NATO base destroyed in Peshawar, Pakistan

[TonyGosling]

Carried out by fellahs like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md4paC-NCIw

More than 160 US, NATO vehicles burned in Pakistan
By RIAZ KHAN – 4 hours ago
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Militants torched 160 vehicles, including dozens of Humvees destined for U.S. and allied forces fighting in Afghanistan, in the boldest attack so far on the critical military supply line through Pakistan.

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCKXW9BZ60E
The American military said Sunday's raid on two transport terminals near the beleaguered Pakistani city of Peshawar would have "minimal" impact on anti-Taliban operations set to expand with the arrival of thousands more troops next year.
However, the attack feeds concern that insurgents are trying to choke the route through the famed Khyber Pass, which carries up to 70 percent of the supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan, and drive up the cost of the war.
It also dents faith in Pakistani authorities already under pressure from India and the U.S. to act on suspicion that the deadly terror attacks in Mumbai were orchestrated by Islamic extremists based in Pakistan.
The owner of one of the terminals hit Sunday denied government claims that security was boosted after an ambush last month in which bearded militants made off with a Humvee and later paraded it in triumph before journalists.
"We don't feel safe here at all," Kifayatullah Khan told The Associated Press. He predicted that most of his night watchmen would quit their jobs out of fear. "It is almost impossible for us to continue with this business."
The attack reduced a section of the walled Portward Logistic Terminal to a smoldering junkyard.
Khan said armed men flattened the gate before dawn with a rocket-propelled grenade, fatally shot a guard and set fire to 106 vehicles, including about 70 Humvees.
Humvees are thought to cost about $100,000 each, though the price varies widely depending on armor and other equipment, meaning Sunday's losses may exceed $10 million.
An Associated Press reporter who visited the depot saw six rows of destroyed Humvees and military trucks packed close together, some on flatbed trailers, all of them gutted and twisted by the flames.
Khan said shipping documents showed they were destined for U.S. forces and the Western-trained Afghan National Army.
The attackers fled after a brief exchange of fire with police, who arrived about 40 minutes later, he said.
Nine other guards who stood helplessly aside during the attack put the number of assailants at 300, Khan said. Police official Kashif Alam said there were only 30.
At the nearby Faisal depot, manager Shah Iran said 60 vehicles destined for Afghanistan as well as three Pakistani trucks were also burned.
The attacks were the latest in a series highlighting the vulnerability of the supply route to the spreading power of the Taliban in the border region, which is also considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Vast quantities of supplies pass through Pakistan after being unloaded from ships at the Arabian sea port of Karachi. Some is routed through Quetta toward the Afghan city of Kandahar, but most flows through the Khyber Pass toward Kabul and the huge U.S. air base at Bagram.
The U.S. military in Afghanistan said in a statement that an unspecified number of its containers were destroyed but that their loss would have "minimal effect on our operations."
"It's militarily insignificant," U.S. spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielsen-Green said. "You can't imagine the volume of supplies that come through there and elsewhere and other ways."
Still, NATO is seeking an alternative route through Central Asia, which it acknowledges is more expensive.
Pakistan halted traffic through the Khyber Pass for several days in November while it arranged for troops to guard the slow-moving convoys.
Shahedullah Baig, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Islamabad, insisted Sunday that the extra security covered the terminals.
"They are fully protected, but in this kind of situation such incidents happen," Baig said.
However, Khan, the depot manager, said that was untrue, and that there were only a handful of lightly armed police at the targeted terminals on Sunday afternoon.
Peshawar has seen a surge in violence in recent weeks, including the slaying of an American working on a U.S.-funded aid project. On Saturday, a car bomb detonated in a busy market area of the city, killing 29 people and injuring 100 more.
Mehmood Shah, a former chief of security in Pakistan's tribal badlands now working as a consultant, said militants appeared to have moved into the Khyber region from both sides of the border in recent months to put pressure on the supply route.
The terminals, like the route itself, could not be adequately protected by private security guards, he said.
"The government should have done it or the U.S. should have insisted that the government do it," he said.

[TonyGosling]

And another raid last night

Militants torched 160 vehicles, including dozens of Humvees destined for U.S. and allied forces fighting in Afghanistan, in the boldest attack so far on the critical military supply line through Pakistan. (Dec. 7)


Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpj6fSRcKkE

[QuitTheirClogs]

Third Raid: Growing Fears in Peshawar as Over 50 More Trucks Destroyed

http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/08/growing-fears-in-peshawar-as-over-5 0-more-trucks-destroyed/
Posted December 8, 2008

Militants destroyed over 160 vehicles bound for Afghanistan on Sunday morning in and around the Pakistani city of Peshawar in raids on two separate compounds storing the vehicles for the international forces. This morning, they struck again.

In another pre-dawn raid, militants attacked two more parking bays, setting fire to 150 vehicles and cargo containers, with over 50 of those trucks also scheduled to cross the tumultuous Khyber Pass to supply NATO forces in Afghanistan. None of the watchmen on the scene saw anything of the attack, and no one was reported injured in the strike.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=18883

[cem]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5333435.ece

Nato hard at work making deals to beat the Khyber Pass convoy trap

by Jeremy Hard, Times, 13 December 2008


Nato plans to open a new supply route to Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia in the next eight weeks following a spate of attacks on its main lifeline through Pakistan this year, Nato and Russian sources have told The Times.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the former Soviet Central Asian states that lie between Russia and Afghanistan, have agreed in principle to the railway route and are working out the small print with Nato, the sources said.

“It'll be weeks rather than months,” said one Nato official. “Two months max.”

The “Northern Corridor” is expected to be discussed at an informal meeting next week between Dmitri Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to Nato, and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's Secretary-General.

The breakthrough reflects Nato and US commanders' growing concern about the attacks on their main supply line, which runs from the Pakistani port of Karachi via the Khyber Pass to Kabul and brings in 70 per cent of their supplies. The rest is either driven from Karachi via the border town of Chaman to southern Afghanistan - the Taleban's heartland - or flown in at enormous expense in transport planes that are in short supply.

“We're all increasingly concerned,” Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Wednesday. “But in that concern, we've worked pretty hard to develop options.”

The opening of the Northern Corridor also mirrors a gradual thaw in relations between Moscow and Nato, which plunged to their lowest level since the end of the Cold War after Russia's brief war with Georgia in August.

However, Nato and the United States are simultaneously in talks on opening a third supply route through the secretive Central Asian state of Turkmenistan to prevent Russia from gaining a stranglehold on supplies to Afghanistan, the sources said. Non-lethal supplies, including fuel, would be shipped across the Black Sea to Georgia, driven to neighbouring Azerbaijan, shipped across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan and then driven to the Afghan border.

The week-long journey along this “central route” would be longer and more expensive than those through Pakistan or Russia and would leave supplies vulnerable to political volatility in the Caucasus and Turkmenistan.

The US and Nato are, though, exploring as many alternatives as possible as America prepares to deploy 20,000 more troops - three quarters of them by the summer - to add to the 67,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. Turkmenistan represents the only realistic alternative that bypasses Russia. A route through Iran is out of the question because Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran. Afghanistan's border with China is too remote to be used.

An agreement with Georgia has already been signed and negotiations with Azerbaijan are “ongoing”, a Nato official said.

Nato began exploring alternative supply routes in response to political instability in Pakistan last year and reached an informal agreement with Russia on the Northern Corridor at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April. At the same meeting President Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenistan offered to allow Nato to take supplies across its territory and to establish logistics bases there, according to Nato sources.

Negotiations stalled after the Georgian crisis, as Nato suspended high-level contacts with Moscow and Central Asian countries grew wary of angering the former Soviet master.

They have since shown their independence by refusing to back Moscow's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

Russia, meanwhile, has been offering preferential treatment to Nato members that it considers “friendly”, such as France and Germany, the only Nato members allowed to fly supplies to Afghanistan through Russian airspace. In November Germany also became the first Nato member allowed to bring supplies for Afghanistan through Russia by railway.

Russian officials say that Moscow is ready to open the Northern Corridor to all Nato members as soon as the alliance finalises its agreements with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The agreements cover non-military supplies such as fuel, food and clothing, and some non-lethal military equipment.

“All Nato countries will be able to use the Northern Corridor,” one Russian official familiar with the negotiations told The Times. “As far as we understand, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have agreed to it and sent the relevant papers to Brussels. We're just waiting for Nato to sign the agreements. We've done our part.”

[TonyGosling]

Do you, or do you not, support the Afghan and Pakistani peoples' right to self-determination?
Pakistan hauliers refuse to take supplies to Afghanistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — Haulage companies in Pakistan have stopped delivering to foreign troops in Afghanistan after a major deterioration in security along the key supply route, an association official said Monday.
The decision follows a series of major raids by suspected Taliban militants on international military supply depots in northwest Pakistan in the past two weeks in which hundreds of NATO and US-led coalition vehicles were destroyed.
"We have stopped supplies to foreign forces in Afghanistan from today, Mohammad Shakir Afridi, president of the Khyber Transport Association, told AFP Monday in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
"We have around 3,500 trucks, tankers and other vehicles, we are the major suppliers to Afghanistan, transporting about 60-70 percent of goods," said Afridi, whose association represents transport companies in the area..........
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gU9NER6FnwTNscMwEOW FyyUPdzMA

[Disco_Destroyer]

Pakistani lorry drivers supplying Nato troops in Afghanistan go on strike 16 Dec 2008 An association of Pakistani lorry owners and drivers refused yesterday to resume delivering supplies to foreign troops in Afghanistan after a series of militant attacks on convoys plying the main supply route via the Khyber Pass. An international shipping company that handles US military supplies through Pakistan also said that there was now "a large backlog of military freight" [<g>] across the country from Karachi, where the cargo arrives by ship, to the Afghan border, "Clearly the security situation is very difficult," Kevin Speers, a spokesman for Maersk Lines Ltd, told The Times.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5344612.ece

[Disco_Destroyer]

Militants torch 10 trucks on Afghan supply route --Attack follows destruction of crucial bridge, creating transport concerns for U.S., NATO forces. 04 Feb 2009 A day after blowing up a crucial land bridge, Taliban militants today torched 10 supply trucks returning to Pakistan from Afghanistan, underscoring the insurgents' dominance of the main route used to transport supplies to Afghan-based U.S. and NATO troops.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan5-2009feb0 5,0,828001.story
http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news