U.S. looks for alternatives to vital NATO supply route

TORKHAM, Afghanistan — A rise in Taliban attacks along the vital NATO supply route that runs through this border town in the shadow of the Khyber Pass has U.S. officials seeking alternatives, including the prospect of beginning deliveries by a tortuous overland journey from Europe.

Supplying troops in landlocked Afghanistan has long been the Achilles' heel of foreign armies here, most recently the Soviets, whose forces were nearly crippled by insurgent attacks.

About three-fourths of NATO and U.S. supplies bound for Afghanistan — gas, food and military gear — are moved over land through Pakistan. To get here, they start in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi and move north through Pakistan's volatile North-West Frontier Province and tribal areas before reaching the Afghan border. The convoys then press along hairpin turns through areas of Afghanistan known as havens for rebels.

Drivers at this busy border crossing say Taliban death threats now arrive almost daily. Sometimes they come in the form of a letter taped to the windshield of a truck late at night. Occasionally, a dispatcher receives an early-morning call before a convoy sets off from Pakistan. More often, the threats are delivered at the end of a gun barrel.

"The Taliban, they tell us, 'These goods belong to the Americans. Don't bring them to the Americans. If you do, we'll kill you,' " said Rahmanullah, a truck driver from the Pakistani tribal town of Landikotal. "From Karachi to Kabul, there is trouble. The whole route is insecure."

The growing danger has forced the Pentagon to seek far longer, but possibly safer, alternate routes through Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, according to Defense Department documents.

A reliable supply route is considered vital to sustaining the 67,000 foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan, including 32,000 Americans. Nearly half of U.S. forces operate under NATO command. Attacks on convoys also have been a problem in Iraq, where the United States has improvised effective but costly ways to keep supplies flowing.

A week ago, a bold Taliban raid on a NATO supply convoy forced authorities to temporarily close traffic through Torkham. For days after the attack on the 23-truck convoy, many of the hundreds of truckers who regularly traverse this route were stranded as they watched their profits dwindle. Pakistani authorities reopened the route Monday after assigning extra security to convoys.

But on Tuesday, a day after the reopening, dozens of truck drivers seemed far from certain their troubles were over. Last week's attack was one in a series in recent months that has cost NATO suppliers millions in losses this year. In March, insurgents set fire to 40 to 50 NATO oil tankers near Torkham. A month later, Taliban raiders made off with military-helicopter engines valued at $13 million.

NATO and U.S. military officials have said raids on the supply line from Pakistan to Afghanistan have not significantly affected their operations. "This is nothing new," said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a U.S. military spokeswoman in Afghanistan.

Yet the scramble to find new routes appears to indicate the attacks have had some effect. The United States already has begun talking with countries along what the Pentagon has called a new northern route. A pact with Georgia has been reached and talks are ongoing with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, according to an Oct. 31 Pentagon document.

"We do not expect transit agreements with Iran or Uzbekistan," the U.S. Transportation Command told potential contractors.

The company that gets the contract will have to provide security forces to protect the convoys. The new contractor also will be required to have intrusion-detection devices and a real-time satellite tracking and tracing system that reports the location of each vehicle every 30 minutes.

Russia agreed earlier this year to allow NATO to send material by rail. The coalition in Afghanistan is working to create an intercontinental rail system to carry nonlethal equipment and materials for both economic assistance and military programs that would go through Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It would not extend into Afghanistan, however.

Separately, the Pentagon's Transportation Command is seeking contractors who could handle what it projects as 50,000 rail containers a year traveling over a new Europe-Caucasus route or, separately, one through Central Asia.

Meanwhile, heavy security along the Pakistan-to-Afghanistan route has slowed NATO supply traffic to a trickle at Torkham, according to Afghan customs officials and drivers here.

To the east, more than 1,000 trucks waited at a near-standstill on the Pakistani side of the pass Tuesday.

Security restrictions forced customs officials to slow the flow of traffic to 25 trucks every few hours. Before the Taliban raid and border closure last week, an average of 600 to 800 tractor-trailers moved through Torkham a day.