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New Supply Routes To Afghanistan
"[In Afghanistan] a small army would be annihilated and a large one starved."
Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) (source)
With recent attacks on convoys through the Khyber pass, the line of communications through Pakistan to Afghanistan is in deep trouble. WaPo reports:
Security restrictions forced customs officials to slow the flow of
traffic to 25 trucks every few hours. Before the Taliban raid and
border closure last week, an average of 600 to 800 tractor-trailers
moved through Torkham a day, according to Afghan customs officials. Customs officials said they hoped at best to see 200 trucks pass through on Tuesday.
The U.S. military asking suppliers to evaluate alternatives:
The first option is to move cargo between Northern Europe and various destinations in Afghanistan through Caucus’ and Central Asia. The second option is to move cargo between CONUS and Afghanistan through Asia and Central Asia.
Some European countries have arranged transport via railroad through Russia and Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. The U.S. seems not be willing to depend on Russian goodwill. That leaves the red and the green lines as the only possible transport routes. Both are much longer than the current blue route through Pakistan.
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The request for information to suppliers says the new route’s capacity should eventual be some 75,000 twenty foot container equivalent units (TEU) per year. Those would be some 200 medium truck loads every day on roads build for much less traffic.
That is certainly not enough to replace the 600 to 800 daily trucks passing through Torkham, but it would certainly relief that line. Unless more troops are needed.
Lt. Col. John Nagl, who works for General Petraeus on a new Afghanistan plan, wants more troops:
Nagl says he believes the U.S. needs to double its American troops from
30,000 to 60,000 in Afghanistan. He also says the Afghan National Army
needs to grow from 70,000 to 250,000. That may mean getting more help
from the international community.
Double the U.S. troops will need double as much in supplies. The Afghan troops will also need lots of ammunition, fuel, food and other materials. (So many Afghan troops would cost much more than the Afghanistans total GDP. Who will finance them how long?)
And who will finance the logistics for U.S. troops?
The troops in Iraq also had a transport problem. But the road from Kuwait to Baghdad is much shorter than the one from Bremerhaven or Shanghai to Kabul. And while fuel to Iraq could come from refineries in Kuwait, where will the fuel for the additional troops in Afghanistan come from? It does not seem to be included in the above TEU calculation.
A retreat from Iraq would relief the U.S. from some costs. But to supply a soldier in Afghanistan might easily cost double or triple as much as to supply a soldier in Iraq. Has Obama thought about how he will finance that war?
While a large U.S. army in Afghanistan may not starve these days, what about children in the U.S.?
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older coverage:
Fuel for War in Afghanistan Aug 20, 2008
The Road War in Afghanistan Aug 16, 2008
Fuel Tanker Attacks in Afghanistan Mar 24, 2008
WSJ: Militant Attacks Impede NATO Supply Route From Pakistan
Islamist militants loyal to a powerful Taliban leader in Pakistan have moved in to block a vital supply route leading through the Khyber Pass to NATO forces in Afghanistan.
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The U.S. is exploring other routes to supply soldiers in Afghanistan, said a U.S. official, speaking from Washington. There is talk of trying to send non-lethal supplies overland across Europe, Russia and through Central Asia. “But right now, and probably for a long time, Pakistan is the best way in,” said the official.
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Authorities say they believe both attacks were carried out by some of roughly 400 tribal fighters dispatched in recent weeks to Khyber Agency by Baitullah Mehsud, a top Taliban commander blamed for last year’s assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The fighters are backed by a network of informants with knowledge of the convoys’ goods and timetables, say Pakistani security officials.
Khyber was relatively peaceful until recently. Mr. Mehsud’s power base is located hundreds of miles to the south in another one of the tribal areas, South Waziristan. Violence has surged in Khyber as militants flee a Pakistani military offensive in the Bajaur region to the north.
I don’t think that Mehsud’s forces would act autonom so far away from their original base. Locals must be involved.
In Peshawar, truckers waiting to make the trip to Afghanistan expressed little optimism about the escorts, saying the paramilitary forces hailed from the tribal areas and were hesitant to take on the Taliban and al Qaeda. “They stand aside when Taliban attack the convoys. Most of the paramilitary soldiers belong to the same area and will not fight because of fear of reprisal against their families,” said Jahangir Khan, a trucker who has been driving the route for three years.
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The U.S. made the very dumb move to start drone attacks BEYOND the tribal regions that make up FATA. FATA has a very special legal status.
Soon after Independence, the various tribes in the region entered into an agreement with the government of Pakistan, pledging allegiance to the newly created state. Some 30 instruments of accession were subsequently signed, cementing this arrangement. To the tribal agencies of Khyber, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan were later added Mohmand Agency (in 1951), and Bajaur and Orakzai (in 1973).
Accession did not subsume the political autonomy of the tribes. The instruments of accession, signed in 1948, granted the tribal areas a special administrative status. Except where strategic considerations dictated, the tribal areas were allowed to retain their semi-autonomous status, exercising administrative authority based on tribal codes and traditional institutions. This unique system, given varying degrees of legal cover in each of the country’s earlier constitutions, was crystallised in Pakistan’s Constitution of 1973.
It is not really a full part of Pakistan and attacks there do not have the street effect in Karachi than attacks on Pakistani heartland.
Suspected U.S. Missiles Strike Deep Inside Pakistan
The U.S. military apparently struck at Islamic militants outside Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt for the first time Wednesday, firing a missile that killed six suspected insurgents taking refuge away from the conflict zone along the Afghan border.
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All the previous attacks had come in North and South Waziristan, semiautonomous tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. But Wednesday’s attack blew up a house in Indi Khel, a village in the Bannu district about 30 miles from the Afghan border and beyond the tribal region.
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While Bannu is inland from the frontier tribal areas, it is still a dangerous place, and it falls under the control of the regional government _ making the attack specially sensitive.
A large Islamist political party threatened to block two major Pakistani roads used to truck supplies to U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan unless the cross-border attacks stop.
“If these missiles attacks continue, then we will ask the people to create hurdles in the way of supplies for NATO,” said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, which has shown it can mobilize thousands of supporters at short notice.
The supply lines have never been blocked by protests, but militants and criminals often attack trucks traveling them.
As the U.S. is totally tone-deaf, expect further attacks and a total blockade of the roads.
Posted by: b | Nov 20 2008 10:28 utc | 13
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