Military Will Struggle to Add Troops to Afghanistan Quickly

No Roads, No Infrastructure? No Problem, Mullen Insists

by Jason Ditz, December 03, 2009

Adding 30,000 troops to the Afghanistan War (a number which is already being further escalated to 35,000 by some officials) in a timely fashion is no small task. After decades of wars and failed occupations, it is a nation with no infrastructure and in many cases no roads.

Add to this the rugged Afghan winters, in which most of the nation grinds to a screeching halt, and the problem seems insurmountable. Not so, insists Admiral Michael Mullen.

“We have the best transportation logistics people in the world working on this problem,” Mullen insists, but it seems that a great plan won’t go as far as, say, paved roads would in getting the surge going quickly.

Some 9,000 US Marines are expected to be leaving any day now for Afghanistan, but they are built with fast deployments into inhospitable territory in mind. Whether the escalation will go as simply for army divisions remains to be seen.

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