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Afghanistan
NATO opens northern supply route to Afghanistan
2010-06-12
NATO has opened an alternate supply route to Afghanistan via Russia and Central Asia - a critical development that gives it the ability to bypass the previous ambush-prone main routes through Pakistan, the alliance said on Friday.
All those jihadis are going to have to find something else to burn, poor darlings.
Until now, most supplies destined for the 140,000-strong international force in Afghanistan were shipped to Karachi, and then trucked to the landlocked nation. But with the Taliban and their sympathisers targeting the convoys, military planners sought other alternatives. "We will take advantage of all transport routes available as soon as possible," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. The development is important because it signals Russian willingness to indirectly support the NATO-led mission. Moscow has been warmer to the mission's success in recent years, fearing that a NATO defeat in Afghanistan could destabilise central Asia and endanger Russia's security. Although Russia offered to open its territory to NATO as a whole two years ago, the alliance did not immediately take them up on the offer.

Individual alliance members, such as Germany and the US, were allowed to use the so-called northern route for non-lethal materials - but it was closed to alliance forces as a whole. About 14,000 maritime containers full of supplies had arrived via the northern route before it was opened to the whole alliance, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said. There are two other possible access routes to Afghanistan, through Iran and China.

But the alliance cannot use the one through Iran's south-eastern port of Chahar Bahar because of the political dispute over Tehran's nuclear weapons. Separately, a dirt road from China through the Wakhan Corridor, leads through some of the world's most mountainous terrain.
Posted by:Fred

#6  Notice no mention of what central Asian country it passes through.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2010-06-12 20:05  

#5  anytime in the future, Pappy.

But it will come from a nuke exchange with India, not at our hands, and in a total jihadi meltdown by the Paki "leadership". Just my "Magic 8-ball" prediction

/Low-budget Nostradamus
Posted by: Frank G   2010-06-12 17:02  

#4  The best way to have dealt with the supply situation would have been to use the US military to "take and hold" a supply corridor from the Persian Gulf, up through Pakistan to Afghanistan.

We didn't have the assets.

Crushing Pakistan would go a long way toward solving most of the problems in that part of South Asia, including Bangladesh.

Before or after dealing with Iraq, General?
Posted by: Pappy   2010-06-12 16:51  

#3  Crushing Pakistan would go a long way toward solving most of the problems...OP

Might solve the problem entirely.
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-06-12 16:14  

#2  The best way to have dealt with the supply situation would have been to use the US military to "take and hold" a supply corridor from the Persian Gulf, up through Pakistan to Afghanistan. Do it through Quetta and solve two problems at once. Failing to secure supply lines is the worst kind of tactical logistics error you can make. Pakistan is NOT an "ally", but a duplicitous part of the problem. Crushing Pakistan would go a long way toward solving most of the problems in that part of South Asia, including Bangladesh.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2010-06-12 16:12  

#1  ION TOPIX/NEWS KERALA > [Persian Gulf = Gulf of Arabia, Bombay, etc.]GULF MARITIME REGION A TARGET FOR TERROR ATTACK.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2010-06-12 00:03  

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