NATO Supply Trucks in Pakistan Are Attacked Again

Oil tankers parked at refueling terminals have been set on fire several times since the border was closed by Pakistan. On Wednesday, the police said attackers set fire to eight tankers and killed a truck driver, The Associated Press reported.

In the first attack, the Taliban claimed responsibility for burning the trucks as they moved through an early leg of the more than 1,000-mile route from the Arabian Sea to the mountains on the Pakistani border.

On Monday, another group of trucks was attacked on the outskirts of the capital, Islamabad.

The border at Torkham, in the northwest, was closed last Thursday in retaliation for NATO helicopter strikes earlier in the week on mountainous border posts.

In the Monday attack, the truck owners were at fault, Mr. Niaz, the police superintendent, said. They had been told by the police that their trucks were parked on an empty plot of land that was open to attack, and not at a proper terminal.

The owner of a big fleet, Dost Mohammad, said that the police received bribes from the drivers but failed to do anything. “The police take 1,000 to 2,000 rupees from every driver,” he said, referring to a sum of $10 to $20.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Pakistani Foreign Office said there was no timetable for reopening the border at Torkham.

The Foreign Office said Pakistan awaited the results of a joint inquiry into the attacks by the NATO helicopters last week, and said that incursions by NATO into Pakistani territory were “intolerable.” Pakistani newspapers and television shows were full of reports about the suspension of the supply route as punishment for NATO wrongdoing.

The Pakistani Army was “hopping mad” about the NATO helicopter strikes, and believed that a “red line was deliberately crossed,” said Mushahid Hussain, a political analyst.

The attack was being equated in military circles with an attack in 2008 when American Special Forces soldiers crossed into Pakistan, and relations were momentarily frozen, he said.

This time, the Pakistani Army had hit back and said: “We have this leverage, and the supplies can be stopped.”

Pilfering of supplies from the trucks, particularly clothes and food, is common, Pakistani officials and Western diplomats say.

But the problem of the stolen goods is small compared to the quantity of material that is delivered, a Western diplomat said.

The bigger problem during the current standoff was the perception that the authorities were “looking the other way” as trucks were attacked by criminals or militants. Until now, the diplomat said, protection of the route had not been needed because the delivery rate had been remarkably efficient given the length and rough nature of the route from the port of Karachi.

The fact that the contractors were paid only after they had delivered the goods was one reason the route, even without government protection, had worked reasonably well, he said.

NYTimes