The war for the Khyber Pass

Gordon Cucullo:

PRESIDENT-elect Barack Obama's plan to surge forces in Afghanistan - almost doubling US boots on the ground - faces one big problem: Hell's Highway.

Not the bloody cult film or the video game, but the main supply line that provides our troops in Afghanistan with vital material to live, work and fight.

This treacherous, rocky road winds up-country from Pakistan's coastal ports, through the legendary Khyber Pass, into bases in Afghanistan. Along it, trucks laden with fuel, ammunition, food and other necessary accoutrements of war make their way north, keeping American soldiers and Marines in the fight.

The road has become a focal point for our enemies, providing lucrative targets for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters (plus those of local bandit warlords) who rightly see this as the easiest, most efficient way to degrade US war-making capabilities. As the number of convoys traversing the road has grown routine and predictable, casualties have mounted, with losses in life and resources growing daily.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, following Napoleon's dictum of an army traveling on its stomach, famously established the Red Ball Express in World War II's European Theater. The Red Ball - a unit of 2½ ton supply trucks and highly motivated, primarily African-American drivers - was tasked with the mission of delivering cargo as close to the front lines as possible. They performed heroically and were a major contribution to the unique logistical system that historians like the late Stephen Ambrose credit with Allied capability to halt Hitler's December 1944 Ardennes Offensive at the Battle of the Bulge.

But there are major differences between that logistical triumph and the tenuous route over which supplies flow into Afghanistan today.

While subject to occasional Luftwaffe and German infiltrator attacks, the Red Ball flowed through liberated areas, reasonably safe from attack. Today's convoys enjoy no such advantage.

It may well be the single most strategically vulnerable point of the Obama surge.

Cargo aircraft simply can't deliver sufficient amounts of needed supplies, given the enormous tonnage required to maintain ground and air forces at combat strength levels. US military and contract air transport is already overtaxed - on its best day, capable of providing only basic support for engaged units. Add in high-volume, enormously heavy components like fuel and ammunition, and any air-supply route would collapse under the load.

Military authorities have recognized this vulnerability, and recently announced plans to open a new supply net that would use bases in Central Asia and a new road to be constructed into Afghanistan.

But such a monumental project is months away and calls for hundreds of millions in new spending to establish bases in countries with fragile governments. Further, the planned supply line would be contingent on road and rail usage from Europe and Russia, which could cut the route or demand a quid pro quo for allowing transit of supplies, rendering US interests vulnerable.

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Hence route security along Hell's Highway is rapidly becoming the singular most vital cog in expanding military operations in Afghanistan. If the supply route is cut, US forces will run short of what they need to conduct operations.

Yet that security is now provided by a poorly organized, often competitive and barely competent mix of Pakistani forces, Afghani military and locally hired contract security groups. Commanders in the theater of operations are already diverting combat units for route-protection missions.

In short order, significant numbers of combat units may have to be diverted from the fight against Taliban and al Qaeda forces in remote, contested areas to a mission of protecting the vital supply lifeline. And those units will also consume some of the northbound supplies.

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If we could engage the enemy on the main supply route, that would not necessarily be a bad thing. The Taliban is fighting an insurgency where it survival must rely on the ambiguity of the time and place of attack. If their focus turns to the main supply route and the traffic on it, they give up the advantage of ambiguity and our troops and air support can focus on their operations against the supply lines.

The current Pakistan operation lacks that advantage and is focused on finding and destroying the enemy rather than letting the enemy come to them. Unless they have some pretty good intelligence on the enemy location, the likely result will be dispersal by the Taliban while they wait for the Pakistan troops to leave.

Much of the losses sustain by the Taliban in Afghanistan has come through their futile attacks on US and NATO convoys. We should try a similar tactic along the MSR.