[R-G] Amid Taliban Rule, a NATO Supply Line Is Choked

[Anthony Fenton]

December 25, 2008
Amid Taliban Rule, a NATO Supply Line Is Choked
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/world/asia/25khyber.html?ref=asia

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — This frontier city boasts a major air base and  
Pakistani Army and paramilitary garrisons. But the 200 Taliban  
guerrillas were in no rush as they methodically ransacked depots with  
NATO supplies here two weeks ago.

The militants began by blocking off a long stretch of the main road,  
giving them plenty of time to burn everything inside, said one guard,  
Haroon Khan, who was standing next to a row of charred trucks.

After assuring the overmatched guards they would not be killed — if  
they agreed never to work there again — the militants shouted “God is  
great” through bullhorns. They then grabbed jerrycans and made several  
trips to a nearby gas station for fuel, which they dumped on the cargo  
trucks and Humvees before setting them ablaze.

The attack provided the latest evidence of how extensively militants  
now rule the critical region east of the Khyber Pass, the narrow cut  
through the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that has been  
a strategic trade and military gateway since the time of Alexander the  
Great.

The area encompasses what is officially known as the Khyber Agency,  
which is adjacent to Peshawar and is one of a handful of lawless  
tribal districts on the border. But security in Khyber has  
deteriorated further in recent months with the emergence of a brash  
young Taliban commander who calls news conferences to thumb his nose  
at NATO forces, as well as with public fury over deadly missile  
attacks by American remotely piloted aircraft.

Khyber’s downward spiral is jeopardizing NATO’s most important supply  
line, sending American military officials scrambling to find  
alternative routes into Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia.  
Three-quarters of troop supplies enter from Pakistan, most of the  
goods ferried from Karachi to Peshawar and then 40 miles west through  
the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.

A half-dozen raids on depots with NATO supplies here have already  
destroyed 300 cargo trucks and Humvees this month. American officials  
insist that troop provisions have not suffered, but with predictions  
that the American deployment in Afghanistan could double next year, to  
60,000 soldiers, the pressure to secure safer transportation is even  
more intense.

For NATO the most serious problem is not even the depots in Peshawar  
but the safety of the road that winds west to the 3,500-foot Khyber  
Pass. The route used to be relatively secure: Afridi tribesman were  
paid by the government to safeguard it, and they were subject to  
severe penalties and collective tribal punishment for crimes against  
travelers.

But now the road is a death trap, truckers and some security officials  
say, with routine attacks like one on Sunday that burned a fuel tanker  
and another last Friday that killed three drivers returning from  
Afghanistan.

“The road is so unsafe that even the locals are reluctant to go back  
to their villages from Peshawar,” said Gul Naseem, who lives in Landi  
Kotal, near the border.

The largest truckers’ association here has gone on strike to protest  
the lack of security, saying that the job action has sidelined 60  
percent of the trucks that normally haul military goods. An American  
official denied that the drop-off had been that severe.

“Not a single day passes when something doesn’t happen,” said Shakir  
Afridi, leader of the truckers’ group, the Khyber Transport  
Association. He said at least 25 trucks and six oil tankers were  
destroyed this month. “Attacks have become a daily affair,” he said.

There are new efforts to deter Taliban raids, including convoy escorts  
by a Pakistani paramilitary group, the Frontier Corps. But now  
militants are attacking empty — and unguarded — trucks returning to  
Pakistan. The road from Peshawar to the border has become far more  
perilous than the route on the other side in Afghanistan, truckers say.

“Our lives are in danger and nobody cares,” said Shah Mahmood Afridi,  
a driver who was in the returning convoy attacked on Friday. “They  
fired at the trucks and killed three men inside. There is no security  
provided when we are empty.”

Escalating violence on the Khyber road has paralleled the rise of  
Hakimullah Mehsud, a young Taliban commander and lieutenant of  
Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the main Pakistani Taliban faction.

Earlier this year, Hakimullah Mehsud’s forces took control of Orakzai  
Agency and instituted the strict Islamic laws known as Shariah. At a  
news conference there one month ago, Hakimullah Mehsud declared his  
intention to intensify attacks on NATO supply convoys. Some security  
officials say they believe that he was behind the assassination in  
August of a rival militant leader, Hajji Namdar, in Khyber.

At the same time, another powerful Khyber warlord, Mangal Bagh, who  
officials say has not been attacking the convoys, has seen the  
geographic range of his influence narrow somewhat, easing the path for  
Mr. Mehsud’s authority to expand inside some parts of Khyber. “I have  
no love for Mangal Bagh, but the fact remains that Mangal Bagh does  
not do these attacks,” said Tariq Hayat, the Khyber political agent,  
the top government official in the region.

Increased missile attacks by remotely piloted American aircraft — like  
one that killed seven people in the South Waziristan Agency on Monday  
— have enraged residents in Khyber and other tribal areas near the  
border, increasing sympathy for attacks on convoys. Mr. Afridi, of the  
truckers’ association, condemns the strikes and blames them for  
increased assaults on his drivers. “We are a tribal people, and if the  
Americans hit innocent people in Waziristan, we also feel the pain,”  
he said.

Raising the prospect of an even wider threat to the convoys, an  
influential Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, staged a rally last week  
in Peshawar, turning out thousands to condemn the missile strikes. The  
marchers demanded that Pakistan end the NATO convoys, and they vowed  
to cut the supply lines themselves.

Taliban militants have also moved into Khyber after Pakistani military  
campaigns in nearby areas like Bajaur Agency. Their migration is  
reminiscent of a tactic that bedeviled the American military in Iraq  
for years — dubbed “whack a mole” by combat officers — in which  
guerrillas eluded large American combat operations and moved to take  
up positions in areas with understaffed troop contingents.

All those factors have been amplified, in the view of some officials,  
by the torpor of the Pakistani government. Mahmood Shah, a retired  
Pakistani Army brigadier who until 2006 was in charge of security in  
the western tribal regions, said the government had the manpower to  
drive militants out of Khyber but had mounted only a weak response.

He recounted a recent conversation with a senior Pakistani government  
official. “You have the chance to wake up,” he said he told the  
official. “But if you don’t wake up now, there is a good chance you  
won’t wake up at all.”