US To Spend $7 Billion On Logistics For Afghanistan Withdrawal: Estimate
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The U.S. military will spend close to $7 billion on logistical issues when it finally pulls out its troops and equipment from Afghanistan by the end of next year, estimated defense experts to Bloomberg on Sunday.
The U.S. military will spend close to $7 billion on logistical issues when it finally pulls out its troops and equipment from Afghanistan by the end of next year, estimated defense experts to Bloomberg on Sunday.
According to Alan Estevez, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for logistics, the Pentagon will have to move about 22,000 containers of equipment out of Afghanistan by end-2014, while about 66,000 U.S. troops still remain in Afghanistan – with only a handful set to stay to train and advise Afghans.
Up to 60 percent of the Pentagon’s inventory in Afghanistan – mostly non-lethal items – will be trucked through Pakistan to the port of Karachi, while the remaining will go north past the Hindu Kush mountains, crisscrossing several former Soviet republics in the Caucasus by truck and rail before reaching ports on the Baltic Sea in Latvia or Lithuania.
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Estevez revealed that among the biggest contractors involved in the move are Danish container firm A.P. Moeller-Maersk, the American President Lines unit of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines Ltd. and Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd AG.
The shipping companies in turn pay local trucking companies, such as those in Pakistan, to carry the cargo to ports, Estevez said.
According to Estevez, the U.S. Army presently maintains about $27 billion worth of equipment in Afghanistan. These include Humvees, helicopters, drones and 12½-ton mine-resistant vehicles, which will have to be shipped back to the States.
However, unlike Iraq, where “the fighting had for a good extent stopped” before the U.S. began to withdraw, in Afghanistan “there’s still certainly an active insurgency and an active fight and essentially we’re in contact with the enemy as we do this,” Estevez said, leading to the increased security cost for the withdrawal.
[quote]“Afghanistan is a logistician’s nightmare and also a dream,” Estevez said because of the challenge of getting the equipment in and out of the country. “All of those things make it difficult and increase the risk of our departure as we pull out,” he noted.[/quote]Related: US Military Spending: For War or Peace?
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The U.S. will be coordinating its withdrawal with similar plans by 50 coalition partners, told Major General Kenneth Dahl, deputy commanding general for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to reporters in Kabul in March. “Because of the geography and physics of Afghanistan, we have to coordinate so we don’t all try to take the same roads,” he said.
The Pentagon and the military services also are also drawing up a list of excess defense articles that the U.S. doesn’t need so they can be given away to allies, Dahl added.
Finally, equipment that supports U.S. bases, such as air-conditioners, construction material and furniture, will be left behind or destroyed, he said.
