While human rights advocates in the U.S. have been warning about U.S. cooperation with Uzbekistan over the Northern Distribution Network since the NDN was set up last year, these discussions have been going on much longer in Germany. The German military has used a facility in Termez, on the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan border, since 2002, as a rear supply base for their NATO troops in northern Afghanistan. But that could be ending. Last week, Germany's foreign minister said his country would start withdrawing troops next year.
Back in 2006, Der Spiegel reported on Germany's involvement in Uzbekistan, and the tension that created between Germany's devotion to human rights and its military strategy:
[H]ow many million Euros should Germany invest in a corrupt country, knowing full well that the population hardly ever benefits from the money? And is it acceptable that the commander of the German air force squadron is even barring German journalists from entering the base -- in response to "discreet pressure from the Uzbeks," as military officials in Potsdam in charge of the Uzbekistan mission coyly explain? Is it acceptable that in banning the journalists, the German military is exempting a mission from public scrutiny that is subject to parliamentary supervision at home?
Berlin's dialogue with the regime in Tashkent is "as immoral as its dialogue once was with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Serbian butcher Slobodan Milosevic or Iraqi criminal Saddam Hussein," says Uzbek journalist Galima Bukharbayeva, who fled to the West after barely escaping Andijan with her life.
Is China giving the Taliban military aid? That's what a British military officer has told Aviation Week:
Chinese advisers are believed to be working with Afghan Taliban groups who are now in combat with NATO forces, prompting concerns that China might become the conduit for shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, improved communications and additional small arms to the fundamentalist Muslim fighters.
A British military official contends that Chinese specialists have been seen training Taliban fighters in the use of infrared-guided surface-to-air missiles.
If true, this would be pretty rich, given that the U.S.'s main hardware aid to the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in the 1980s was the same sort of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
Another source, this one from the U.S., says that Chinese contact with the Taliban is relatively benign, mainly oriented toward intelligence gathering for use in China's fight against its own restive Muslims on Afghanistan's border, the Uighurs:
Army officials told Aviation Week of an unsuccessful, multi-manpad attack against a U.S. helicopter in Iraq last year, but a senior intelligence official expressed doubt that Chinese aid to the Taliban has included weaponry. But he acknowledges that Chinese activities most certainly include intelligence gathering that could be of use in China’s own internal conflicts with its restive Muslim populations. That analysis could project U.S. hopes, whether well-founded or not, that China will not become involved in weapons trade to insurgent groups.
If -- and it’s a big if -- the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline moves from being a figment of inter-governmental imagination to being an actuality of pipe full of actual gas, Kabul stands to make a mint.
Turkmenistan stands to make a lot of money too, but not as much as it would like.
In 2008, Ashgabat was looking for $457 per ton of gas. Sources quoted by The Economic Times, an Indian business paper, however, suggested on December 13 that Ashgabat would sell gas for TAPI at a rate of $272 per thousand cubic meters (tcm). (By contrast, the rate Turkmenistan agreed for China was only $195 per tcm.)
Delhi should expect to pay $362 per tcm by the time charges and transit fees to Afghanistan and Pakistan are factored in, however. Turkmenistan wants to sell 33 billion cubic of meters of gas to India and Pakistan. Afghanistan wants to rake in transit fees ranging from a $1 billion to $1.4 billion annually. Pakistan and India want to keep gas prices for their ever growing number of consumers low and 33 billion cubic meters should just about do it.
But is the promise of $1.4 billion in transit fees enough to bring stability to southern Afghanistan, the persistently volatile area, through which the pipeline must pass? Some Afghan observers say it might be.
Others say the TAPI is just another flammable item in an explosive region.
“The situation in southern Afghanistan is no more stable now as it was when Bridas and UNOCAL were duking it out for control of the pipeline,” Candace Rondeaux, International Crisis Group’s senior analyst in Kabul, told EurasiaNet.
“Internally, of course, no one can say for certain how to stabilize Nimroz, Helmand, and Kandahar enough that work could begin on such an
As more of the agenda emerges for NATO summit that will take place two weeks from now in Lisbon, it's highlighting how much, two decades after the end of the Cold War, NATO is still focused on its eastern flank.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in Moscow yesterday and met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Few details of their talks have been released, but they did of course discuss the proposed NATO missile defense plan and what role Russia might play in it. Before the talks, Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, was skeptical:
"If it is simply a US system built on European soil with European money and without any guarantees that will not be targeted against Russia, that is unacceptable to us," he said. "We hope that some cards will be opened before the document is officially made public."
But Lavrov, after the meeting, was somewhat more optimistic:
"We are willing to take part in such a joint system and a joint analysis... Of course, on an equal basis and aimed against joint threats," Lavrov said.
While in Moscow, Rasmussen told the BBC that Russian participation in counterdrug raids in Afghanistan would continue, despite protests by the Afghanistan government.
And the Wall Street Journal reports that coalition commanders in Afghanistan are hoping to use the NATO summit to firm up European support for, and participation in, the war in Afghanistan, in particular trying to keep countries like Italy and France from pulling out altogether:
Ever since the U.S. started using the Northern Distribution Network to ship military cargo to Afghanistan through Central Asia rather than Pakistan, we've speculated on whether the NDN would be subject to attacks by Taliban-aligned groups. Avoiding the regular convoy attacks in Pakistan was, after all, the reason the NDN was created, so it would stand to reason that the same people interested in attacking convoys in Pakistan would think it was a good idea to do so on the NDN.
And according to the German general in charge of NATO operations in nine northern Afghan provinces, that's starting to happen. Violence is surging in northern Afghanistan, and he says it's because of the NDN:
"It's clear that the insurgents concentrate their efforts on those areas where they can hope to reach a significant impact," explained Maj. Gen. Hans-Werner Fritz, the German commander of 11,000 coalition troops across Afghanistan's nine northern provinces. "The northern part could become the game-changer for all of Afghanistan."
Baghlan is of strategic importance, Gen. Fritz added, because most supplies from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan pass through, including most of the coalition's fuel. The power line from Uzbekistan, the main source of Kabul's electricity, also runs through here.
There are surely many reasons that violence in northern Afghanistan is increasing, but assume this is one. Does that mean that violence from Afghanistan could then spill over further up the NDN, into Central Asia? Seems unlikely. To say that Uzbekistan's government has a handle on its security situation would be an understatement. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Russia would seem to be also difficult terrain for Islamist terrorists. So for better or worse, the U.S. and NATO will likely be fighting new front this just in Afghanistan.
It may not be as bad as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but it looks like an American-run detention facility in Afghanistan may be using nasty, and potentially illegal techniques on Afghan suspects.
Thus far, nearly all of the ground traffic on the Northern Distribution Network has gone by railroad. But the U.S. is trying to increase its use of trucks to ship military cargo from Europe to Afghanistan, according to a Defense Logistics Agency press release:
U.S. European Command has successfully tested a truck route from Germany to Afghanistan.
The trial run, also called a proof of principle, consists of two trucks carrying two 20-foot containers each from Germany to Bagram, Afghanistan. The first phase of the test, completed in September, used an international carrier that used drivers and equipment from several of the transited countries to move the cargo.
The release doesn't specify which route the trucks took, but says the trip took 49 days and that the DLA identified "some areas for improvement that could reduce the delivery time by another 19 days." (Let's hope that doesn't include bribery, which some western logistics companies have proposed as a timesaver on the NDN.)
The second phase of the test is planned for next month, and will "entail moving cargo from several different countries in a single convoy." Just as long as they watch out for those Uzbek smokeys.
U.S. military officials like to say that the Northern Distribution Network is necessary to get "essential" equipment to troops in Afghanistan. But, as anyone who has experienced the all-you-can-eat bounty of a modern U.S. military base can attest, there is a lot shipped to the war zone that is far from essential. In The Guardian, Pratap Chatterjee points out some examples:
An Easter menu I picked up a military base in 2008 offers soldiers Cornish hen, grilled trout and chocolate-covered bunnies. Mark Larson, a military blogger who recently returned from Afghanistan, wrote that "Camp Phoenix is known for its large PX and barbecue tent that serves everything from steak to ribs daily on a very nice outdoor patio. And after dinner, soldiers can wash down their meal with a smoothie at Green Beans Coffee."
1942:A German Panzer Division needed from 30-70 tons of supplies per day.
1968: A North Vietnamese Army Division needed less than 10 tons of supplies per day.
2010: An American Army Division needs in excess of 3,000 tons of supplies per day.
I don't know what the equivalent figure would be for a Taliban unit, but it seems a fair bet that it's several orders of magnitude smaller. Given the outsized importance that the NDN has assumed in U.S. policy toward Central Asia, those statistics are worth keeping in mind.
The problems with U.S. military supply lines in Pakistan have raised the possibility that the U.S. and NATO will be forced to increase their use of the Northern Distribution Network, as EurasiaNet's Deirdre Tynan reports today. A spokeswoman for U.S. Transportation Command says the problems in Pakistan won't force a significant increase in NDN traffic. But some disagree; one company put out a press release touting the new opportunities provided by the Pakistan closure:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- FMN Logistics today responds to Pakistan's closing of its border and transport routes by bringing attention to the availability of the Northern Distribution Network as a safe and reliable route for transporting cargo into Afghanistan.
"With the recent developments in Pakistan it is vital that a safe alternative for supplying FOB's and organizations operating within Afghanistan exist. The NDN offers a series of commercially-based logistical arrangements connecting Baltic and Caspian ports with Afghanistan via Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus," said Harry Eustace, Jr. CEO of FMN Logistics.
"FMN has been on the ground since the beginning of the NDN and we have just completed our 1,000th container shipment using this route. In fact, FMN has delivered more consignments to NATO and US Forces than any other freight forwarder operating on the NDN. As concerns continue to grow about the Pakistani supply routes, the NDN and FMN's capabilities there are crucial to the continuing support of United States and NATO Forces and their prime service contractors," Eustace continued.
FMN is the only full-service, American-owned and managed logistics provider with boots on the ground in all of the former Soviet Stans as well as Afghanistan.
The Islamist militants who have been wreaking havoc in Tajikistan have been driven there by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Taliban commander in Afghanistan tells Newsweek:
Taliban sources in Afghanistan say jihadist allies from Central Asia have started heading home. Though the exodus is being encouraged by relentless American drone attacks against the fighters’ back bases in Pakistan’s tribal areas, it’s not necessarily good news for U.S. forces. The dislodged jihadists aren’t quitting the battlefield; on the contrary, they’re expanding their range across the unguarded northern Afghan border into Tajikistan to create new Taliban sanctuaries there, assist Islamist rebels in the region, and potentially imperil the Americans’ northern supply lines.
The Central Asians retreated to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the late 1990s after failing to topple their home governments. Now they seem ready to try again, using guerrilla tactics and know-how they’ve picked up from the Taliban about improvised explosive devices. Small groups of Tajik and Uzbek militants began moving into Tajikistan in late winter 2009, says a Taliban subcommander in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz. In Kunduz they joined up with fighters from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Qaeda-linked group active there and in Tajikistan. “Once these first groups made it back safely [to Tajikistan], they signaled to militants here in Kunduz and even in Pakistan’s tribal areas that the journey was possible,” the subcommander, who didn’t want to be named for security reasons, tells newsweek.
Another commander largely confirmed that account, though estimates on how many fighters have gone from Afghanistan/Pakistan to Tajikistan vary from 70 to 150.
