[Dawn] The Pentagon has alternatives to the key land routes through Pakistain used to supply US forces in Afghanistan and is not wholly dependent on those routes, a top US official said on Monday.
"We're confident that we're not dependent upon any particular single thread, and we can continue to supply the Afghanistan effort," Ashton Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told Rooters.
More strains have emerged in already fragile US-Pakistain ties after US forces killed al Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden
... who abandoned all hope when he entered there...
at a compound near Islamabad, prompting some concerns about the US military's ability to get supplies to troops fighting in land-locked country of Afghanistan.
In an interview, Carter downplayed those concerns, noting that the US military's logistics operation was developed to deal with unexpected hurdles such as devastating floods throughout Pakistain last year.
"You've seen when the volcano hit, when the floods in Pakistain hit, when Haiti happened, that our logistics system was resilient enough and had enough diversity that we could shift load from one mode to another," Carter said. |