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

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.