This last week, there has been a lot of talk on the web about Supply Lines in Afghanistan. None of it really good. But by far the worst of the news landed today via the UK Times.
The West is indirectly funding the insurgency in Afghanistan thanks to a system of payoffs to Taleban commanders who charge protection money to allow convoys of military supplies to reach Nato bases in the south of the country.
Seems the job of transferring supplies from the port city of Karachi in Pakistan to the troops in landlocked Afghanistan isn't going as well as most people would like.
But before we go into this lets take a look at some facts of how we got in this crappy situation, what it means to the war in Afghanistan, and if this is a good strategy.
An army marches on its stomach - Napoleon Bonaparte.
Without Supply lines an army doesn't stand much of a chance of winning a war. That's just a fact. When Napoleon invaded Russia with 450 thousand troops the Russians just kept retreating and burned there own fields as they backed away. Napoleon's supply lines became stretched and winter set in. By the time Napoleon retreated back to Western Europe he has 40 thousand troops left.
In modern times the same is true. By the time the Soviets left Afghanistan only 30% of there supplies were reaching the troops.
Lieutenant-Commander James Gater, a spokesman for Nato forces in Afghanistan, said that the transport of Nato supplies was contracted to commercial firms and how they got them into the country was their business.
Diarist Fixer, over at the military/insurgency blog Alternate Brain was one of the first to post on the fact that all of a sudden NATO troops are finding their supply lines in serious trouble in his piece Monday.
As I've said many times, I don't care what kind of force you have on the ground. If you can't resupply them, they're ineffective at best, dead at worst. Afghanistan in particular is the last place you want to have resupply problems. The Khyber Pass, and the entire mountain range they are a part of, is a natural obstacle to resupply and has played a big part in the death of armies for the last few centuries.
Now what could be worse than having to transport enough food/water/equipment to 70,000 troops in one of the worst terrains on Earth?
This Reuters piece also from Monday
"The Taliban now has a permanent presence in 72 percent of the country," ICOS, formerly known as the Senlis Council, said in the report, adding that the figure had risen from 54 percent last year.
It is with this background that the latest story from The Times of London hit. It appears that NATO is paying companies to provide the supplies to troops. But these companies need to pass over roads controlled by the Taliban. In light of this Western companies are now paying the Taliban not to attack the convoys.
Another boss, whose company is subcontracted to supply to Western military bases, said that as much as a quarter of the value of a lorry's cargo went in paying Taleban commanders.
The blog Foreign Policy also has a small comment on this story saying that it requires an investigation.
I second that call for an investigation. Obviously having our tax dollars going towards paying the Taliban's road tax is simply unsustainable and counter productive.
If this continues the Taliban will hold even more of the country by this time next year.