NATO supply lines were severely disrupted when resistance forces attacked and destroyed 25 tankers in the town of Shikarpur, Pakistan located in the Sindh province. The U.S. had recently killed 45 people in drone attacks in the same region.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
By Gene Clancy
Published Oct 11, 2010 6:29 AM
U.S. efforts to supply its troops and the puppet regime in Afghanistan came to a standstill on Sept. 30. Convoys of trucks bearing fuel and other supplies were backed up for hundreds of miles on the long supply route that runs from Karachi, the main port of Pakistan, to the mountain passes leading into Afghanistan.
Twenty-seven large fuel tankers blazed out of control after being attacked by militants. The main reason for the holdup, however, was that the government of Pakistan had closed off the Khyber Pass, in response to a U.S. armed incursion across the border with Afghanistan that killed three Pakistani border guards.
In recent weeks the U.S. military has stepped up its deadly attacks on Pakistan by both drone aircraft and armed helicopters carrying U.S. troops. There have been more than 20 strikes by CIA-operated drones since Sept. 1, counter-terrorism officials said, the highest monthly total in the nearly nine years since the U.S. began carrying out such attacks. (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 28)
As its highly touted “surge” policy has bogged down, the Pentagon has frantically lashed out by attacking so-called insurgent bases in Pakistan, claiming the right of “hot pursuit” after being attacked.
No mention is made by the corporate-owned media of the fact that the “attacks” are on forces which illegally occupy Afghanistan or that the drones are remotely controlled from halfway around the world at bases in the continental U.S.
The U.S. claims to have a secret agreement in which the Pakistanis are supposed to ignore these incursions into their sovereign territory as well as the killing of Pakistani citizens. Pakistan has denied that any such agreement exists. The killing of the border guards has raised that disagreement into a full-blown crisis.
Ninety percent of military supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan travel through Pakistan, 75 percent though the Khyber Pass via Peshawar in the Northwest Federated Provinces. Attempts to broaden the supply routes through Central Asia have been unsuccessful. The only other major seaport capable of supplying the NATO contingents is the Iranian port of Chabahar. The vulnerability of the U.S. supply lines was shown in early 2009 when militants successfully cut off the Khyber Pass temporarily by blowing up a key bridge.
It is obvious to the Pentagon planners that they cannot “succeed” in Afghanistan without the assistance of Pakistan. But according to a Pew Research Poll released on July 30, the vast majority of Pakistanis consider the U.S. to be an “enemy country” and oppose helping the NATO mission in Afghanistan.
Many Pakistanis have expressed outrage that the government of Pakistan only reacted forcefully when members of their own armed forces were killed after months of tolerating murderous air strikes on their homeland.
People in the U.S. and around the world need to join in solidarity with the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan and demand an immediate end to the illegal NATO war and occupation of Afghanistan.
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