NDN.

This is coolbert:

"Free supplies and open retreat are two essentials
to the safety of an army or a fleet"- - Alfred Thayer Mahan."

Once again, the topic is the supply routes for the NATO forces currently at war with the Taliban in Afghan.

Thanks to the web site for Radio Free Europe and the tip from the blog Jungle Trader.

Supply routes imperiled by attack from Taliban and various tribesmen, that route from Karachi overland through the Khyber Pass too dangerous and difficult. NATO forces finding "free" supply at stake. With all that means.

The answer being the NDN. "Northern Distribution Network". Northern supply routes passing through the various central Asian "republics" often referred to as the "stans"!

My intuitive and instantaneous reaction is that this NDN is probably NOT a whole lot better than the Karachi-Khyber Pass route. But read the whole article. You decide.

"Central Asia Stands To Gain As NATO Shifts Supply Lines Away From Pakistan "

"The NATO-led international forces in Afghanistan depend heavily on far-flung supply lines for the food, fuel, and goods they need to go on fighting."

"These days they [NATO] are increasingly focusing their efforts on a web of routes reaching from ports on the Baltic and Black seas to the Central Asian republics that border Afghanistan. Together these routes are known as the Northern Distribution Network (or “NDN” for short). The NDN is growing in significance for NATO planners"

Again, my instantaneous and intuitive reaction to the Afghan incursion, starting in 2001, was that NATO forces neither possessed a line of retreat NOR safe supply. And this situation has not gotten better. A military planners worse nightmare is realized in Afghan? So far things have gone relatively smoothly and any crisis that has arisen has been "handled"! But if things for some reason [and in that part of thew world things can change in an instant] go from bad to worse, just watch out.

coolbert.