The U.S. continues to provoke Pakistan:
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is urging leaders of India to play a more robust role in Afghanistan, as U. S tensions with Pakistan, India's arch-rival, continue to churn.
Inviting India to surround Pakistan will not be welcome in Rawalpindi. Adding that to the continuation of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, even on people mourning their dead, Obama's unwillingness to say "sorry" for the killing of Pakistani soldiers by U.S. troops and the recent snubbing of President Zardawi at the NATO summit one can only imagine how enraged the Pakistani feel towards the U.S. It is now likely that, even if the U.S. would be willing to pay the demanded transit fee of $5,000 per container, the Pakistani government, facing upcoming elections, would no longer be able to agree to that.
There has even been talk of war against U.S. forces. Today, as Panetta is in India, Pakistan tested a nuclear capable cruise missile. It was the fifth test of various nuclear capable Pakistani missiles within the last six weeks. That is supposed to send a message and the addressee is not only India. A war against Pakistan will not happen but the threat of war is real.
As the U.S. seems determined not to make peace with Pakistan it creates itself a huge problem for the retreat from Afghanistan. The only way out is now either by air or through the north. NATO has just signed new deals that will allow transports through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It also has agreements with Russia and Turkmenistan and while the routes through those countries are expensive and long they are also relatively secure.
So the retreat will have to go through the north with, like in Soviet times, only two major routes to leave the country.
General Concept and Scheme of Soviet Withdrawal (Lester W. Grau)
bigger
The Soviets also used the western part of the ring road from Kandhar via Herat towards what is today Turkmenistan while the U.S., it seems, will mostly rely on the eastern part of of the ringroad via Kabul, Bagram towards Termetz and Uzbekistan. U.S. troops concentrations are in the east of Afghanistan and around Kabul and there is no easy way from the east to the western exit route.
But that eastern part of the ringroad has one very problematic choke point, the Salang tunnel:
For 20 miles north and south of the old Soviet-built tunnel at Salang Pass, thousands of trucks are idled beside the road, waiting for a turn to get through its perilous, 1½-mile length.
This is the only passable route for heavy truck traffic bringing NATO supplies in from the Central Asian republics to the north, as they now must come.
There are other roads, but they often are single-lane dirt tracks through even higher mountain passes, or they are frequently subject to ambushes by insurgents and bandits. So a tunnel built to handle 1,000 vehicles a day, and until the Pakistani boycott against NATO in November was handling 2,000, now tries — and often fails — to let 10,000 vehicles through, alternating northbound and southbound truck traffic every other day.
“It’s only a matter of time until there’s a catastrophe,” said Lt. Gen. Mohammad Rajab, the head of maintenance for the Salang Pass. “One hundred percent certain, there will be a disaster, and when there is, it’s not a disaster for Afghanistan alone, but for the whole international community that uses this road.”
He said 90 percent of the traffic now is trailer and tanker trucks carrying NATO supplies.
With 10,000 trucks per day the roads at this bottleneck are likely to get worse during the retreat and periods of full closure of the tunnel, due to weather, accidents or attacks, are to be expected.
What makes this retreat more difficult than the Soviet one is the sheer mass of equipment that the U.S. has used in Afghanistan. The Soviet units had much less equipment and amenities than the U.S. troops have. They also left much of it for their Afghan partners. Today's Afghan army is unlikely to be able to use modern U.S. equipment and much more will have to be transported back than in Soviet times.
That equipment will also, unlike in Soviets times, have to cross multiple boarders of various countries each of which has its own interest and corrupt officials. The retreat will be very expensive and not only in monetary terms.
From a global political standpoint the necessity of a U.S. retreat through the north has some advantages. It gives Russia a kind of veto over U.S. foreign policy. "You want to invade Syria? Sorry those containers can not pass right now. We need check on them fist, those papers seem to be wrong and by the way those trains are unlike to run this month or next."
With the only route out of Afghanistan now solely through the north the U.S. gave Putin a joker, a wild card, that he can threaten to play whenever he feels that he needs to. That may well tame some other agressive U.S. foreign policies.