WASHINGTON, Feb 9: The war in Afghanistan may be winding down, but the United States appears to be moving towards creating a permanent military presence for itself in the region.

This is the thrust of a report from Kyrgystan in The Washington Post on Saturday which describes how a military base in that country is being given a more or less permanent shape, with 300 personnel and nearly two dozen American and military aircraft stationed there.

All told, more than 50,000 US military personnel now live and work on ships and bases stretching from Turkey to Oman and eastward to Manas in Kyrgystan. This broad swathe of growing American influence includes Pakistan, with which the US signed an agreement on Saturday to supply US forces stationed there.

Last week, in testimony before the international relations committee of the House of Representatives, Secretary of State Colin Powell said: “America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before.”

The Post report quotes a military analyst as saying that the “imperial permimeter is expanding into Central Asia”, and points out that the growing US deployment is raising eyebrows in Beijing and Moscow, both which have strategic interests in the region.

Previous commentaries in the press here and abroad have pointed to the presence of the vast oil deposits in Central Asia which were being eyed by the US and the West even before Sept 11.