Attacks on military supplies coming to Afghanistan are just one tactic of the widening Taliban insurgency, but one that forces Western nations to deal with the geopolitical reality of fighting a war in a landlocked nation. The Taliban declared they would increase attacks on troop supply lines this year, repeating a strategy the mujahideen used against Soviet forces in the 1980s and even against the British in Kabul in the 1840s.
So far they have lived up to their word. The US military sends 75 percent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 percent of the fuel for its troops, the Defence Department said. "You essentially have to face the fact that bulk cargo moves to Pakistani ports by sea and bulk cargo moves best by road," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"If you have to do this through air lift, it puts a tremendous strain on US Air Force and US air mobility assets to move very ordinary equipment and goods," he said. There are only two major routes into Afghanistan from the main Pakistani port of Karachi, one via the Khyber Pass to the north and the other through the town of Chaman to the south-west linking to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Both routes have come under attack with dozens of fuel trucks torched this year and four US helicopter engines worth more than $13 million stolen in September.
This week 13 lorries carrying two Humvees and tonnes of food were stolen. DEALS The vulnerability of the Pakistan route was further brought home to Nato when the Islamabad government itself cut off fuel supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan for several days in September in response to a raid by US forces into Pakistan.
That has meant Nato has had try to make deals with Afghanistan's other neighbours in order to secure supply routes. With Iran out of the question, that leaves Russia, a country fiercely opposed to Nato plans to allow Georgia to join the alliance and US plans for a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.