NATO logistics in the Afghan War

NATO logistics in the Afghan War refers to the efforts of the NATO International Security Assistance Force to deliver vital fuel, food, hardware and other logistic supplies to Afghanistan in support of the War in Afghanistan (2001-present). Delivery of supplies is done using a combination of air transport and a series of overland supply routes. There are two routes which pass through Pakistan, and several other routes which pass through Russia and the Central Asian states. Following the 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan, the Pakistan routes were closed, but reopened after US Secretary of State apologized for the incident on July 3, 2012.

Since Afghanistan is a landlocked country, supplies must pass through other countries in order to reach it, or else be shipped by air. Since air shipping is prohibitively expensive, NATO forces tend to rely on ground routes for non-lethal equipment. This is principally accomplished either by shipping goods by sea to the Pakistani port of Karachi in the southern Sindh province, or by shipping them through Russia and the Central Asian states.

All munitions, whether small arms ammunition, artillery shells, or missiles, are transported by air. However, airlifting supplies costs up to ten times as much as transporting them through Pakistan. In order to reduce costs, these goods are often shipped by sea to ports in the Persian Gulf and then flown into Afghanistan. The air supply effort at the beginning of the war was the third largest in history, after the Berlin Airlift and the 1990 airlift for the Gulf War.

There are two routes from Pakistan to Afghanistan (both were closed in November 2011 following the Salala incident and reopened in July 2012). Both routes start in Karachi, Pakistan's principal port in its southern Sindh province, on the Arabian Sea. From there, one route crosses the Khyber Pass, enters Afghanistan at Torkham, and terminates at Kabul, supplying northern Afghanistan. This route is approximately 1,000 miles long. The other passes through Balochistan Province, crosses the border at Chaman, and ends at Kandahar, in the south of Afghanistan.

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