Here's an interesting piece by an Indian blogger about the Northern Distribution Network (NDN).

One thing I hope to do with this blog is look at the Indian press and Pakistani press a lot more to see what they have to say about the war in Afghanistan and the effect on Central Asia.

You wonder how they see this whole NDN caper, when it seems to have suddenly become all about the right price.

This blogger Pragmatic Euphony asks, "Shouldn’t all the US aid to Pakistan also be counted towards supply line costs?"

The story quotes an AP piece that says:

Pentagon figures provided to the AP show it is now costing about $104 million per month to send the supplies through a longer northern route. That is $87 million more per month than when the cargo moved through Pakistan.[AP]

He adds:

Transporting materials through the NDN is estimated to be three times the cost of transporting supplies through Pakistan. And, direct flights to Afghanistan cost ten times of what it would cost to transport materials through Pakistan.

Now to the major question. Money is fungible. US military and civilian aid to Pakistan (not to count CSF payments), before it came to a halt in 2011, was essentially a facilitation fees paid to Pakistan Army to allow supplies to be sent to Afghanistan via Pakistan. If you add the $20 billion paid to Pakistan by the US (excluding CSF payments) since 9/11, the cost of transporting goods via Pakistan would be greater than supplying troops in Afghanistan via alternate routes. Essentially, cutting off aid to Pakistan and using northern supply routes is still cheaper than supplying goods via Pakistan.

So basically the moral of the story is: given all that aid that went to Pakistan, and the fraction of that amount going to Uzbekistan (and only a symbolic amount of military aid), shouldn't that cost be factored in when judging the NDN via Uzbekistan and neighbours as being three times as expensive?

And that's why the Pakistanis feel justified in adding a "facilitation" fee to get back some of that aid they once enjoyed. That's why they could find a "fig leaf" of an excuse as this blogger says.