A NATO truck – cleverly disguised as a gasoline tanker truck killed 15 innocent Patistani civilians when the crowd decided it wasn’t fair for NATO to have gasoline, and the crowd decided to stop the truck and spread the gasoline evenly among themselves. At that point, an unseen force detonated the NATO truck bomb, resulting in 15 deaths
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/21/nato-fuel-tanker-explodes-pakistan-killing-15/
Forces loyal to NATO blamed the explosion on the actions of the dead people and indicate they will keep the trucks rolling until the ultimate mission is achieved. Phone calls placed to the dead people were not immediately returned.
So… is that considered an IED?
“Another bombing damaged 14 NATO tankers in a nearby border town…
A Pakistani Taliban group claimed responsibility for both attacks, underscoring the threat to vehicles that carry non-lethal supplies for Western troops…”
Seems quite lethal to me! BTW, where were the tanker escort guards?
Looks like the ‘ole Taliban has learned a few things from Battle of the Bulge.
For a while, we were using a base in one of those obscure -stan countries to ferry supplies in by air, but I remember hearing someone on John Batchelor mention that the base was no longer available to the U.S. because we upset the host country.
There is a bridge on the north end of Afghanistan that could be another land route – it was built by Russia, but has been closed since the Russians left. It connects Termez, Uzbekistan to Afghanistan across the Amu Darya river.
Well, look here…. NATO is in the process of rapidly trying to rebuild the railroad from the north across that bridge.
http://www.andrewgrantham.co.uk/afghanistan/tag/friendship-bridge/
Making things just that much more fun – Russia has always used a different wider gauge than the rest of Europe – in part so Germany could not operate trains over the Russian railroad to invade Russia. So any transport through there would be entirely dependent on Russian gauged rail cars.
for “humanitarian aid purposes, of course.
Look here – so many coincidences…
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/176543.html
(note it is an Iranian web site)
A week before we killed Bin Laden, Iran announced a deal to build a railroad link connecting Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazahzstan. There was a railroad bridge across the same river near the city of Turkmenabat, Turkmenistan.
There appears to be another rail link at Krkichi, that looks (from Google Earth) to have been close to finishing construction in late 2009. In the same general area, a natural gas pipeline is being built to china.
Russia just announced plans to entend its broad guage railroads to Northern Italy and Germany for “more efficient” handling of rail traffic.
http://www.bsr-russia.com/en/transport-logistics/item/1557-russian-broad-gauge-railway-lines-to-extend-to-northern-italy-and-southern-germany.html
This puzzle has so many moving parts. I’m glad we have a smart president to figure this all out, unlike the “stupid” George W Bush
Making things even more fun is that Pakistan and India use a gauge that is neither the European Standard, nor the Russian Standard. The Afghanistan railroad system that is being planned will be standard (1435 mm) gauge – used in Europe, North America and China, but not in the countries surrounding Afghanistan, except Iran – which used to be under the sphere of influence of Britain and the United States, not Russia.
Rail gauges of the world