NATO supplies attacked in Pakistan

Fuel and other supplies for U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan were destroyed in southwestern Pakistan this week in brazen attack by unidentified gunmen. More than two dozen vehicles, stranded near Quetta by Islamabad's ban on NATO convoys using its border crossings, went up in flames after men rode motorcycles into a parking area and fired rockets. The attack on the stranded trucks is the first since Pakistan slammed the gates at the Chaman border crossing in Baluchistan in retaliation for the friendly fire airstrike by NATO aircraft in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed. Scores of trucks are also stranded at the northwestern Torkham border crossing but haven't been targeted by militants since the Nov. 26 closure. The airstrike and its aftermath mark the lowest ebb in U.S. and NATO relations with Islamabad, a sometimes dubious ally in the war on terrorism. NATO says the attack on the Pakistani border post on Nov. 26 occurred after a joint NATO-Afghan mission against insurgents reported being fired on from the direction of the border post and asked for air support. Pakistan claims NATO, in liaising with Pakistani troops, gave incorrect coordinates of their target, resulting in the belief no Pakistani troops were in the area. NATO is investigating the incident -- despite Pakistan's refusal to participate in it the probe – and expressed regrets but Pakistan's rancor is so far unabated. The attack, it said, was another violation of its sovereignty by the United States and NATO and was a deliberate act of aggression. As a result, the United States was ordered to vacate a base in Pakistan used for unmanned aerial vehicles conducting surveillance and reconnaissance in Afghanistan and the border crossings were closed, complicating coalition operations in Afghanistan. About 40 percent of NATO's non-lethal supplies for forces in Afghanistan are shipped to the Pakistani port of Karachi and then trucked to Afghanistan. That has come to a complete halt. The U.S. Department of Defense says the border closure poses no immediate danger for its 130,000 troops in Afghanistan since they have adequate supplies for several months and the Northern Distribution Network is in operation. But that alternative route from Europe for non-lethal supplies -- food, water, machinery, equipment -- isn't without problems. Russia, through which the supplies pass by train, is at loggerheads with the United States and NATO over European ballistic missile defense plans and could use access to its rail network as a pawn in the dispute. "We will have to link (the dispute) to other matters … this could include Afghanistan," Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to NATO, is reported to have said last month. The Northern Distribution Network has been used for supplying troops in Afghanistan since late 2009. On the main route, goods are shipped by sea to Baltic ports (Tallinn in Estonia, Riga in Latvia and Klaipeda in Lithuania) and put on trains that pass through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. Road transport into Afghanistan is part of the supply route. The NDN, with its side routes, is more expensive to transporting goods than the Pakistan route. The prospect of Russia using its leverage on transiting supplies in the missile dispute is thus a possibility. Russia is insisting on a formal, binding agreement that any NATO ballistic missile defense system in Eastern Europe wouldn't be used against Russian weaponry. The position of Washington and its NATO allies was expressed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "No ally within NATO is going to give any other country outside the alliance a veto over whether NATO protects itself by building a missile defense system against threats we perceive are the most salient. "It's not directed at Russia. It's not about Russia. It's frankly about Iran." Moscow, however, is showing no inclination to take the alliance at its word. Reports in Washington indicate preparations are under way to increase the volume of supplies to Afghanistan using the NDN. But as the comment from the Russian ambassador suggested, the NDN -- in its own way – is as vulnerable as those through Pakistan.