NATO's failure to reopen Pakistani supply routes

[Shah-i-Kot]

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-bl...-supply-routes


NATO's failure to reopen Pakistani supply routes


By Joshua Foust, American Security Project - 05/23/12 04:28 PM ET
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Early in the morning on Nov. 24, 2011, two NATO Apache helicopters, an AC-130 gunship and two F-15 strike fighters entered the Mohmand Agency in Northwest Pakistan from Afghanistan and struck two Pakistani border patrol checkpoints, killing 24 soldiers. Pakistan officials protested about the strike, the Pakistani public remains up in arms about the deaths of 24 soldiers, and the Pakistani government canceled NATO access to the Shamsi Airfield (which used to host the flying Predator drones) and to vital Pakistani supply routes.

In the meantime, the United States had been building an alternative to Pakistan. Starting in 2008, the United States began inking deals with various countries in Central Asia and Europe, including Russia, to create a Northern Distribution Network (NDN) that would allow the United States to break its reliance on Pakistani territory to resupply the war effort. When Pakistan closed down its supply routes, it found, suddenly, that it didn’t have quite the same leverage over the United States it once did. The United States could still run the war, even if the northern resupply cost more than the old Pakistan-based routes.






NATO might be able to run the war without Pakistan, but it cannot end the war without Pakistan. There is so much equipment in Afghanistan, so many vehicles, so much ammunition, so much trash and construction material, that the NDN could never hope to accommodate all of it by NATO’s 2014 end date for combat operations. Furthermore, some of the governments along the supply route, like dictatorial Uzbekistan, are morally reprehensible regimes that should not be rewarded with surplus combat equipment. So the Pakistani supply routes must be reopened.

This past weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago, however, did not result in the supply routes reopening. President Asif Ali Zardari’s demands for an apology over the Nov. 24 airstrike have gone unanswered, and he was invited only at the last minute to attend the summit. The discussions Presidents Obama and Hamid Karzai had with Zardari didn’t go anywhere, either — I asked NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow if they had a breakthrough on the talks, and he said they were “still in progress.”

If the Pakistani supply lines cannot be reopened, then the withdrawal from Afghanistan will become a lot messier. Just as the Russians left tons of equipment, supplies, buildings, weapons and vehicles behind in their mad rush back north after the Geneva Accords were signed in 1988, so too will the United States and NATO leave an unimaginable cache of valuable equipment and materiel behind as they leave over the next two years.

Pakistan’s relationship with the West is facing critical issues over the next two years. Their nuclear arsenal remains at risk from seizure by Islamist militants. The economy is slowly collapsing under the weight of both terrorism and poor government mismanagement. The terrorism question itself remains frightfully unresolved, and the Pakistani military’s decision over the last 15 years to sponsor international terrorism through the Taliban and related organizations is unacceptable. The supply route question is coming to head with these critical issues unresolved.

The withdrawal of combat troops and transition to Afghan-led security is the lynchpin of NATO’s, and Obama’s, strategy for Afghanistan. Yet that strategy is under tremendous strain by the closure of Pakistan’s supply routes. Reopening those routes needs to be made a priority if Obama’s strategy is to have any hope of success.

The long-term stability of the region depends on that as well. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is being developed by the Asia Development Bank to supply energy to India while getting Afghanistan and Pakistan much-needed cash from transit fees. But all the best plans in the world will go nowhere so long as Pakistan’s supply route challenge remains unanswered.


Foust is the Fellow for Asymmetric Operations at the American Security Project, and attended the NATO 2012 summit in Chicago.

[Shah-i-Kot]

http://www.theledger.com/article/201...news/120539923


U.N.: Civilian Deaths Drop 36% in Afghanistan

By HEIDI VOGT
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10:15 p.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10:15 p.m.


KABUL, Afghanistan | The number of Afghan civilians killed has dropped 36 percent so far this year compared with last, the U.N. said Wednesday, the first time the death toll has declined during multiple months since the United Nations started keeping track.

The senior U.N. envoy for the country, Jan Kubis, called the trend promising but cautioned that too many civilians still were being caught up in the violence as insurgents fight Afghan and foreign forces.
Kubis' office said 579 civilians were killed in the first four months of this year, down from 898 killed in the same period of 2011. The number of wounded dropped from 1,373 to 1,216 in the January to April period.
James Rodehaver, a U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan, noted the death toll has sometimes declined from month to month since the U.N. started tracking attacks in 2007, but never over such a sustained period.
The Taliban and their allies are responsible for most civilian casualties, according to U.N. figures. In the first four months of 2012, anti-*government forces caused 79 percent of civilian casualties and Afghan and foreign forces 9 percent, Kubis said in remarks in Kabul. It was not clear who was responsible for the remaining 12 percent of the casualties, he said.
In a reminder of the dangers facing Afghans, a roadside bomb killed three district government employees on their way to work Wednesday in eastern Nangarhar province's Deh Bala district, said district chief Asrarullah.
Two NATO coalition service members also were killed Wednesday in southern Afghanistan — one by a homemade bomb and the other by an insurgent attack, the coalition said, without providing further details.
The deaths raised the number of coalition troops who have died in Afghanistan this year to 174.
Kubis also urged the country's allies Wednesday not to neglect social and economic aid to Afghanistan as they commit to funding government security forces.
Afghanistan needs billions of dollars in international support to survive economically and avoid descending into further chaos as the U.S. and other countries in the NATO coalition seek to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014, both the Afghan government and its allies have said.

[Shah-i-Kot]

The long-term stability of the region depends on that as well. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is being developed by the Asia Development Bank to supply energy to India while getting Afghanistan and Pakistan much-needed cash from transit fees. But all the best plans in the world will go nowhere so long as Pakistan’s supply route challenge remains unanswered.

A lot of hot air here. Aside from that, this article is loaded with geopolitical talk. Which fool ever thought such Western initiatives such as TAPI had any chance of succeeding, especially as a blatant attempt to drain the resources of Asia? Especially, when there is instability due to the NATO war?

As it is, with the closure of NATO supply lines, civilian casualties in Afghanistan are already down
U.N.: Civilian Deaths Drop 36% in Afghanistan

http://www.theledger.com/article/201...news/120539923

In an international court at the Hague, Pakistan has as much responsibility for Afghan civilian casualties as NATO since it was Pakistan that was the ONLY country to supply lethal supplies to NATO/Karzai regime.