Opinion United States and Pakistan: Tyranny of Geography
As its military winds down in Afghanistan,US may find itself free from depending on Pakistan.
An orderly retreat is the most challenging task for an army at war. American skills in this department will be severely tested after US President Obama’s decision to start pulling out US troops from Afghanistan from this month and end all combat operations there by 2014.
From its current levels of about 100,000 troops,the US military presence is likely to be reduced to a residual force of a few thousands that is expected to stay on in Afghanistan after 2014 in a training and support role.
As its military winds down in Afghanistan,the United States might find itself liberated from its total dependence on Pakistan since 911. Washington will also be free to explore regional security options that are no longer centred on the Pakistan army.
After the US moved into Afghanistan at the end of 2001 and steadily built up its military presence there,most of its equipment and fuel supplies landed by ship at Karachi on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast and were moved by road through two gateways into Afghanistan–the two passes at the Khyber and the Bolan.
These two passes provide the most efficient routes into Afghanistan from the south and the east. The only way of accessing these routes is through Pakistan. It is also possible to enter Afghanistan from the west through Iran.
Given the more than three decades of confrontation between Iran and the United States,that route is purely a line on the map for Washington. Not surprisingly the Pentagon became rather deferential to Gen. Pervez Musharraf and his successor Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
Rawalpindi,where the Pakistan Army Headquarters are located,is acutely conscious of its geopolitical leverage in controlling the access to Afghanistan and has exercised it quite ruthlessly in winning economic and military assistance from the United States.
Typically though Rawalpindi overplayed its hand with the United States. Even as it collected cash at the Washington ATM,it supported the very forces that were killing American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Many in Rawalpindi were boasting that they could bring the United States to its knees and accept its terms for a final settlement in Afghanistan,by threatening to squeeze the U.S. supplies to its armies in Afghanistan.
To make the point,the ISI often encouraged militants to burn down NATO’s supply trucks in Peshawar,at the Khyber pass,and Quetta,near the Bolan.
It took a while for Washington to recognize the dangers of being a permanent hostage to Rawalpindi in Afghanistan. Even as the Obama Administration reached out to Pakistan,it vigorously pursued a strategy to reduce its logistical dependence on Rawalpindi.
Central to this effort has been the creation of the so-called Northern Distribution Network–a system of roads through Central Asia and the Caucasus. From the faraway ports on the Black Sea and the Baltics,the United States has slowly built up the NDN in recent years.
The NDN now meets nearly 40 per cent of the supply requirements of the American and allied international presence in Afghanistan. The US does not see it as an alternative to the routes in Pakistan but as a strategic supplement.
The NDN will now acquire a new salience as the route of international withdrawal from Afghanistan. The US and its allies will need to move quite a lot of heavy equipment and other material from Afghanistan. They would rather not make the retreat vulnerable to Pak army’s pressure tactics.
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