U.S. Pays High Price for Pakistan Route Cut-Off: Admiral

WASHINGTON — Moving supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan via Central Asia costs three times as much as routes through Pakistan, which Islamabad shut seven months ago in anger, a senior U.S. officer said June 27.
“On the ground, it’s almost three times more expensive to come from the north as it does from Pakistan. More expensive and slower,” said Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek, director of the Defense Logistics Agency.
NATO now uses an alternative network of northern routes that pass through Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Transporting a container from the United States to Afghanistan costs about $20,000, he told a group of defense reporters.
But the cost of ferrying cargo to the Pakistani port of Karachi and then over roads to the Afghan border amounts to only a third of that price, he said.
Pakistan imposed a blockade on NATO supply convoys after 24 of its soldiers were killed by mistake in a U.S. air strike in November along the Afghan border.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said earlier this month that the Pakistan border closure costs the United States an additional $100 million a month.
Before the route cut-off, about 30 percent to 40 percent of the fuel used by coalition forces came through Pakistan.
Fuel is now transported over land via the northern routes, while food is flown in on cargo aircraft, he said.
“It was challenging initially and we took a bit of a dip there in terms of days of supply. But now our stocks of food and fuel have never been higher,” Harnitchek said.
The supply routes will be on the agenda when the commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, meets his counterparts in Pakistan on June 27, officials said.
U.S. officials raised expectations in May that a deal was imminent with Pakistan on the reopening of the routes, but no announcement came and Washington withdrew its team of negotiators.
The United States has refused to issue a formal apology over the air strikes, despite appeals from Pakistan.
Amid continued deadlock, the Pentagon on June 27 expressed hope that a deal eventually could be reached on the supply routes.
“I think there is reason for optimism. I think we’re reaching a point in our relationship with Pakistan that suggests that things are settling down a bit,” spokesman George Little told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.
“I think the basis for some kind of agreement on the GLOCs (ground lines of communication) is there and is real and we hope that we reach a resolution,” he said.

U.S. Drone Strikes Resume in Pakistan; 4 Killed

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan - The deadly U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan's tribal zone resumed with a missile strike that killed four militants, two months after a NATO raid that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The CIA campaign had reportedly been suspended to avoid worsening relations between the United States and Pakistan after the deadly Nov. 26 incident, which eroded even more the thin veneer of trust between the wary allies.

The four militants were killed late Jan. 10 when two missiles struck their compound on the outskirts of Miranshah in North Waziristan, a lawless tribal region near the Afghan border, security officials said.

The attack set the building on fire, and flames could be seen from the roofs of houses in Miranshah, which lies three miles away, residents reported.

It was the first missile strike in Pakistan since Nov. 17. It remains to be seen if it presages a new round of attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants based in the remote territory bordering Afghanistan.

November's strike by NATO helicopters triggered outrage in Pakistan and aggravated tensions in an already shaky relationship with Washington. The incident prompted Islamabad to block alliance supply convoys heading to Afghanistan.

Islamabad also ordered the U.S. to last month leave Shamsi air base in western Pakistan, from where it is believed to have launched some of its drones. Others are thought to be fired from within Afghanistan.

A joint U.S.-NATO investigation concluded last month that a catalogue of errors and botched communications led to the soldiers' deaths. But Pakistan rejected the findings, insisting the strikes had been deliberate.

NATO's probe said that both sides failed to give the other information about their operational plans or the location of troops and that there was inadequate coordination by U.S. and Pakistani officers.

The U.S. drone campaign has reportedly killed dozens of al-Qaida operatives and hundreds of low-ranking fighters in Pakistan since the first Predator strike in 2004.

But the program has incensed many Pakistanis and fuels widespread anti-American sentiment throughout the country.

The Los Angeles Times reported last month that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had suspended drone strikes on gatherings of low-ranking militants in Pakistan due to the tensions caused by the campaign.

The latest drone strike came on the same day that a remote-controlled bomb killed 35 people and wounded more than 60 others in the troubled Khyber tribal region of northwest Pakistan.

The region had served as the main supply route for NATO forces operating in Afghanistan before the suspension triggered by the November incident.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing but local residents suggested it was a tribal dispute.

The U.S. denounced the blast, which struck in a marketplace.

"By callously targeting innocent peoples, the extremists who planned and perpetrated this attack are just showing their contempt for the value of human life," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

"We remain deeply committed to working with Pakistan to address these kinds of terrorist threats and the results of violent extremism," she said.

Nuland added that Washington could not confirm reports that al-Qaida was behind the attack.

The border crossing for supplies to foreign troops fighting in Afghanistan remains closed. NATO said this month that it wants to get relations with Pakistan back on track "as quickly as possible" so it can be reopened.

Turkish Leaders Struggle with Airstrike Aftermath

ANKARA - Turkey's government is struggling to contain the fall-out from a blunder in which the military killed 35 young Kurdish smugglers in an air strike they thought was directed at Kurdish separatist militants.

KURDISH PEOPLE MOURN for victims of a Turkish air raid at the cemetery of Gulyazi Village, Sirnak province, near the Iraqi border on Dec. 30. (Bulent Kilic / AFP via Getty Images)

The conservative, Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has followed previous administrations in cracking down on the separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). But it is no closer to finding a solution to the complaints of the country's substantial Kurdish minority.

Turkey's military said they directed Dec. 28's air strike near the Iraqi border against what they thought was a group of around 40 fighters from the PKK, with whom they have been involved in a bitter, decades-long conflict.

When the dust cleared, however, the bodies were of local villagers - most of them between the ages of 16 and 20 - who had been smuggling cigarettes and fuel across the border.

Grief-stricken, enraged local villagers had denounced the attack within hours; local television pictures showed them using mules to carry the dead down off the snow-covered mountains in Uludere district.

But while the AKP conceded Dec. 29 that there could have been a blunder, it took until Dec. 30 for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to unequivocally acknowledge the mistake.

Expressing regret for the killing of 35 Kurds, he offered his condolences to the victims for what he described as an "unfortunate and distressing" incident.

At the same time, however, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu insisted that Turkey was engaged an anti-terrorist operation against the PKK while respecting the rule of law. The blunder Dec. 28 had been an exception, he said.

Media commentators and opposition politicians were scathing of the AKP's handling of the crisis.

"The state bombed its own people," was the headline in the liberal daily Taraf.

Fikret Bila, a columnist with Milliyet newspaper, remarked on CNN-Turk television: "The government is always readying to take credit, notably for economic successes.

"One wonders why no one has apologized on behalf of the government."

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), called for the government to act - and for those responsible to resign.

The outrage within the Kurdish community itself expressed itself in protests in several cities Dec. 29 and 30, with some protesters clashing with the police.

Down near the border with Iraq, some bereaved villagers dismissed talk of an error, accusing the army of having deliberately targeted the civilians. The PKK itself made the same case.

"This massacre was no accident ... It was organized and planned," Bahoz Erdal of the PKK's armed wing said in a statement.

The PKK took up arms in Kurdish-majority southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives. But clashes between the rebels and the army have escalated in recent months, with Turkey raiding PKK bases inside northern Iraq in October in response to an attack that killed 24 soldiers in the border town of Cukurca.

"The government cannot, must not have this affair covered up," Rusen Cakir,a specialist on the Kurdish issue, wrote in the Vatan newspaper. "To do so would only spur the PKK on to step up its attacks."

After he came to power in 2002, Erdogan pushed through important reforms granting greater rights to the Kurds, who make up 15 million of the nation's 73 million population. But after the heavy losses suffered by Turkey's army in October, he bowed to public pressure and hardened his line against the Kurdish rebels.

Resolving the Kurdish conflict remains one of the toughest challenges facing Turkey, the world's 17th-largest economy and a major regional player. The air strike Dec. 28 only made that task harder.

Israel Approves New Joint SOF Command

TEL AVIV - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Dec. 15 approved the formation of a joint special operations force oriented to multidisciplinary missions far from Israel's borders.

The force will be led by Maj. Gen. Shai Avital and will report directly to Lt. Gen. Beni Gantz, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

Defense News first reported the likelihood of the proposed force - known as Depth Corps - in its Nov. 14 editions.

The force will integrate elite commando units into a single special operations command for counterterror, anti-smuggling, anti-proliferation and other operations beyond its immediate and intermediate circles of enemy states. Israel's military censor did not allow reference to these outer circle states, but foreign sources have defined them to include Iran and countries lining the Horn of Africa.

"The primary task of the Corps will be to extend joint IDF operations into the strategic depth," noted an IDF statement released late Dec. 15.