Yesterday's massive attack in the heart of Peshawar is now the third to take place in a month in the region. Around mid-November a convoy of supplies, including Humvees and food from the World Food Programme, was hijacked near the entrance to the Khyber Pass. In August, suspected militants in Karachi set light to two Nato armoured vehicles. In April, four US helicopter engines worth $14 million went missing on the way from Kabul to Pakistan. In March 36 fuel tankers were destroyed in Landikotal, a border town in the NWFP.

Around the end of January, militants also seized the Kohat tunnel on the Indus Highway, which links the NWFP with the central and southern part of the country. It is not only the main route for supplying the Pakistani armed forces in the southern and northern Waziristan agencies, but the 1.1-mile tunnel is also used for transporting supplies to Afghanistan. It took an intensive three-day military operation by the Pakistan Army, involving helicopter gunships and heavy artillery, to regain control.

What the Indian audience of the Great Indian Response Trick needs to be aware of is the fact that the US and NATO forces operating in Afghanistan subsist entirely at the mercy of Pakistan. It is estimated that anything between 75-80 per cent of all supplies for the approximately 67,000 foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan, including 32,000 Americans pass through Pakistan.

The strength of these forces is only set to grow over the next 18 months as US shifts troops from Iraq to Afghanistan by at least 15,000 –some suggest even double that and more.

After being shipped into the port of Karachi, some supplies pass through the Chaman border post in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan into southern Afghanistan. Since this area is particularly dominated by the Taliban most supplies move across the country to Peshawar and over the Khyber Pass to Kabul, the Afghan capital.

We may recognise how critical the whole issue of supplies has become for the foreign forces in Afghanistan from the fact that the Pakistan army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was invited to attend a NATO commanders meeting in Brussels. Here he assured the assembly that he would keep supply lines to their troops in Afghanistan open in spite of the surge in attacks along the route.

The onset of winter is also making the foreign forces edgy.

And here is this gem from a 19 November Washington Post report from the region. It quotes a Pakistani truck driver operating on these dangerous routes as saying that attacks have become so common place in recent months, and so costly for NATO suppliers, that Taliban commanders have begun issuing receipts to drivers when they hijack trucks.

"The Taliban give us letters to give to the Americans that say that the Taliban has taken the truck, because otherwise no one would believe us and they would think we destroyed it ourselves," Rahmanullah said. "No one would question a letter like this from the Taliban."

NATO suppliers paying compensation on receipts duly certified by the Taliban! Such are the compulsions that drive military campaigns, and resultantly, foreign policy.

                                                                                                         1 2 3 4 5 6 7