Western countries scramble for
Afghan exits By Fozil Mashrab
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - As international
forces prepare for withdrawal from Afghanistan,
Western countries are already in talks with
Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors to bring
their troops and military equipment back home.
The Pakistani route and the Northern
Distribution Network (NDN) running through Central
Asian countries are the two viable routes for
international forces to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The United States and Afghanistan are in
the process of negotiating an accord for a
long-term US presence in Afghanistan
after 2014, when most foreign
combat forces are due to withdraw. The US wants
some advisers and special forces to stay on.
There are also "emergency scenario
options" in the event either or both of the
Pakistani route or/and the NDN are closed. This
would require airlifting military equipment to
Ulyanovsk airport in Russia or even to a suitable
military airport in India, and from there
transporting it to the nearest port city.
The Pakistani route, which has remained
closed since November 2011 after a "friendly fire
incident" involving North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) forces at the AfPak border
area which killed 26 Pakistani soldiers and
wounded dozens others, was partially reopened
earlier this year to allow the US and NATO to ship
food items to Afghanistan.
Currently, both
US and Pakistani authorities are in search of a
mutually acceptable arrangement that would allow
both sides to scale down negative feelings and
fully reopen the Pakistani route.
Such an
arrangement could include a sharp increase in
transit fees for US and NATO convoys crossing
Pakistani territory, while the US could also
insist that Pakistani military forces provide
stronger security for these convoys.
Meanwhile, Western governments have
already started to cultivate Afghanistan's Central
Asian neighbors by dispatching their top military
officials and defense ministers to various
capitals.
Since the beginning of 2012,
apart from frequent visits of US military
officials to respective Central Asian countries,
United Kingdom Defense Secretary Philip Hammond,
Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks and more
recently Federal Defense Minister of Germany
Thomas de Maiziere and Polish Defense Minister
Tomasz Siemoniak have visited Uzbekistan, the key
Central Asian country that is part of the NDN. The
UK deputy defense secretary is expected to visit
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the near future.
It has been reported that the US
government has already secured the consent of some
of the Central Asian countries to use their
territory to bring heavy military equipment out of
Afghanistan.
Other NATO member countries,
especially those that have large military
contingents in Afghanistan, such as the UK,
France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Poland, are
also trying to secure similar arrangements for
themselves.
However, there have also been
some dissenting voices among Western countries
with regards to the costs involved in withdrawing
troops and equipment from Afghanistan using the
NDN though Central Asia.
In particular,
French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet was
reported recently to have voiced his preference
for using the Pakistani route in view of the
higher costs involved for transporting military
equipment through Central Asian countries compared
to the Pakistani route.
France and other
NATO countries' military officials have been
quietly angry over various negative incidents
involving US troops in Afghanistan recently; these
they believe help fuel anti-US and anti-Western
feelings in Afghanistan and put their troops at
increased danger. The killing of several French
soldiers by an Afghan trainee recently is a case
in point.
Recently, the US government has
intensified its efforts to reach out to the
Pakistani government by resuming high-level talks
to convince it to reopen the Pakistani route.
United States Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton's meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister
Hina Rabbani Khar on the margins of the "Somali
Conference" in London and the visit of General
James Mattis, commander of US Central Command, to
Pakistan in February are part of the bilateral
efforts to mend ties.
Both sides seem to
be slowly edging towards reconciliation, for their
own reasons. After a decade of military
cooperation with the US on Afghanistan, Pakistan
seems to have developed dependency on the billions
of dollars in US military and financial aid it
receives and which was suspended last year when
relations between the countries deteriorated
precipitously.
What is more, Uzbekistan's
"no" to allowing its territory to be used for the
transit of "lethal" military equipment to and out
of Afghanistan adds urgency to US efforts to talk
sweet to Pakistan.
At the same time, the
US plans to utilize the
"Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Latvia"
route bypassing Uzbekistan as an alternative to
transport heavy military equipment out of
Afghanistan.
Most probably, the US will
strip everything "lethal" from its heavy military
equipment to transport through Uzbekistan rather
than take the long and tortuous route bypassing
Uzbekistan though Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Moreover, in an effort to secure Central
Asian countries' cooperation and goodwill for
transporting equipment out of Afghanistan, the US
and British governments have dangled the prospect
of donating some of their military equipment to
those countries that allow the transit of
material. This would be in addition to transit and
other fees paid to each Central Asian country.
The high cost involved aside, the NDN also
some advantages over the Pakistani route - the
security of the convoys.
Previously,
frequent attacks by Pakistan based pro-Taliban
militant groups on US and NATO convoys and scenes
of burning trucks carrying fuel and other military
vehicles were part of the picture for using the
Pakistani route.
Therefore, the security
of the convoys will be an important calculation
for Western countries that wish to make an
"honorable" and smooth exit from Afghanistan,
rather than being seen as getting chased out of
the country and plundered on the way out.
According to Western observers, both the
NDN and the Pakistani routes will need to remain
open to allow for a timely and orderly withdrawal
of Western troops and military equipment from
Afghanistan - the failure to reopen the Pakistani
route might lead to the rescheduling of withdrawal
deadlines.
Fozil Mashrab is a
pseudonym used by an independent analyst based in
Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
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