PAKISTAN:NATO: Choked Supply Chains :: South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR),Vol. No. 9.11
Show/Hide Search
HomePrint
 
  Click to Enlarge
   

SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 9, No. 11, September 20, 2010

Data and assessments from SAIR can be freely published in any form with credit to the South Asia Intelligence Review of the
South Asia Terrorism Portal


ASSESSMENT

PAKISTAN
Click for PrintPrint

NATO: Choked Supply Chains
Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

The US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Forces engaged in their ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan are facing the brunt of the militants’ ire in Pakistan. In a span of just 28 days since August 23, 2010, as many 20 NATO convoys, were targeted in 14 terrorist attacks. The convoys included fuel tankers, each of which carries about 45,000 litres of oil, and containers with unspecified quantities of logistic material for the 119,819-strong NATO Forces, as well as armoured transport for the Forces, which were either torched or looted by militant groups. Barring Sindh, all the other Provinces and the Federally Administered Tribal areas (FATA) witnessed attacks over this period, with Balochistan leading from the front (the Taliban and its affiliates control the principal transport routes in Pashtun-dominated North Balochistan. The attacks in Balochistan are not connected with the Baloch rebellion against Islamabad).

Significantly, NATO convoys coming through Pakistan are the principal source of logistical support for the Forces in Afghanistan. According to STRATFOR, between 80 and 90 per cent of all supplies for the NATO Forces in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan. Fuel, refined in Pakistan, food, vehicles, ammunition and other materials, are shipped in through the port of Karachi and transported across Pakistan by road to Afghanistan.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 49 attacks on NATO convoys have already occurred in 2010. The most brazen among these was witnessed near the national capital, Islamabad, on June 8, 2010, when unidentified militants attacked and set ablaze a convoy of about 50 tankers and containers heading towards Peshawar, the Capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), on the Motorway in the Sangjani area of Ternol. Four people were killed in the attack and another three were injured.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Azam Tariq claimed the attack and declared, on June 10, that it had been carried out by tribal Mehsud fighters [the Mehsud are a dominant tribe in FATA, and a large proportion of TTP fighters are drawn from this tribe]. "Pakistani roads are being used to supply non-Muslim Forces that are occupying Afghanistan," the TTP spokesman stated, warning, "We will attack all traffic on these roads which we suspect of carrying supplies to those Forces." The TTP has, in fact, claimed responsibility for most of the attacks on NATO supply trucks in Pakistan since December 2008.

The first significant attack on NATO supply vehicles took place on December 1, 2008, when eight vehicles, including two armoured personnel carriers, were destroyed and another seven were partially damaged, when militants attacked a parking lot in the vicinity of the Pishtakhara village near the KP provincial capital, Peshawar, killing two civilians and injuring another two. According to the SATP database, since then, 82 such attacks have taken place, in which 33 persons were killed and 109 sustained injuries. Balochistan accounted for 49 such incidents, and nine fatalities. FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with 14 incidents each, witnessed 10 and five killings, respectively. Punjab saw nine killings in four attacks. Just one such incident was reported from Sindh, with no fatalities. The numbers suggest that the objective was principally to inflict losses on NATO transports, rather than to kill people associated with the convoys (the drivers and the helpers), as a majority of these were Pakistanis. This, however, may now be a thing of the past. Khalid Khan, owner of one of the burnt containers, claims that the militants have been changing their modus operandi over the past few months: "Earlier, they [TTP] would give a chance to the drivers to run away to save their lives, but for the last few months, they have started killing them before torching the vehicles."

Some of the most significant attacks on NATO convoys include:

April 24, 2010: Four Policemen were killed by unidentified militants, who also set 12 NATO oil tankers on fire at the Talagang-Mianwali Road in Chakwal District of Punjab.

June 14, 2009: Three people were killed and two were injured when a vehicle carrying supplies for the NATO Forces hit a roadside bomb in South Waziristan.

March 15, 2009: Dozens of suspected TTP militants attacked a terminal storing NATO supplies on the Ring Road in Peshawar, destroying at least 12 trucks and 20 containers.

December 8, 2008: TTP torched at least 53 vehicles destined for NATO forces in Afghanistan in an attack on the outskirts of Peshawar.

December 7, 2008: At least 171 vehicles of the NATO Forces, including 62 armoured personnel carriers, were torched by armed attackers in two parking bays on the Ring Road in the vicinity of Pishtakhara in Peshawar. Some 130 vehicles were completely destroyed in the attack, while 40 others were partially damaged.

March 23, 2008: Two persons were killed and 50 others injured when six bomb blasts ripped through two parking lots and destroyed 40 oil tankers in the Khyber Agency of FATA. The tankers were carrying fuel for NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The intensity and frequency of attacks against NATO convoys has been fed by a rising rage against Islamabad’s campaigns against the TTP, as well as by the continuous US drone attack in FATA and KP. As many as 1,194 persons have been killed in 123 drone attacks in Pakistan since 2005. Corroborating this, Maulvi Omar, spokesman for the TTP, had stated on December 14, 2008, that the attacks on NATO supply terminals were "a response to the Americans for their drone strikes inside Pakistan". Omar warned that the TTP would intensify the attacks if US drone strikes continued, and that attacks would be extended to other parts of the country if the intensity of NATO operations in Afghanistan was not reduced. "We would try to cut off every supply through Pakistan if the situation remains the same," Omar threatened.

On June 22, 2010, the TTP pasted posters in the main market in Landikotal in the Khyber Agency, warning those connected with the supply or transport of goods to NATO Forces in Afghanistan to stop doing so, or face attacks on their homes. The posters declared, further, that all those protecting supplies deserved to be killed. The warning was written on the letterhead of the TTP with the name, sign and stamp of Hakeemullah Mehsud, the TTP chief.

Meanwhile, owners of the transports and containers destroyed by the TTP attackers blamed poor security measures for the rise in the attacks. Khalid Khan thus noted, "All this happened because of poor security. We have requested, time and again, the Government for proper security, but to no avail." State security agencies, however, have attempted to shift the blame to NATO transporters, claiming that the principal responsibility for protection lies with them. Malik Naveed Khan, the Inspector General of Police, KP, thus complains, "One or two companies have retired Army forces as guards. But the rest of them, they have employed just people from the street." Naveed Khan delivered an ultimatum to transporters on December 18, 2008: improve security at the depots within a week or face closure.

Indeed, Islamabad, at the highest levels of authority, has attempted to wash its hands of the security of the supply lines. On June 9, 2010, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that NATO was responsible for the security of its supply lines, and that the Federal and Provincial Governments cannot provide security to the 4,000 trucks which travel across Pakistan daily. He added, further, "Various terminals, including the one attacked by TTP in Islamabad, have been established without Government knowledge and permission, and are involved in smuggling of different commodities." Ignoring the fact that NATO has no authority to engage in security operations on Pakistani soil, and the billions of dollars Pakistan receives in military aid and for its ‘cooperation’ in the campaigns against terrorism, Malik argued that NATO’s ‘security budget’ was not provided to the Pakistan Government but rather to private contractors directly hired by NATO: "This is not ours, but NATO’s responsibility — to arrange security for its convoys." He conceded, nevertheless, "As per [an] agreement between the two sides, Pakistan is supposed to allow the transportation to Pak-Afghan border."

Significantly, on July 3, 2010, a Pakistan Communication Ministry source disclosed that they intended claiming about USD 580 million from NATO / International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for using its highways for the transit of their goods to Afghanistan on the grounds that Pakistan was suffering a loss of USD 83 million every year due to the damage caused to the national highways network by their freight trucks since 2002.

As with much of Pakistan’s ‘cooperation’ in the ‘war on terrorism’, moreover, there is evidence of significant duplicity on Islamabad’s part. US and NATO officials often point fingers at alleged links between the Taliban and Pakistani intelligence officers who patronize and protect them. Ishtiaq Ahmad, an Islamabad-based regional security expert, notes, "There has been a trust deficit between the two sides on this issue. The US security officials suspect that there is some kind of linkage between Pakistani intelligence agencies and militants, which is why they rely upon their own security arrangements." As one commentator, Tufail Ahmad, notes, "some officials in the Pakistani Government have ordered the security forces to shut their eyes to the attacks on US and NATO supplies in Peshawar."


These attacks have certainly heightened the crisis of the US AfPak policy, and NATO Forces have increasingly emphasised the necessity of developing alternative routes for their supplies into Afghanistan. As far back as January 20, 2009, then CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus, was already stressing: "It is very important as we increase the effort in Afghanistan that we have multiple routes that go into the country… There have been agreements reached, and there are transit lines now and transit agreements for commercial goods and services in particular that include several countries in the Central Asian states and also Russia." A major component of this strategy is the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), a series of rail, water and road links to deliver cargo to Afghanistan through the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

The supply crisis has currently been compounded further as a result of the disruption by floods across Pakistan. Commenting on the flow of NATO supplies, an unnamed official from the Pakistan National Highway Authority observed, "The interruption may last for at least a few weeks. Bridges and roads leading to Peshawar have been washed away due to the floods and therefore all heavy traffic, including NATO containers, has been stopped."

The rising incidence of attacks on the NATO-ISAF convoys, combined with the abrupt crisis brought about by the floods, have lent a new urgency to efforts to develop alternative supply routes for the international Forces stationed in Afghanistan. If these routes crystallize and increase in their significance in the Afghan supply chain, they will widen the spectrum of US policy options in dealing with the AfPak crisis. Western options have, too long, been crippled by an excessive dependency on Pakistan, despite voluminous evidence of Islamabad’s duplicity on these issues. Any measure of loosening of this disastrous dependence on the principal source and fountainhead of global Islamist terrorism can only help in a further rationalisation of the international effort against terrorism, and for the stabilisation of Afghanistan.


NEWS BRIEFS

Weekly Fatalities: Major Conflicts in South Asia
September 13-19, 2010

 

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

BANGLADESH

 

Left Wing Extremism

0
0
3
3

INDIA

 

Assam

2
0
1
3

Jammu and Kashmir

2
2
13
17

Meghalaya

0
0
3
3

Left-wing Extremism

 

Bihar

2
0
0
2

Chhattisgarh

1
2
0
3

Jharkhand

0
1
2
3

Orissa

3
1
0
4

West Bengal

6
0
0
6

Total (INDIA)

16
6
19
41

NEPAL

1
0
1
2

PAKISTAN

 

Balochistan

3
1
0
4

FATA

8
1
50
59

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

1
0
8
9

PoK

0
0
1
1

Total (PAKISTAN)

12
2
59
73
Provisional data compiled from English language media sources.


BANGLADESH

Stay alert against evil activities of war criminals, says Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina: Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina on September 15 asked the freedom fighters and people of all walks of lives to remain alert against evil activities of the war criminals who committed crimes against humanity during the liberation war in 1971. Daily Star, September 16, 2010.


INDIA

33 protesters and a Policeman killed in street violence in Kashmir Valley during the week: 33 protesters and a Policeman were killed in street violence in the Kashmir Valley during the week. Till September 19, a total of 102 protesters and one Policeman were killed in the 101-day long street violence since June 11. Daily Excelsior, September 14-20, 2010.

Maoists had planned to replicate Jehanabad jailbreak in Bihar, says Police: The Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) had planned to replicate 2005 Jehanabad jailbreak in Jamui District in August 2010 to free their 51 cadres lodged in the jail, Police said on September 16. Hindustan Times, September 14, 2010.

Loss from Maoist attacks at over INR 10 billion, says Railways: The railways has incurred a loss of over INR 10 Billion in attacks by the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). A Railways official on September 13 said, "During March this year [2010] we had estimated a revenue loss to the tune of Rs 500 crore [INR 5 billion] from the Maoist attacks. Till date the loss is much more than Rs 1,000 crore [INR 10 billion]. We are putting together a detailed list of losses from attacks on rail tracks. We will be able to assess the exact amount of damage done by the Maoists by then." The Hindu, September 14, 2010.

Arrested militants’ next target was Nashik, says Maharashtra ATS: A senior Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) officer said on September 13 that the two militants, identified as Sheikh Lalbaba Mohammed Hussain Farid alias Bilal and Himayat Baig, who were arrested by the ATS in Mumbai in the German Bakery blast case, had plans to target sensitive places in Nashik. The Hindu, September 14, 2010.

Chhattisgarh Government to impart industrial training to youth in Maoist affected Districts: The Chhattisgarh Government decided to impart vocational and industrial training to youth in Naxal [Left Wing Extremist] affected Districts of the State on September 13. DNA India, September 14, 2010.

Centre ready for talks over Kashmir within Constitution, says Prime Minister Manmohan Singh: Voicing concern over the unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on September 13 sought to reach out to the people there, saying their grievances have to be addressed and promised talks within the Indian Constitution with those who abjure violence. The Hindu, September 14, 2010.

Situation in Northeast is better, says Prime Minister Manmohan Singh: Addressing Combined Commanders’ Conference in New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on September 13 said in the Northeast, the situation in general is better today than it was in the recent past, but some areas of concern still remain. Assam Tribune, September 14, 2010.


NEPAL

Prachanda decides to withdraw from PM candidacy: The Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda decided to pull out of the Prime Ministerial (PM) elections on September 17, in a bid to explore new ways to end the prolonged political deadlock.

Earlier, on September 16, he had warned of a national struggle if the party was not given a chance to lead the Government through the constitutional ways. Himalayan Times, September 18, 2010.

UCPN-M decides to launch peaceful agitation: After failing to secure a clear majority in the seven rounds of Prime Ministerial elections, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) decided on September 12 to resort to agitation. Kantipur online, September 13, 2010.


PAKISTAN

50 militants and eight civilians among 59 persons killed during the week in FATA: A suspected US drone fired three missiles at the house of a local militant at Dattakhel, a town in the North Waziristan Agency of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), on September 19, killing five militants in the 14th such attack in September 2010– the most intense barrage since the strikes began in 2004, said intelligence official.

Four persons were killed when militants attacked the house of a pro-Government tribal elder, Malak Buner Khan, in the Ghafoor Shah Village of Khar tehsil (revenue unit) in Bajaur Agency in the midnight of September 15. In addition, at least 21 militants, including 14 foreign nationals, were killed when the United States (US) drones carried out two attacks on al Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani network hideouts in North Waziristan Agency on September 15.

14 militants were killed in two separate incidents of missile attack by the US drones in North Waziristan Agency on September 14. Eight Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants and a soldier were killed in an encounter in the Dabori Tapu Kaley area of Orakzai Agency.

A roadside bomb blast killed six persons and injured four others in Kurram Agency on September 12. Dawn; Daily Times; The News, September 14-20, 2010.

52 journalists killed in 2010, says International Press Institute: At least 52 journalists lost their lives in the first eight months of 2010 because of their jobs – four fewer than during the same period of 2009, International Press Institute (IPI) said on September 12. Daily Times, September 14, 2010.

US won’t accept slackness by Pakistani Army in war on terror, says US Envoy for Pakistan Richard Holbrooke: The United States (US) special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke on September 17 said that US would not accept any "slackness" on part of the Pakistan Army in the fight against the Taliban due to their engagement in flood relief efforts. Daily Times, September 18, 2010.

Mullah Omar is in Pakistan, everyone knows it, says French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner: Afghanistan Taliban leader Mullah Omar is based in Pakistan and everyone knows it, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on September 14. Daily Times, September 15, 2010.

Operation to be launched against Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, announced Interior Minister Rehman Malik: The Interior Minister Rehman Malik, while announcing a grand operation against Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), on September 14 once again made it clear that no military operation was taking place in Balochistan. The News, September 15, 2010.

‘Islamabad told United States not push too far on Kashmir as it's ours’, reveal declassified documents: US had asked Pakistan in 2002 to end infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir but was instead told not to "push it too far" on the issue with an assertion that "Kashmir should have been ours", declassified documents released by the National Security Archive of the George Washington University reported on September 14. Times of India, September 15, 2010.


SRI LANKA

Remaining IDPs to be resettled with completion of de-mining: Around 25,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) remaining in welfare centres will be resettled by the Sri Lankan Government   as soon as the de-mining is completed in the areas where they are to be resettled. Colombo Page, September 17, 2010.

Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission makes suggestions to President Mahinda Rajapakse: The Sri Lankan Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission suggested President Mahinda Rajapakse some interim measures to better the lot of resettled Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and people living in former conflict areas on September 14. Other measures suggested by the eight-member Commission include enabling people to use their own language in official dealings, especially while making statements to the Police. Colombo Page, September 16, 2010.

The South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) is a weekly service that brings you regular data, assessments and news briefs on terrorism, insurgencies and sub-conventional warfare, on counter-terrorism responses and policies, as well as on related economic, political, and social issues, in the South Asian region.

SAIR is a project of the Institute for Conflict Management and the South Asia Terrorism Portal.

South Asia Intelligence Review [SAIR]

Publisher
K. P. S. Gill

Editor
Dr. Ajai Sahni


A Project of the
Institute For Conflict Management



To receive FREE advance copies of SAIR by email Subscribe.

Recommend South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) to a friend.

 

 

 

 

 
Copyright © 2001 SATP. All rights reserved.