Asked which road he feared most, 40-year-old driver Mohammad Qayum said the valley route to the most far-flung U.S. base in the northeast, Forward Operating Base Bostick near the Pakistan border in north Kunar, was the most dangerous.
Bostick, in a natural mountain amphitheatre visited by Reuters in June, is a frequent target for Taliban rockets aimed down at the first battalion of the U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment.
“Last year, two of my trucks were attacked going to Kunar. My nephew was inside and was burned to death,” said Lalajan, nodding agreement with his friend.
This has always left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to the logistics of this war. These materials being shipped on land are and have always been a prime target of the enemy, and yet you never hear of any concerted effort to actively protect these shipments or to set up fairer contracts that would better protect the rights of these truckers? Why is that?
These truck drivers are risking life and limb to deliver this stuff and at the very least we should be providing some kind of constant over watch with air assets along with some ground units that can help to establish corridors. Anything to protect these guys as they deliver these crucial supplies. (at least on the Afghanistan side)
The other angle that we are missing out on is that if the enemy wants to show themselves in attacks against these supply convoys, then these are perfect opportunities for us to eliminate the exposed enemy using air assets and strategically positioned ground units. We should be striving to make life a living hell for the Taliban out in those mountain passes, and make them pay for attacking convoys.
Also by not protecting these convoys, we are creating Afghans that harbor animosity and anger towards ISAF/NATO. These folks are also in the same position as interpreters or anyone else that has stepped forward to help ISAF/NATO in the war–that they get the label of ‘infidel’ or traitor. I think they deserve better than that. They should get our respect and thanks for their sacrifices and we should do more to meet them half way in their effort to support us.
Hell, if the military doesn’t want to do this, then contract it out. Task a company with protecting over these routes and allow them to operate lethal air assets along with sufficient ground assets. A private company could absolutely create the corridor needed, and the money saved by making this deal with Pakistan to continue ground shipments could be applied to contracting out this type of security effort. And that would include security on the Afghanistan side and Pakistan side of these routes, because the enemy is hitting them on both sides. Either way, something must be done if these supplies are that important? –Matt
Edit: 07/31/2012– Check this quote out. It seems the Taliban are pretty stoked about these shipping routes being opened. They were a prime source of income for their fighters.
“Stopping these supplies caused us real trouble,” a Taliban commander who leads about 60 insurgents in eastern Ghazni province told The Associated Press in an interview. “Earnings dropped down pretty badly. Therefore the rebellion was not as strong as we had planned.”
A second Taliban commander who controls several dozen fighters in southern Kandahar province said the money from security companies was a key source of financing for the insurgency, which uses it to pay fighters and buy weapons, ammunition and other supplies.
“We are able to make money in bundles,” the commander told the AP by telephone. “Therefore, the NATO supply is very important for us.”
44 NATO oil tankers attacked in Pakistan, December 2011.
Afghan truckers a forgotten front in a war growing deadlier by the day
Sun, Jul 29 2012
By Rob Taylor and Hamid Shalizi
In the cabins of their “jingle” trucks flamboyant with tinsel baubles and painted tiger patterns as they move NATO’s war supplies, Habibullah thinks he and other drivers are becoming a forgotten front in an Afghan war growing more vicious.
From a dusty truck park midway between Kabul and the Pakistan border, and under the constant thump of helicopters from Jalalabad airbase over the road, Habibullah moves food and military materiel across the Taliban’s eastern heartland, from Nuristan to the former al Qaeda cave stronghold of Tora Bora.
“We worry about our fate when NATO leaves, because the Taliban also call us the infidels. For them, we are not just the enemy, but also traitors,” said the soft spoken 23-year-old, who contributes seven trucks to a cooperative with five owners.
It is a thankless and increasingly deadly job, and one so mired in graft that the drivers see a fraction of the cash paid by U.S. military paymasters, with the rest skimmed by middlemen or even going into the hands of insurgents for “protection”.
Only this week, three of Habibullah’s trucks were attacked and burned by Taliban amid the rugged mountains of Nuristan, a virtual no-go zone for NATO soldiers after heavy past losses and now garrisoned by a handful of Afghan troops and police.
A truck belonging to another company was torched and the driver shot dead across the border in Pakistan, while 22 fuel tankers were blown up in the north by insurgents there as they moved fuel and equipment.
“One of our drivers was killed. We brought his body back to Jalalabad,” Habibullah said. “His wife came and grabbed me by my collar, tearing my shirt and shouting ‘you killed my husband’. I had to give her some money. The Americans don’t help with that.”
Another driver, Lalajan, sits on a crimson carpet in a container filled with the rattle of an ageing fan against the oppressive heat and says Taliban raids are mounting this summer, as foreign combat troops look to leave the country by 2014.
The NATO-led coalition this week acknowledged that insurgent attacks had risen 11 percent in the past three months compared to last year, with a spokesman blaming a severe winter and crop failures driving poor farmers into paid Taliban ranks.
“We have between us lost 15 trucks this year so far. We had one truck break down and we sent others to help. Then out of the blue the Taliban appeared,” said Lalajan, his heavily bearded face furrowing as he sits cross legged with his 4-year-old son crawling over his lap.
“I asked them, I will give you money not to attack my trucks, but they said my money was haram (forbidden). The leader burned them,” he said.
No less disruptive are the frequent border closures on the Pakistan side, including a seven-month shutdown enforced on NATO traffic last November after 24 Pakistani soldiers were mistakenly killed in a U.S. airstrike.
The main Torkham border crossing only reopened in July, but Lalajan said there was still an immense backlog and some days only a few trucks could pass a border gateway which last year averaged around 160 each day.
POCKETING THE DIFFERENCE
Adding to security fragility, Lalajan said, was that Afghan drivers working from distribution hubs in Afghanistan like Bagram airbase north of Kabul could not obtain insurance, as drivers coming from Pakistan were able to.
Local drivers, except for those working for the largest transport companies, were also forced to rely on brokers who sold on contracts to smaller firms and pocketed the difference, often as much as half the job’s entire worth.
For the majority of contracts paid by the military, worth around $8,000 on average, middlemen pocketed $4,000 for doing nothing other than having good connections.
Drivers then received around $300 per month in salary, but pocketed $1,000 extra in danger money for each 10- to 15-day delivery to military bases in the riskiest areas.
“The middlemen often hold our money for sometimes months, investing it in other things. Sometimes when we go to claim, the company has disappeared and we get nothing. The Americans don’t care about that,” Lalajan said.
Laghman province, which is home to the truckers, is one of Afghanistan’s poorest, with 67 percent of people living in poverty and 78 percent underemployment, while seven in 10 people do not get adequate food each day, according to World Bank data.
Asked which road he feared most, 40-year-old driver Mohammad Qayum said the valley route to the most far-flung U.S. base in the northeast, Forward Operating Base Bostick near the Pakistan border in north Kunar, was the most dangerous.
Bostick, in a natural mountain amphitheatre visited by Reuters in June, is a frequent target for Taliban rockets aimed down at the first battalion of the U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment.
“Last year, two of my trucks were attacked going to Kunar. My nephew was inside and was burned to death,” said Lalajan, nodding agreement with his friend.
Smaller cooperatives like his with 70 trucks say margins are so tight they cannot make the security payments to protect convoys and which critics say often end up in the hands of the Taliban, helping fund the insurgent war effort.
“For bigger companies that get first-hand contracts, for them it’s possible. They can have 60 trucks in a convoy and can pay some money to avoid attack,” he said. “But for us there are lots of Taliban groups. Which one would we pay? The attacks have been mounting.”
Habibullah said the only thing keeping drivers in jobs vital to the NATO war effort currently were danger bonus payments, but even they were losing their lure as the Taliban intensified their fight and foreign troops wound back their presence.
“We don’t have any faith that the government will reach any deal with the Taliban. If they reach a deal, these attacks on us will still continue, because in the eyes of the Taliban we are kaffirs (infidels),” he said.
“We think for drivers like us, as has happened with some translators, foreign borders should be opened to us. We should be allowed to leave Afghanistan.”
Story here.