At the moment, about half those supplies come through Pakistan. The Pakistanis only closed, for about a day, one of the two main routes. About 30 percent of the supplies come in via Central Asia railroads, and another comes from the Black Sea, via rail to the Afghan border. The remaining 20 percent comes in by air. But some of that may be shifted to the Central Asian route, which is much safer (from bandits, bad roads and the Taliban) than the Pakistan routes.
The U.S. and NATO supplies coming in via railroad from Western Europe, go through Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, to Afghanistan. This approach costs $400 a ton to get supplies into Afghanistan, versus three times that to truck it in from Pakistani ports, or $14,000 a ton to fly stuff in. This Central Asian route has been under negotiation since 2003, but Russia kept agreeing to it, and then withdrawing cooperation. What has finally compelled Russia to cooperate in the last year is the growing problems they are having with heroin and opium coming out of Afghanistan into, and through, Russia.-From Strategy Page
Boy, this latest deal with Pakistan shutting down the border after the cross border accident is any indicator as to how unstable the logistics route is, then news like this should be good for the US and NATO. Although any deals they make with Russia will have to piss off Georgia, whom has contributed forces to the war effort. It is also risky to now make Russia a partner with all of this, because they could play games with the rail system. I guess they would be the best route to go with out of the two bad options available.
The other point is that Russia is very smart when it comes to leverage and negotiations. The more we have issues on the Pakistan border with crucial logistics, the more the coalition is up against the wall to use a different route–and they don’t have many options. Especially when cost is increasingly becoming an issue. So at this point, Russia is going to negotiate all types of sweet deals in regards to NATO and how it impacts Russia. I just hope that whatever deals we strike up, that the US and NATO don’t get screwed in the long run. Russia knows it has the cards.
On the flip side, I just posted a deal on Russia thinking about using private security firms for their companies overseas. I could see them utilizing these types of paramilitary forces for work in Afghanistan, if in fact the US and NATO could convince them to participate. Russian troops in Afghanistan would be too much to ask I think. You never know though and I never cease to be amazed with this stuff.
I also mention private industry as a better option because of all of the Mi-17s that Afghanistan is buying up. Russia would be a good choice for instructors and maintenance types in these contracts to ensure that Afghanistan gets a good value. Plus, the Russians wrote the book on using the Mi-17 in Afghanistan during their war there and these Mi-17s are familiar to the Afghans. Most of all, there is the maintenance of these aircraft post war. Poor countries with little in the means of parts or repair capability, will really appreciate the durability, cost and simplicity of this aircraft when everyone is gone and packed up.
Afghanistan will also appreciate all of these railroads coming into their country, because that will make it significantly cheaper for investors to do business there. The US and NATO will enjoy a cost savings as well, just as long as Russia is happy, and the Taliban can be put in check in the north. We will see how it goes. –Matt
Afghanistan’s First New Railroad On Track
Russia, NATO Plan Joint Afghan War Initiative
Afghanistan’s First New Railroad On Track
October 14, 2010
by Charles Recknagel
From the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif to the Uzbek border, the land runs flat with barely a hillock to block the way.
It is perfect terrain for building a railway. So, since Afghanistan inaugurated construction of its northern rail line in May, progress has been fast.
Now, the Uzbek company contracted to lay the track has completed almost all of the 75-kilometer line. According to the schedule, the construction should be finished by the end of this year.
If so, Afghanistan will get its first railroad in more than 100 years. That is when a former monarch, Amir Abdurrahman, banned rail lines as potential invasion routes.
Officials say the railroad will speed up freight deliveries across the Uzbek border dramatically.
“The [delivery time] will decrease by 50 percent because the speed of rail transport is faster, since the wagons don’t have to stop,” says Ahmad Wali Sangar, an economic adviser to the government of Balkh Province, where Mazar-e Sharif is located. “When the cargo is loaded on the train wagons, the trader’s products will be transported straight to Afghanistan.”
Currently, the stops can be endless.
Revitalize The Economy
Everything headed by rail for Afghanistan has to stop at the Uzbek border and be offloaded to trucks. The offloading and resulting backups and customs checks can means weeks of delay before the cargo continues on its way.
The railroad will solve that problem by allowing containers — which are sealed at their point of origin — to move across the border without interruption to a major new freight terminal near Mazar-e Sharif’s airport. From the terminal, the cargo can be forwarded by truck or air, making Mazar-e Sharif a major distribution hub for the country.
The Asian Development Bank, which is funding the construction with some $165 million, hopes the railway line will help revitalize the Afghan economy by bringing in goods faster and cheaper than is now possible. Among the key imports are grain, fuel, and foodstuffs from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and, farther afield, from Russia.
But the rail from the border will also enable Washington and NATO to bring in more supplies for troops, reducing the coalition’s dependence on routes through Pakistan where militants routinely attack trucks. And that may make the railroad a tempting target for the Taliban.
Currently, the railroad is guarded by a force of 500 police. The headquarters of the force is a small, windswept outpost halfway between Mazar-e Sharif and the Afghan border crossing of Hairaton, where the new rail line starts.
Cause To Worry
General Asghar Asghary, the head of the force, receives visitors in the post’s single small concrete building. He says there are other posts scattered along the length of the track and that the force is strong enough to protect the line when it becomes operational.
General Asghar Asghary
“We won’t need more police than we have now. The structure we have is entirely capable,” Asghary says. “And even during the last three to four months, the company’s trains have been coming and going a lot with workers and they are being protected.”
Still, there is increasing cause to worry. The Taliban have grown powerful over the past two years in several northern provinces, particularly in the neighboring province of Konduz. Already the militia regularly attacks fuel trucks traveling from the Tajik border through Konduz and Baghlan provinces to the coalition’s base at Bagram airport near Kabul.
Asghary says that U.S. officers initially visited his headquarters and promised help, including with constructing fortified perimeters around the posts. But they have not returned since and he does not know whether the aid will ever arrive. His own budget is not enough to do more than the minimum needed to fortify and winterize the outposts.
For now, guarding the railroad is light work and construction goes on unimpeded.
Lack Of Technical Skills
Each day the police escort the Uzbek workers building the railroad to their construction site and then escort them home again to their camp in Hairaton.
The entirely Uzbek team is doing the work because Afghanistan long ago lost the equipment and technical skills needed for the job. But once the railway is built, some of the Uzbek technical staff will stay on to train Afghan personnel and create the basis for Afghans to extend the track further themselves in the future.
Sangar says the country today has nowhere near the money needed to build a railway network connecting its different regions. But the track which will soon be finished in Mazar-e Sharif, plus another track currently being built in Iran toward the Afghan border, create the starting points for a wider system.
Iran has reportedly completed two-thirds of a 190-kilometer rail bed from its town of Khaf to link with Herat.
If Herat were one day connected by rail to Mazar-e Sharif, some 700 kilometers away, northern Afghanistan would not only acquire a major rail line but also become a transit country for the shortest rail link between the Central Asian countries and the Gulf or Indian Ocean ports.
Whether that rail line is built will depend upon outside funding. The Asian Development Bank is funding technical surveys for such a track across northern Afghanistan but has made no commitments.
Story here.
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From Strategy Page
October 3, 2010
After a recent incident where U.S. helicopter gunships crossed into Pakistan, in hot pursuit of Islamic terrorists, and killed three Pakistani soldiers (and a lot more terrorists), Pakistan cut one of the two NATO supply routes that pass through Pakistan. Aside from the fact that the Pakistani soldiers fired on the NATO helicopters (which they often do, even when the choppers are on the Afghan side of the border), the U.S. didn’t have to remind the Pakistanis that such a gesture was self-defeating. The Pakistani government is heavily dependent on American economic and military aid, and more and more of the supplies for foreign troops in Pakistan is coming from non-Pakistani sources. This hurts Pakistani businesses that move, and often provide, the supplies.
At the moment, about half those supplies come through Pakistan. The Pakistanis only closed, for about a day, one of the two main routes. About 30 percent of the supplies come in via Central Asia railroads, and another comes from the Black Sea, via rail to the Afghan border. The remaining 20 percent comes in by air. But some of that may be shifted to the Central Asian route, which is much safer (from bandits, bad roads and the Taliban) than the Pakistan routes.
The U.S. and NATO supplies coming in via railroad from Western Europe, go through Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, to Afghanistan. This approach costs $400 a ton to get supplies into Afghanistan, versus three times that to truck it in from Pakistani ports, or $14,000 a ton to fly stuff in. This Central Asian route has been under negotiation since 2003, but Russia kept agreeing to it, and then withdrawing cooperation. What has finally compelled Russia to cooperate in the last year is the growing problems they are having with heroin and opium coming out of Afghanistan into, and through, Russia.
Shipping supplies to Afghanistan via Russian and Central Asian railroads has advantages for the nations it passes through. Russia has an economic interest in this, as more traffic makes it financially attractive for Central Asian nations to invest in upgrading their rail connections to Afghanistan. Tajikistan, for example, is extending its railroad to the Afghan border by building another 145 kilometers of track. Afghanistan itself has no railroads, mainly because there is not enough economic activity in the country to make this worthwhile. Foreign donors have contributed billions of dollars since 2002 to build more paved roads in Afghanistan. Currently, there are 42,000 kilometers of roads there, but only a third are paved. There are few rivers, much less navigable ones, and no access to the sea. The place has long been a logistical nightmare. Most Afghans recognize that roads will make the country more prosperous, by making it economically feasible to export many commodities, and cheaper to bring in, and distribute, foreign goods. Naturally, the Taliban are opposed to all this road building, as it threatens the poverty and ancient customs that Islamic conservatives are so fond of.
Afghanistan’s neighbors are eager to trade, and are using the U.S. and NATO need for more access to upgrade their transport links to the country. For example, 90 cargo containers were shipped through the Caucasus, via Turkey, Azerbaijan, the Caspian sea and Kazakhstan, to Afghanistan last year, as a test, and regular shipments began shortly thereafter. It’s also possible to ship containers across the Caspian to a port in Turkmenistan, and thence to Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO wants to move up to 50,000 containers a year via these new Russian and Caucasus routes. This makes it economically feasible to ship more civilian goods this way. As the traffic increases, it makes economic sense for Afghanistan to start building rail lines, something most nations began doing over a century ago.
Story here.
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Russia, NATO Plan Joint Afghan War Initiative
October 27, 2010
Russia could play a new role in Afghanistan under plans being drawn up between NATO and Moscow — more than two decades after Soviet troops were forced into a bloody retreat from the country.
Among a range of proposals under consideration Wednesday was the possibility of Russia lending military helicopters to the Afghan Army, training Afghan pilots in Russia and enabling more NATO convoys — including those with lethal cargo — to pass across its territory. The plan could also extend to Russia training Afghan security forces outside the country in counternarcotics techniques.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary-general of NATO, said he hoped that details of the deal would be agreed at a landmark summit between NATO and Russia in Lisbon on Nov. 20.
“I think there is potential for an expanded cooperation between NATO and Russia as regards Afghanistan,” Rasmussen said Monday. “Russia has a long-term interest in stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan because Russia’s security is also affected by what is going on in Afghanistan, not to speak of the risk of destabilization spreading from Afghanistan to Central Asia and farther.”
Rasmussen said he raised the prospect of Russia providing the Afghan Army with helicopters at a meeting in Moscow in December, and the concept was also being discussed between the U.S. and Russia. “I would not exclude that we could facilitate that process within the NATO-Russia Council,” Rasmussen said.
As well as aircraft, Russia could agree to let convoys of NATO weapons and ammunition cross its territory. This would offer an alternative route from Pakistan, where the alliance’s convoys come under regular attack from the Taliban.
The NATO-Russia summit could also lead to Moscow being invited to cooperate with the alliance on the controversial issue of missile defense. “The summit will represent a new start in the relationship between NATO and Russia,” Rasmussen said. “Cooperation on missile defense will provide us with a very strong framework for developing a true EuroAtlantic security architecture.”
The idea of Moscow taking a more active role would be hugely emotive in Afghanistan, where more than one million civilians lost their lives after the Soviet invasion in 1979. NATO officials appeared unconcerned at the potential psychological impact, noting that Russian-manufactured helicopters were already in use over Afghan soil.
Story here.