The $5,250 game of fleecing the foreigners
As travelers to the world’s frontiers know, it is not in the airport on the way into a country when the main fleecing usually begins, but on the journey out. You are at your most vulnerable — laden with gear, trinkets and, if you are a businessman, country commitments such as infrastructure. You are usually ...
As travelers to the world's frontiers know, it is not in the airport on the way into a country when the main fleecing usually begins, but on the journey out. You are at your most vulnerable -- laden with gear, trinkets and, if you are a businessman, country commitments such as infrastructure. You are usually in a rush.
As travelers to the world’s frontiers know, it is not in the airport on the way into a country when the main fleecing usually begins, but on the journey out. You are at your most vulnerable — laden with gear, trinkets and, if you are a businessman, country commitments such as infrastructure. You are usually in a rush.
Such is the case with Pakistani treatment of NATO aims to revive the use of Pakistani roads for the final 18 months of its deployment in Afghanistan. The Pakistani route has been closed since a NATO air strike last November killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers, and no one would apologize. But now NATO needs the roads to repatriate ground vehicles, aircraft and heavy equipment.
The negotiations to reopen the route, leading up to the current NATO summit in Chicago, has gone something like this: Let’s see what you have. Ummh hmmh. We were charging you a $250-a-vehicle tax, but this is much more stuff — very burdensome to our roads. Very burdensome. What would you say to $5,250 a truck? Twice that if it’s a double-semi? Mmmm. And of course you will repair any damage to the roads.
President Obama and the U.S. military are offended. At the demanded rate, the total bill could come to hundreds of millions of dollars. U.S. negotiators have offered less, though neither they nor the Pakistanis have disclosed how much less.
The backdrop is that NATO is getting it from all sides. In 2011, the U.S. paid Pakistan about $17 million a month in taxes on trucks that carried about 40 percent of NATO cargo into Afghanistan. When things turned bad, the U.S. turned to what it calls the Northern Distribution Network, or NDN, a 3,000-mile network of roads starting in Europe, passing through the former Soviet Union, and terminating in Uzbekistan, from which cargo crosses over the Friendship Bridge into Afghanistan. NDN is three times the length of the Pakistani route, which starts in Karachi, and it consequently costs more — six times more. NATO has been paying $104 million a month to transport its stuff across the NDN to Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press. Who gets this money? The countries along the way, plus the truckers.
But where do such situations end up? You know yourself — you clench your teeth, reach into your wallet and pay. That is the price of adventures in frontier lands.
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