Mumbai, mobilization, and Khyber Pass logistics

By Fester:

The majority of supplies for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are routed through the port of Karachi in Pakistan.  From there, trucks are loaded and sent north to either Quetta which is a staging point to Kandahar or to  Peshwar and then through the Khyber Pass to Kabul.  Supply convoys are then sent to either Kabul or Khandahar where there are large logistics and air bases.  Tactical transport by truck, helicopters and smaller transport aircraft are then used to get the supplies to units in the field. 

Either supply route crosses hostile and Taliban controlled territory in Afghanistan and is increasingly being shot at in Pakistan:

Via the Globe and Mail: 

Militants in northwestern Pakistan attacked trucks ferrying supplies to NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan on Monday, killing two people and destroying a dozen vehicles, witnesses and police said.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed eight people and wounded 40 others at a military checkpoint in the region's Swat Valley, police said....

Several gunmen fired rockets and automatic weapons at the Faisal terminal, killing a driver and a clerk and destroying 12 trucks, said police officer Ahsanullah Khan.

An AP Television News reporter saw two Humvee military vehicles on board the trucks that were on fire following the attack.

Up to 75 per cent of the supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan pass through Pakistan. Earlier this month, suspected Taliban militants hijacked several trucks carrying Humvees near the Khyber Pass.

Pakistan's military has been wage an on-off-on-off-skedaddle-find the cameras-on-off campaign against Pashtun and Taliban fighters for the past seven years.  The Pakistani military has been consistently ceding ground, control and legitimacy during this process.  Some of this is because of motivation, but most of it is due to the fact that most of the Pakistani military believes that the existential threat to Pakistan is not in the tribal areas or the Islamists (as they are really not that popular) but India.  So they have used US largess to buy capital intensive and high tech weapons that make no sense for a counter-insurgency campaign, but make perfect sense against India.  They keep most of their loyal and effective forces on their eastern borders, and they do just enough to be doing something to keep the Americans happy and the minimal strings attached money coming with them. 

And now via the Danger Room blog at Wired, we see that India is mobilizing. Right now that mobilization is not being aimed at the border or Kashmir/Jammu, but this is a threat that Pakistan's elite know, recognize and fear. This fear is magnified byincreasing calls for action and war by the Indian public. This fear dictates mobilization and shifting of forces from the interior to the frontier as a defensive measure at the very least. 

And those forces have to come from either the west (the Baluchistan and Quetta routes) or from the north (FATA and NW Frontier Province).  If those forces are removed from their nominal mission of internal security and anti-Taliban/Islamists duties, that opens up the NATO convoys to further attack. 

Pakistan can not allow the open operation of routine foreign ground troops on its territory as a risk to the government's legitimacy.  So the option the US took in 2004 to detail a couple of infantry brigades to guard the Kuwait City to Baghdad convoys is off the table for several hundred hostile miles.  This means the flow of supplies and thus the range of plausible options in Afghanistan for ISAF will be dramatically reduced.  Less fuel, less spare parts, less food and less of everything else means ISAF will cede more of the countryside to the Taliban as they operate with a much lighter footprint than NATO forces.

Comments

[Digital Cabinet]

Great. That gives incentive to the NATO forces to explore more seriously alternative ways of getting supplies to Afghanistan:

1. By Air to bases in Afghanistan
2. By Air to Central Asian allies and by then road to Afghanistan

The less dependent NATO is on Pakistan, the greater the chances for success.

Will it be more expensive? Sure since ships can carry more tonnage per unit cost but reliability of supplies will improve and you will not have to depend on unreliable allies. Plus Pakistan may not get transit payments :)

[containers sales]

Great!!!
It is Very informative blog.