Peshwar and the supply lines

By Fester:

Brandon Friedman at Vet Voice is worried about Karachi-Khyber-Kabul supply line and proposes a fairly radical method of dealing with that problem.   This solution runs into a simple problem of a few divisions here, a division there and another one there, and the US starts running out of an army again and faces rotation/optempo issues that would make 2007 look like a walk in the park.

 I know that a major military incursion into Pakistan is the Idea Which Cannot Be Spoken, but many of the burned out vehicles in the photos were up-armored humvees.  And the loss of those vehicles directly endangers the lives of American soldiers serving in Afghanistan.  Consequently, we shouldn't be asking men and women to risk their lives in Afghanistan if we're only going to let Pakistani militants to dictate what equipment our troops get to use.

As this is at least the second time something like this has happened in less than a month, I would think that the U.S. military might want to start thinking about alternative supply routes--that is, unless America wants to invade western Pakistan in an effort to seize and hold routes and supply points the Pakistani military is unwilling or incapable of protecting.

There are many problems with this proposal.  But I just want to deal with the first one that popped to mind.  Peshwar, the capital of the NWFP has a population of roughly 3 million people.  Using current US counter-insurgency doctrine to pacify that city requires at least 20 to 25 counter-insurgents per 1,000 people living in the city. The minimum requirement would therefore be close to 60,000 to 75,000 counter-insurgents in a single city on an 1,100 kilometer supply route. 

60,000 US troops would be the entire Surge rotation PLUS any forces that the US could reasonably expect to draw out of Iraq over the next year.  And there might be more National Guard forces needed, but this is a rough estimate.

So what about the Basra model where the local army backed by massive US airpower goes in and bust heads? 

The Pakistani army really is not interested in fighting that fight as it wants to deploy its forces on its shared border with India AND not in the FATA.  Additionally, it would serve as a massive delegitimizer for the civilian government and the Pakistani military to be portrayed as the directionless grunts of American policy.  So if this proposal was to be adapted, it would either be US troops or current ISAF troops doing the fighting and implementing at massive strategic costs.

edited to correct a minor factual error (thanks Empty!)

Comments

[empty]

minor correction - Peshawar is the capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), not FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas).

[BJ Bjornson]

The impossibility of the situation is fairly apparent. Even the possibility of an alternative overland supply route is pretty easy to shoot down just by looking at the map, as the only real alternatives to going through Pakistan means either miving through Iran or a very long haul through Russia and Russian-friendly territory.

Basically, the current situation is the best you can hope for, so it would probably be prudent to stop annoying the population with all the cross-border raids and bombings that have gotten the locals backs up against the US and NATO. Pissing off the poeple who control your line of supply is not a good strategy.