Pakistan Shuts Its Border; Pentagon Shuts Its Mouth

Airmen load up supplies bound for Afghanistan at Manas Airbase, Kyrgyzstan, Feb. 2009. With a vital Pakistani trucking route closed, expensive aerial shipping is how the U.S. resupplies the war. Photo: U.S. Air Force

For nearly six months, Pakistan has closed its ground shipping routes to convoys resupplying the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Getting those resupply routes open is preoccupying U.S. military officers and diplomats as they haggle, sweet-talk, beg and cajole their Pakistani counterparts, since alternative shipping routes are vastly more expensive. Exactly how expensive, the Pentagon won't say, probably because disclosing that figure could undermine the U.S. in its talks with its Pakistani frenemy.

The so-called 'Ground Lines of Communication' ' GLOCs, pronounced 'Gee-Locks' in military parlance ' slammed shut after a November disaster in which U.S. troops killed 24 of their Pakistani counterparts during a chaotic nighttime border mission. That's a costly closure. Last year, every U.S. shipping container crossing in through Pakistan cost the U.S. about $6,200, according to Defense Department figures provided to Danger Room. The average container flown in from the air transit route at Manas, Kyrgyzstan cost a whopping $15,800.

Military officials won't disclose just how much more it's actually cost to ship goods through Manas. 'I have nothing releasable on transportation costs, or percentage of increase in spending,' says Cynthia Bauer, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Transportation Command. Privately, they know exactly how much it costs, as logistics are a crucial factor in prosecuting any war.

Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank with close ties to the U.S. military, explains what the Pentagon won't. 'It's pretty simple: if we released a number on how much it's cost us, Pakistan would come back with a number below it, and probably not too far below it,' he says. 'When dealing with a difficult negotiating partner, you don't want to show your hand.'

Talks between Washington and Islamabad to open the GLOC back up don't seem to be going well. 'The effort to try to get them open before Chicago' ' that is, NATO's big summit on the war next week ' 'doesn't appear like it's going to happen,' Dressler says.

But it's possible to get some sense of how much Pakistan's unwillingness to reopen the gates actually costs.

As Inside The Army first flagged, a recent Pentagon report on Afghanistan cited 'nearly 4,194 [Afghan army vehicles] are currently stranded in Pakistan due to the closure of the Pakistani ground lines of communication.' (.pdf) That figure was just about Afghan army logistics vehicles, so it's hardly indicative of the total amount of halted shipping. But it does allow for some back-of-the-envelope calculations.

Assume that each shipping container requires two trucks to haul it. That's about 2,100 containers. Each of them costs $15,800 to fly through Manas instead of trucked through Pakistan, which costs $6,200 instead. Cost: about $33.2 million, instead of about $13 million. So operating on conservative cost assumptions, the U.S. spent about an extra $20.1 million in shipping just for those 4,194 Afghan vehicles idling across the border in Pakistan.

To be clear, the Pentagon won't say how many shipping containers are actually going through Manas instead of the GLOC. And we probably won't know until talks with the Pakistanis on reopening that ground trucking route conclude.

Pakistan has already exacted a cost for its dead soldiers. It kicked the CIA out of a Pakistani airbase used as a launchpad for the drone war. Should the U.S. publicize how much extra the closure of the GLOCs cost, Pakistani negotiators would probably suddenly think of new, costly concessions to extract from Washington in exchange for opening the gates.

The U.S. continues to negotiate with the Pakistanis over reopening the GLOCs. Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, met with top Pakistani general Ashfaq Parvez Kayani over the weekend, and the issue came up. But to no avail.

U.S. military officials, including Allen, have consistently said that losing the Pakistani shipping route is a problem, but it hasn't actually affected the war effort. Still, keeping the figure concealed means U.S. taxpayers don't actually know how much the Afghanistan war costs. Congress approved $115.1 billion for wartime spending (.pdf) last year, the vast majority of which paid for Afghanistan. But that price has clearly gone up, entirely in secret. Which also means the taxpayers don't know how much Pakistan's intransigence is really costing them.