the construction crews why they were working on buildings and infrastructure for a base that was being shut down and the answers varied from "the contracts were signed before the announcement so we finish the job" to "we are continuing improvements for the Iraqi forces who will man it after we are gone".  Given the fact that the Iraqi governmnet had no plans to occupy the base, neither explanation makes sense.  I anticipate the same type of thing happening in Afghanistan.  I would hope that the Afghan government would actually take advantage of the new infrastructure but the Iraqi government sure didn't.

I highly doubt we will be there much longer.  The country doesnt want us there, at least the Afghan Govt. doesn't.  The political games we see in the news are not really a surprise to me due to the fact that once we leave, the the Taliban will be free and clear in the country to do as they please.  They have taken power before and Karzai knows that if he doesn't play nice with them,  he'll be removed very quickly by whatever means possible.  As for the building at the various large bases that are still building... There are two things that i can think of right away that are the probable cause for the continued buikding. First is that contracting those projects takes awhile.  Once a contract is awarded and the money is allocated, the government isn't going to pull the plug and ask for the money back.  Second is that just like Iraq, our government looks at these building and facility improvements as infastructure improvements that will aid the host nation.  That thought process supports the first point I mentioned.  The gov. just isnt going to pull the money back.

It happened in Germany when we started closing bases there and turning them back over to them.  We built new buildings and refurbished all the old ones to brand new condition.  It might be that they are doing the same thing for the Afghanis.  I do know this, here in Shindand, we are not building anything, except on the Afghani side there are some new hangars going up for the Afghani air force pilot training.