U.S. soldiers on patrol along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

We have discussed the Talibanization of Karachi, and while the alleged number of Taliban in Karachi (400,000) is probably exaggerated, there is no doubt that extremism has taken root in Karachi.  It was the launch point for the Mumbai attacks, and as we have also discussed before, the port city through which all NATO supplies into Afghanistan through Pakistan flow.  Recently the police and Taliban fighters had a shootout in Karachi in which numerous police casualties occurred.

Pakistani police have arrested more than a dozen Islamist militants in the southern city of Karachi after a gun battle following a pre-dawn raid on their hideout, officials said.

Two policemen were killed and nine wounded before the militants’ resistance was broken after several hours of shooting.

The raid came as tension is running high between Pakistan and India in the wake of a militant attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in November, and there is pressure from the international community for Pakistan to crack down harder on jihadi groups.

A senior police official who declined to be identified said the detained men had links with Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, who is based in lawless ethnic Pashtun lands on the Afghan border …

“We were getting reports for a long time that some jihadi elements were active in this area. Today, we raided the area and arrested many of them,” Ahmed said.

One Pakistani official also said (coincidentally before this shootout) that “The Taliban won’t cause real trouble in Karachi because it’s their funding point – they get their infrastructure here, the money, the SIM chips, the mobile phones.”  Perhaps this official should re-evaluate his position on whether the Taliban wish to cause “real” trouble.  Funding point or not, the Taliban will be able to focus their activities on the implementation of Islamic writ and anti-American activities – including the closing of the port city to NATO supplies – with enough fighters.

Finally, it isn’t clear whether the police believe their propaganda or not, but one thing is certain.  In arresting approximately a dozen Taliban, the Karachi police haven’t yet seen the tip of the iceberg, much less arrested many of the Taliban.

Prior:

The Talibanization of Karachi

Targeting of NATO Supply Lines Through Pakistan Expands

Soldiers with the US Army’s 6-4 Cavalry prepare to leave on a patrol
from Combat Outpost Lowell in eastern Afghanistan January 7, 2009.

Having been busy in the Anbar Province since 2004, the Marines had become a second land Army, or at least, so Commandant General James Conway had feared.  We’ve been listening hard, and in the midst of seemingly disorganized talk about littoral combat, the force being “too heavy,” the need to go back to the Corps’ expeditionary roots, and the desire to leave Anbar and take on the task of Afghanistan, frankly it has been difficult to weave together a narrative for the future of the Corps.

Commandant Conway has taken a huge step forward in systematizing that vision with his presentation at the national symposium of the Surface Navy Association, even if he didn’t intend to address this point.

Marines shipping out to Afghanistan this year eventually will spend twice as much time at home as deployed, Commandant Gen. James Conway said Thursday.

Conway said he doesn’t know yet exactly how many Marines will go to Afghanistan, but he said it would be fewer than 20,000. And as the Corps swells to 202,000 active-duty Marines, a goal the service expects to reach later this year, those deployed troops could spend about 14 months at home for every seven months they spent in theater, he said.

But that’s only partly meant to afford troops more time off with their families, Conway said. Just as important, he wants Marines to have more time to train for operations they’ve been too busy for since the force has been locked down in Iraq.

“You don’t have time to do mountain warfare training, or jungle training, or cold weather training, and most importantly to us, we’re not doing amphibious training with our brothers in the Navy, because we just don’t have time,” he said. “Now, we’ve got to fix that.”

Conway made his presentation at the national symposium of the Surface Navy Association, outside Washington, D.C., to an audience composed mostly of active and retired naval officers and defense contractors.

Marines and other U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan “for some time to come,” Conway said, acknowledging that the situation there “will get worse before it gets better.” He hasn’t ruled out negotiations at some point with the resurgent Taliban fighters there, but the problem now is that the Taliban thinks it’s winning, Conway said, and it wants to bargain as the victor.

“Of course, we can’t allow them to do that,” he said.

Conway sees a Corps that has as many as (but no more than) 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, with the balance of the force Stateside for 14 months at a time.  Not only is this time intended for family, but he sees retraining to conduct all manner of warfare, from conventional to COIN, from jungle to mountain and cold weather.

He wants a well-trained and rested force.  This is a good vision.  What isn’t apparent is whether his vision includes the Navy’s vision for littoral combat.  It’s one thing to support amphibious warfare with amphibious assault docks, amphibious assault vehicles, helicopters, and all of the other things necessary to support a Marine expeditionary unit.

It’s quite another to buddy up with the Navy as it pursues its vision of littoral combat in the vicinity of near-failed states.  At The Captain’s Journal we see jettisoning aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers, and larger surface warfare as a very dubious proposition.  Hopefully, Conway can find a way to partner with the Navy in preparation for amphibious warfare without involving the Corps in questionable programs in which the Corps has no business.

Finally, the amount of time preparing for amphibious warfare should be limited to be commensurate with the actual probability of engaging in such warfare.  Jungle and cold weather mountain training makes sense.  The Corps might actually be engaged in such things at any point as the ready reserve for CENTCOM.  Unless we can find a nation-state against which we believe we might launch an amphibious assault, it’s prudent to spend less time and effort on it.

We have raised the issue of Georgian and more broadly European involvement in the search and decision-making for a new logistics line for Afghanistan.  As to the proposed supply line through Georgia, we observed that:

… interestingly, this leaves us vulnerable yet again to Russian dispositions, even with the alternative supply route.  Georgia is the center of gravity in this plan, and our willingness to defend her and come to her aid might just be the one thing that a) kills the option of Russia as a logistical supply into Afghanistan, and b) saves Georgia as a supply route.  Thus far, we have maneuvered ourselves into the position of reliance on Russian good will.  These “thawed relations” might just turn critical should Russia decide again to flex its muscle in the region, making the U.S. decisions concerning Georgia determinative concerning our ability to supply our troops in Afghanistan.  Are we willing to turn over Georgia (and maybe the Ukraine) to Russia in exchange for a line of supply into Afghanistan, or are we willing to defend and support Georgia for the preservation of democracy in the region and – paradoxically – the preservation of a line of supply to Afghanistan?

Stratfor weighs in on the logistical maelstrom (at the time of writing of this article, the Stratfor analysis was still available through Google organic search, but not by direct URL for non-registered users).

With little infrastructure to the east, the Pentagon is forced to go north, into Central Asia. Though some fuel is shipped to Western forces in Afghanistan from Baku across the Caspian Sea, there is little indication that existing shipping on the Caspian could expand meaningfully. Additionally, there would be the challenge of transferring cargo from rail to ship back to rail on top of the ship-rail-truck transfers that are already required in Afghanistan.

But even if Caspian shipping was not a problem and if there was sufficient excess seaworthy capacity, there remains the problem of Georgia. Though politically amenable at the moment, it is unstable; furthermore, with some 3,700 Russian troops parked in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russian military forces are poised to sever the country’s east-west rail links.

These realities will likely drive the logistical pathway farther north, through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and through Kazakhstan to Russia proper (some U.S. transports already utilize Russian airspace).

Turkmenistan presents its own challenges, as it is particularly isolated after years of authoritarian rule and continues to suffer from the legacy of what was essentially a state religion of worshipping the now-deceased Turkmenbashi. His successor, Gurbanguly Berdimukhammedov (who is rumored to be the Turkmenbashi’s illegitimate son), continues to struggle to consolidate power and is left with a series of delicate internal and external balancing acts. In short, enacting new policies under the new government remains problematic to say the least.

There is another choice: Use a Russian or Ukrainian port of entry where organized crime will be a particularly serious problem (as well as espionage with any sensitive equipment shipped this way), or use a more secure — and efficient — port that will require a rail gauge swap from the European and Turkish 1,435 mm standard to the 1,520 mm rail gauge standard in the former Soviet Union.

All of this is complicated, but the linchpin is working out an agreement to use Russian territory. This presents an even more profound challenge than Russia’s real (but not unlimited) capacity to meddle in its periphery.

While there are a number of outstanding questions — where exactly U.S. supply ships might dock to offload supplies, whether a transfer of cargo from the Western to Russian rail gauge might be necessary, whether the route would transit Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan or both, etc. — these are minor details in comparison to the Russian problem. If there is an understanding with Moscow, the rest is possible. But that understanding must entail enough reliability that Russia cannot treat U.S. and NATO military supplies like natural gas for Europe and Ukraine.

Without an understanding between Washington and Moscow, none of this is possible.

The problem is that while the Kremlin has been reasonably cooperative up to this point when it comes to U.S. and NATO efforts in Afghanistan, such an understanding may not be possible completely independent of the clash of wills between Russia and the West. There is too much at stake, and the window of opportunity is too narrow for Moscow to simply play nice with the new American administration without a much broader strategic agreement and very real concessions. Nevertheless, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Gen. Bantz Craddock, has been making overtures to Russia about improving relations.

General David Petraeus is also involved in the efforts to line up a logistics pathway to Afghanistan.  “The top US military commander for the Middle East and Central Asia has denied reports the US is planning to open a military base in Kazakhstan.

Speaking in the Kazakh capital, Astana, Gen David Petraeus also said the US had no plans to withdraw its military presence from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.

The general is in Kazakhstan for talks on the role of Central Asian states in supporting America’s Afghan operations.

Gen Petraeus and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed the partnership between their countries, and Kazakhstan’s role in supporting US operations in Afghanistan.  Kazakhstan has recently signed an agreement allowing the transit of non-military US supplies to Afghanistan.”

Assuming the veracity and accuracy of this report, it would appear that the probability is that the chosen line of supply directly involves Russia, although only for so-called “non-military” supplies.

But this choice might burden any upcoming decisions on the Ukraine and Georgia and whether they are allowed to enter into NATO, as well as other important European issues such as whether missiles will be deployed in Poland.  While not learning much from the Stratfor analysis, they are on target with their analysis of the affects of the decision-making as it pertains to Russia.

Stratfor says “there is too much at stake, and the window of opportunity is too narrow for Moscow to simply play nice with the new American administration without a much broader strategic agreement and very real concessions.”  Concessions indeed.  And while the route selected will be moderately to significantly less problematic that the alternatives, and while Gates, Petraeus and Craddock might actually believe (for now) in Russian good intentions, they should remember that Russia is ruled by ex-KGB, bent on regional hegemony for at least what they consider to be their near abroad.

The alternative through Georgia still exists, as long as the U.S. is willing to play hard ball and defend her sovereignty (as well as defend her as a line of logistical supply to Afghanistan).  More specifically, the line of supply is as follows.  First, supplies (including military supplies) would be shipped through the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus Strait in Turkey.

And from there into the Black Sea.  From the Black Sea the supplies would go through Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan.

From here the supplies would transit across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, and from there South to Afghanistan.  A larger regional map gives a better idea of the general flow path.

The problems are numerous, including the fact that the supplies would be unloaded in Georgia to transit by rail car or road, unloaded from rail or truck to transit again by sea, and finally loaded aboard rail cars or trucks again (after passage across the Caspian Sea) in Turkmenistan to make passage to Afghanistan.

But it isn’t obvious that this line of supply is impossible, however impractical it may be.  U.S. military leadership should remember that an alternative exists to the Russian line of supply to Afghanistan.  It will be too late to act to secure a line of supply through Georgia at some point in the future, but until then, the U.S. should carefully examine the Russian demands for this logistical aid.  The Russian demands are likely to evolve and expand, and it is this expansion that will prove to be troubling.  Russia is playing nice now.  This won’t last forever.

Prior:

New Afghan Supply Route Through Russia Likely

U.S-Georgia Strategic Partnership

The Logistical Battle: New Lines of Supply to Afghanistan

The Search for Alternate Supply Routes to Afghanistan

Large Scale Taliban Operations to Interdict Supply Lines

More on Lines of Logistics for Afghanistan

How Many Troops Can We Logistically Support in Afghanistan?

Targeting of NATO Supply Lines Through Pakistan Expands

Logistical Difficulties in Afghanistan

Taliban Control of Supply Routes to Kabul

Interdiction of U.S. Supplies in Khyber Pass

The Torkham Crossing

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan