Supply routes to Afghanistan

[Steve the Planner]

No matter how you slice any of this, the route to the South, through Pakistan, is the most needed, most basic access route.

Back to Baluchistan.

Lately, Afghan promotion of concepts to exploit its natural resources (all along that corridor) are predicated on this route and system that doesn't exist.

Economic Geography 101.

[Jedburgh]

CSIS, 17 Dec 09: The Northern Distribution Network and the Modern Silk Road: Planning for Afghanistan’s Future

The authors of this report set out to assess the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), which the U.S. military is establishing as an additional and alternative channel for provisioning U.S. forces in Afghanistan. These new supply routes from the Baltic and Black Seas through Central Asia have provided an urgently needed supplement to the single route through Pakistan that had been used exclusively since 2001. It was also hoped that the NDN would be less subject to the armed attacks, unexpected delays, and pilferage that have hampered the movement of goods along that same Karachi-Peshawar road.

For some years, Afghanistan’s northern neighbors have argued that they are well positioned to assist in the development of Afghanistan and also to benefit from that development. Until now, they have had no means of acting on that claim. This report argues that the NDN offers the best vehicle to date for organizing such engagement by Afghanistan’s neighbors. The adjustments to the NDN proposed here will build connections based on the genuine mutual interests of Afghanistan and its neighbors, which will in turn ensure the longer-term security and viability of the northern
supply routes.....