Obama

Let's be clear, the infidels have lost the war in Afghanistan and shall exit in a manner similar to Vietnam, perhaps only slower thus more pitiful but shameful none the less. The Afghans thus maintain their tradition of defeating all occupiers since Alexander the Great.
--Marvin X

Western countries scramble for Afghan exitsBy Fozil Mashrab

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - As international forces prepare for withdrawal from Afghanistan, Western countries are already in talks with Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors to bring their troops and military equipment back home.

The Pakistani route and the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) running through Central Asian countries are the two viable routes for international forces to withdraw from Afghanistan.

The United States and Afghanistan are in the process of negotiating an accord for a long-term US presence in Afghanistan after 2014, when most foreign combat forces are due to withdraw. The US wants some advisers and special forces to stay on.

There are also "emergency scenario options" in the event either or both of the Pakistani route or/and the NDN are closed. This would require airlifting military equipment to Ulyanovsk airport in Russia or even to a suitable military airport in India, and from there transporting it to the nearest port city.

The Pakistani route, which has remained closed since November 2011 after a "friendly fire incident" involving North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces at the AfPak border area which killed 26 Pakistani soldiers and wounded dozens others, was partially reopened earlier this year to allow the US and NATO to ship food items to Afghanistan.

Currently, both US and Pakistani authorities are in search of a mutually acceptable arrangement that would allow both sides to scale down negative feelings and fully reopen the Pakistani route.

Such an arrangement could include a sharp increase in transit fees for US and NATO convoys crossing Pakistani territory, while the US could also insist that Pakistani military forces provide stronger security for these convoys.

Meanwhile, Western governments have already started to cultivate Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors by dispatching their top military officials and defense ministers to various capitals.

Since the beginning of 2012, apart from frequent visits of US military officials to respective Central Asian countries, United Kingdom Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks and more recently Federal Defense Minister of Germany Thomas de Maiziere and Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak have visited Uzbekistan, the key Central Asian country that is part of the NDN. The UK deputy defense secretary is expected to visit Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the near future.

It has been reported that the US government has already secured the consent of some of the Central Asian countries to use their territory to bring heavy military equipment out of Afghanistan.

Other NATO member countries, especially those that have large military contingents in Afghanistan, such as the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Poland, are also trying to secure similar arrangements for themselves.

However, there have also been some dissenting voices among Western countries with regards to the costs involved in withdrawing troops and equipment from Afghanistan using the NDN though Central Asia.

In particular, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet was reported recently to have voiced his preference for using the Pakistani route in view of the higher costs involved for transporting military equipment through Central Asian countries compared to the Pakistani route.

France and other NATO countries' military officials have been quietly angry over various negative incidents involving US troops in Afghanistan recently; these they believe help fuel anti-US and anti-Western feelings in Afghanistan and put their troops at increased danger. The killing of several French soldiers by an Afghan trainee recently is a case in point.

Recently, the US government has intensified its efforts to reach out to the Pakistani government by resuming high-level talks to convince it to reopen the Pakistani route.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on the margins of the "Somali Conference" in London and the visit of General James Mattis, commander of US Central Command, to Pakistan in February are part of the bilateral efforts to mend ties.

Both sides seem to be slowly edging towards reconciliation, for their own reasons. After a decade of military cooperation with the US on Afghanistan, Pakistan seems to have developed dependency on the billions of dollars in US military and financial aid it receives and which was suspended last year when relations between the countries deteriorated precipitously.

What is more, Uzbekistan's "no" to allowing its territory to be used for the transit of "lethal" military equipment to and out of Afghanistan adds urgency to US efforts to talk sweet to Pakistan.

At the same time, the US plans to utilize the "Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Latvia" route bypassing Uzbekistan as an alternative to transport heavy military equipment out of Afghanistan.

Most probably, the US will strip everything "lethal" from its heavy military equipment to transport through Uzbekistan rather than take the long and tortuous route bypassing Uzbekistan though Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Moreover, in an effort to secure Central Asian countries' cooperation and goodwill for transporting equipment out of Afghanistan, the US and British governments have dangled the prospect of donating some of their military equipment to those countries that allow the transit of material. This would be in addition to transit and other fees paid to each Central Asian country.

The high cost involved aside, the NDN also some advantages over the Pakistani route - the security of the convoys.

Previously, frequent attacks by Pakistan based pro-Taliban militant groups on US and NATO convoys and scenes of burning trucks carrying fuel and other military vehicles were part of the picture for using the Pakistani route.

Therefore, the security of the convoys will be an important calculation for Western countries that wish to make an "honorable" and smooth exit from Afghanistan, rather than being seen as getting chased out of the country and plundered on the way out.

According to Western observers, both the NDN and the Pakistani routes will need to remain open to allow for a timely and orderly withdrawal of Western troops and military equipment from Afghanistan - the failure to reopen the Pakistani route might lead to the rescheduling of withdrawal deadlines.

Fozil Mashrab is a pseudonym used by an independent analyst based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.