Pakistan had only reopened the border to Afghanistan a few weeks ago, and traffic was just finally starting to approach pre-November levels when Pakistani officials announced another temporary closure today, citing security concerns.
The new closure is a response to the Jamrud attack on Tuesday, in which unknown gunmen attacked a convoy of NATO supply trucks heading to occupied Afghanistan, killing a driver.
Behind the diplomatic tensions and the reliability of the route, this underscores the reason the US was looking to open alternative, more expensive routes to Afghanistan in the first place: Pakistan’s route is enormously dangerous.
Officials say they don’t expect the new closure to last long, but there’s no reason to expect they’ll actually solve the problem either, so brief closures related to security threats, a common occurrence over the past several years, are likely to continue to crop up from time to time.
What a shame the US let Israel talk them into making such a mess of relations with Iran. At the time of 9/11 Iran was willing to aide the US against Bin Laden and Taliban. They would have provided an excellent route into Afghanistan as well as being a firm middle east ally.
Now, the US, and NATO countries, are faced with the flow of good in and, especially out, of Afghanistan as they have made enemies in Pakistan and are faced with a hodge-podge of expensive countries between them and the Baltic on the northern route.
How much better to have had some planner look at a map and decide to keep Iran as a friend; what have the US's other friend in the middle east ever done for them? This way goods could flow up and down the A1 (fairly safe depending on the usual bribes) and join with evacuating Helmand province down the A71. These would take you safely into Iran, no passes, no Taliban ambushes, and down to Chahbahar on the Gulf of Oman (Indian ocean) or the heavy duty port of Bander Abbas.
A great saving of money, a safe passage on reasonable highways, and a chance to refuel when needed.
A pity all this was thrown away.
On the contrary, it was great that this happened. I cannot imagine the extreme US hubris we'd have now had things gone well in the ME for the Americans.
Or…we could just go home.
They could just simply deploy more and better armed Mobile patrols from Bristol. That should be enough to secure the route.