Political Dimensions of the Northern Afghanistan Resupply Routes

Abstract

A series of insurgent attacks in Pakistan targeting U.S./NATO supply lines took place during the latter half of 2008 and early 2009. As much as 75 percent of the cargo to support military operations and development programs in Afghanista previously had been shipped through Pakistan, passing through a small number of precarious transport corridors, constrained by chokepoints and subject to disruption. As a result of insurgent attacks, carriage of supplies through the Khyber Pass along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was repeatedly interrupted for brief periods. These events in Pakistan shifted Allied attention from the southern routes to Afghanistan’s northern access routes. The existing transit routes for supplies entering Afghanistan from the north passed across European and Eurasian countries and then through the Central Asian countries. This combination of port, air, rail, and road facilities came to be referred to within the framework of Afghanistan’s normalization operations as the NDN — the “Northern Distribution Network.”