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WASHINGTON — The United States is seeking new
supply routes for the war in Afghanistan that would bypass
Russia, and has even had logistics experts review overland
roads through Iran that might be used by NATO allies,
according to military planners and Pentagon officials.
The effort is aimed at developing reliable
alternatives to routes through the Khyber Pass in Pakistan,
where convoys have come under increasing attack by the
Taliban, and to prepare for the possible loss of an
important air base in Kyrgyzstan. The planning also reflects
growing concern that Russia could use its clout to restrict
American and allied shipments that would be passing in
greater amounts through its territory on the way to staging
areas in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan en route to Afghanistan.
Pentagon and military officials cautioned
that the United States was not in any way considering the
use of overland routes through Iran for American supplies, a
politically implausible proposition given the near frozen
state of relations between the United States and Iran.
American officials say that recent overtures from the Obama
administration toward Iran — Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton last week proposed a conference on
Afghanistan that would include Iran — did not encompass any
use of Iranian roads.
But Pentagon and NATO planners, as part of
an effort to consider every contingency, have studied
Iranian routes from the port of Chabahar, on the Arabian
Sea, that link with a new road recently completed by India
in western Afghanistan. The route is considered shorter and
safer than going through Pakistan.
“In the course of prudent planning, our
military planners have looked at virtually every conceivable
avenue of supplying our forces in Afghanistan,” said Geoff
Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. “However, as you
would expect, they have done so with an eye on logistical
feasibility rather than political reality.”
The route through Iran nonetheless might
be the focus of bilateral supply talks conducted by
individual NATO allies that have relations with Iran, as
NATO’s supreme allied commander, Gen. John Craddock, an
American, suggested last month. Moreover, the Shiite
government in Iran has long had testy relations with the
Sunni Taliban, improving the odds that it could offer
transit of supplies to NATO nations.
In an interview in February with The
Associated Press, General Craddock said NATO would not
oppose individual member nations’ making deals with Iran to
supply their forces in Afghanistan. “Those would be national
decisions,” he said. “NATO should act in a manner that is
consistent with their national interest and with their
ability to resupply their forces. I think it is purely up to
them.”
Outlines of potential alternatives to
routes through Russia emerged in greater detail this week,
as the American military hosted a conference in Baku,
Azerbaijan, for transportation officials and private
contractors from two former Soviet republics — Azerbaijan
and Georgia — and from Turkey to examine new supply routes
into Afghanistan.
The route would be a west-to-east swing
across the Caucasus region and into Central Asian states to
the north of Afghanistan.
Officially, the United States and NATO
would be expected to explain that this new route would be a
supplement to other transit lines, and not intended as an
antidote to potential Russian coercion as Russia takes on a
greater share of supplying the Afghan mission.
“We want to avoid any danger of
single-point failure, whether it’s Pakistan or Russia,” said
one American military officer. “It’s simply prudent planning
to have alternative lines of communication.”
Even so, any new deals for routes through
former Soviet republics would diminish the Kremlin’s growing
role in supplying the alliance in Afghanistan, and would be
expected to frustrate the leadership in Moscow. In
particular, including Georgia as part of a new route would
irritate Russia.
Georgia, which fought a war last summer
with Russia, is said by American officials to be eagerly
seeking a role in supplying NATO troops in Afghanistan — as
it desires alliance membership, and protection, and wants to
do all it can to bind itself to the Atlantic alliance.
Although Russia expresses a desire to
support the American and NATO mission in Afghanistan,
Kremlin leaders offered large economic incentives to
Kyrgyzstan to kick out the Americans from a base in Manas,
just outside the Kyrgyz capital, that has been an important
hub for moving troops into Afghanistan as well as a base for
tanker planes.
Mr. Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, said
late Wednesday that the Kyrgyz government had agreed that
American negotiators would travel there in coming days and
engage in talks on extending access rights to the Manas
base. The question of additional payments is expected to be
central to the discussion. Even so, the Air Force is working
on contingency plans to move the tanker fleet to bases in
the Persian Gulf if it loses basing rights to Manas.
The Azeri capital, Baku, is emerging as a
leading candidate to substitute for Manas, should the Kyrgyz
government refuse to reconsider its withdrawal of the basing
rights.
American and Azeri officials said that the
focus of the discussions on Monday and Tuesday was a surface
route that would move supplies from the Georgian port of
Poti on the Black Sea and overland to Baku, where they would
cross the Caspian Sea to Aktau, Kazakhstan, and then
overland across Uzbekistan into Afghanistan.
A second potential route would land cargo
at the Caspian seaport of Turkmenbashi, in Turkmenistan, for
transit into Afghanistan. Talks on supply routes have also
been held with officials in Tajikistan, another neighbor to
the north of Afghanistan.
One American official said the first
“trial run” of cargo containers on the new route was
conducted within the last two weeks, with shipments of
lumber sent from Turkey to Georgia to Azerbaijan, and then
onward toward Afghanistan.
At the conference, the American military
was represented by officials from the European Command,
Transportation Command and Defense Logistics Agency, and
officials said the talks focused only on movement of
nonlethal supplies.
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