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.
When Georgia lost its first soldier in Afghanistan about a month ago, the question arose as to whether Georgian public support for the deployment in Afghanistan would suffer as a result. Now, as EurasiaNet's Giorgi Lomsadze notes, Georgia just lost four more soldiers to a mine explosion in Helmand province.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili held a press conference with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasumussen, who happened to be visiting at the time, and spoke extensively about how the soldiers' deaths were in the service of Georgia's national interest:
Yesterday night we have received very unfortunate news about the tragic death of Colonel Ramaz Gogiashvili, Sergeant Dato Tsetskhladze, Corporal George Kolkhitashvili and Corporal Nugzar Kalandadze.
Being Soldier is a very honorable but at the same time very dangerous profession.
This is the profession that requires great devotion and self-sacrifice.
Georgian warriors traditionally, fought in many countries, during all our history.
Our warriors commanded the armies of old Persia, Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Russia...
It would be a big mistake to determine state's interests in the Georgia's borders, while a global political struggle Is conducted against us.
We have international interests and have allies and friends. The fact that our five-crossed flag is raised above this building, also the fact that Georgia successfully proceeds development, as independent country, although 20 percent of its territory is occupied, is the big deserve of our international links, our friends, our communion.
Later, Saakashvili said that NATO accession is Georgia's top strategic priority.
Energy ministers from the four countries involved in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline have now decided to invite a "global energy giant" to bid on implementation of the project, the Hindu Times and other India media reported this week.
Turkmenistan has been aggressively pursuing its neighbors in recent months to close the deal on the pipeline to run from the Dovletabad gas fields in the southeast of Turkmenistan through volatile territory in Taliban-held regions in Afghanistan and Balochistan in Pakistan to India. Analysts have speculated that Turkmenistan has been driven by a need to find new customers to pay for its gas, to make up for a sharp reduction in purchases by Russia's Gazprom, following price disputes and a drop in world demand last year.
At the meeting of heads of states at the UN General Assembly last week, Ashgabat mounted an ambitious five-part peace proposal making TAPI central to a concept of Afghan reconstruction, to be achieved through UN-sponsored peace talks among the Afghan parties hosted in Turkmenistan. President Berdymukhamedov offered trade, humanitarian aid, and technical assistance in capacity-building, expressing hope that the construction of TAPI as well as a railroad would bring trade, jobs and ultimately stability to the region.
Last week, the energy ministers of the four countries met in Ashgabat to sign a framework agreement for the pipeline, and heads of state are slated to meet in either December or January 2011 to finalize the arrangements.
