Supply Lines

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"As British troops pull out of their last base in Basra, some military commanders and civilian government officials in the area are concerned that the transition could leave them and a major supply route to Baghdad at greater risk of attack.

The route, a lifeline that carries fuel, food, ammunition and equipment for the war, crosses desert territory that is home to rival militias and criminal gangs. In interviews, Americans stationed in the southern provinces and Pentagon planners say they are closely watching the situation there as the British pass security responsibility to local Iraqi units.

There is little talk of increasing the American troop presence along the major supply route, which links Baghdad and Kuwait and is called M.S.R. Tampa, although officials in Baghdad and Washington say other options include increased patrols by armed surveillance aircraft, attack helicopters and combat jets. (...)

General Petraeus said the security mission in three of the four provinces in southern Iraq already had passed to Iraqi forces with no discernible impact on the supply routes. And he said bypass routes now being used allow convoys to skirt some trouble areas. (...)

According to officers at the American Third Army forward headquarters in Kuwait, which oversees the vast shipments of supplies flowing north into Iraq, on any given day more than 3,000 vehicles are on the road in convoys hauling food, fuel, ammunition and other equipment.

To keep the war effort going each day requires about 3.3 million gallons of fuel, the equivalent of filling the tanks of 150,000 automobiles, as well as enough food to serve 780,000 meals, according to statistics at the Third Army headquarters. (...)

At the American military headquarters in Baghdad, Lt. Col. James Hutton, spokesman for the Multinational Corps-Iraq, said military statistics showed “a recent drop in both the number and effectiveness of attacks on these convoys.” The most significant threat in the south continues to be roadside explosives, he said.

Colonel Hutton said commanders attributed this decline in attacks to “aggressive patrolling,” and he added that the recent call for a cease-fire by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia is the biggest in Iraq, might “lead to further reductions of violence in the southern provinces.”

But Iraqis in the Basra region fear that the Iraqi security forces are too heavily infiltrated by the militias to ensure order in the city, a vital oil hub where smuggling, banditry and carjacking have long been a way of life for powerful criminal gangs.

Iraqi policemen in Basra privately concede that they are afraid to confront the militias, who have powerful backing in the religious Shiite parties that run Basra, and that if they arrest criminals they face retribution from powerful tribes and criminal gangs. (...)

Concerns about M.S.R. Tampa are based on experience. When Sadr militia fighters rose up in the spring of 2004, a number of bridges were attacked, threatening the supply lines. With that in mind, before Iraqi national elections in January 2005, commanders ordered the stockpiling of ammunition, food and fuel, partly motivated by the desire to halt military convoys before the vote, depriving insurgents of a target."

This seems like a good time to link to two analyses of what would happen if some group made a concerted attempt to cut our supply lines: Pat Lang's and Andrew's. Short version: a concerted effort to cut our supply lines, by a competent group, would be very bad.

It's worth noting that one of the many, many reasons not to bomb Iran is that it would give them a very strong incentive to do just this. The Iranian border is very near Basra, and they have a lot of proxies in the region.

Comments

[CharleyCarp]

Best of luck, Andrew.