LONG AND WINDING ROAD: KARACHI TO PESHAWAR TO KABUL

clipped from: www.theaustralian.news.com.au

Taliban fighters stepping up attacks on convoys forced Pakistan to suspend all traffic along the route

PAKISTAN cut off the main NATO supply route into Afghanistan yesterday,
for the 35,000-strong coalition force.

More than 350 trucks and oil tankers use the pass each day, carrying NATO supplies from the port city of Karachi up the west bank of the Indus to Peshawar, then through the Kyber pass to Kabul.

About 70 per cent of the fuel, clothes and food needed by the NATO forces is transported in civilian Pakistani trucks through the Khyber Pass, a vulnerable point in the long route from Karachi to Kabul.

The route is now too risky to transport weapons, and many supplies travel on the southern route from Quetta to Helmand.

Attacks are occurring almost daily. Earlier this year, 42 oil tankers were destroyed in one attack.

The Taliban's used by mujaheddin guerillas in the 1980s, who crippled the Soviet army by attacking its supply convoys.

last week the Taliban captured a convoy of coalition supply trucks,
The militants were later seen driving around the Khyber Agency in the US
Humvees

NATO has long looked at alternative land routes using Kazakhstan as a base among several alternatives.

UN is pulling its workers out of the Pakistani provincial capital of Peshawar
in the past 10 months, 78 people had been kidnapped in Peshawar