The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) strongman Hakeemullah Mehsud has been eliminated by a CIA-operated drone in Miranshah on the eve of an apparent breakthrough in the peace negotiations, which the government of Pakistan had initiated with the rebel leader. The government is under pressure to take the US to task for this deliberate subversive act, which has allegedly derailed the peace process. Among the number of actions it can initiate against the US for ‘sabotaging’ the peace talks, stopping of NATO/ISAF supplies by closing the Southern Distribution Network (SDN) is the vociferous demand of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) under the fiery Imran Khan, and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). In their view, only such a strong measure can force the US to stop the drone attacks in the country’s tribal belt. ThePML-N, the ruling party, meanwhile, is weighing the pros and cons of such a step. Will the closure of the supply route force the US to abandon its current drone strike policy in Pakistan is the question that needs due deliberation. When Operation Enduring Freedom (the US invasion of Afghanistan 2001) was being conceived, Pakistani land and air routes were the only practical option for the attackers. The US threatened to wield the stick, forcing the military government of General Pervez Musharraf to fall in line and permit the use of its territory and air space for the invasion force. The US was allowed a specific air corridor for both offensive airpower missions and airlift of personnel and supplies. In addition, a base each in Sindh and Balochistan were earmarked for use as supply depots and for emergency recovery of their combat planes. Offensive missions from these two airfields were not permitted, and by and large, the US adhered to the protocol. A third airstrip, Shamsi, in Balochistan, according to an unwritten tri-nation secret deal comprising the governments of Pakistan, UAE and the US, allowed the CIA to house and operate Predator drones for both reconnaissance and offensive missions. This aspect only became open public knowledge in 2011, after the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 by US Special Forces. After the overthrow of the Taliban, UN Resolution 1386 was passed, where an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established, initially for securing Kabul and adjoining areas from the Taliban, al Qaeda and factional warlords, to facilitate the establishment of an Afghan Transnational Administration headed by Hamid Karzai. ISAF comprises primarily of troops and military hardware of NATO with a sprinkling of contribution by non-NATO members. Within NATO, the US component is the largest by a wide margin. In October 2003, the UN Security Council authorised the expansion of the ISAF mandate throughout Afghanistan. ISAF continued to increase in size and reached its peak during the Obama surge of 2009 and with the growing number of combat forces deployed there, the scale of logistics also multiplied exponentially. Up until 2007, Pakistan land and air routes were the principal conduits through which the bulk of ISAF supply was transported. Munitions of all calibers ranging from small arms to large artillery shells were sent by sea to the ports of the Persian Gulf and then flown into Afghanistan via Pakistani airspace. All other items were shipped to the Pakistani port city of Karachi and then transported by road via two routes, Chaman in Balochistan and the Khyber Pass in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. With the weakening of Musharraf’s hold over Pakistan in 2007, the attacks on ISAF supplies, especially fuel tankers, increased manifold, and with the passage of time, these routes became unreliable. NATO began working to reduce its dependence on Pakistan by building additional fuel storage capacity in Afghanistan and by exploring other avenues. By 2010, the US-Pakistan relationship had deteriorated considerably, making the Pakistani supply routes unpredictable and vulnerable to theft and disruption by the Taliban. Following the killing of two Pakistani soldiers by a NATO helicopter gunship in 2010, Pakistan had suspended the NATO supplies for one week, and after the November 26, 2011 Salala incident, where NATO air power martyred 24 Pakistani troops, Pakistan blocked both the routes, and reopened them seven months later in July after a belated US apology over the incident. During the blockage, according to Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson of Germany, “The coalition has enough supplies to continue operations indefinitely despite the closure of the supply line.” Since then NATO has shifted its focus to the Northern Distribution Network (NDN). NDN was established in 2009 in response to the increased risk of sending supplies through Pakistan. There are several different routes that are in use. The longest starts at the port of Riga (Latvia) on the Baltic Sea and continues for over 3,212 miles by train across Russia, and then through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan before reaching Afghanistan’s northern border at Termez. To reach the southern parts of the country the supplies are loaded onto trucks and transported through the Hindu Kush mountain range via the Salang Tunnel, which is prone to avalanches. A more southern route emanates from Poti (Georgia) on the Black Sea and continues to Baku (Azerbaijan), where the goods are transferred to barges and ferried across the Caspian Sea, landing in Turkmenistan and onwards by rail to Uzbekistan before arriving at the Afghan border. A third route, created in order to avoid going through the often-volatile country of Uzbekistan, goes from Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan and then through Tajikistan before reaching Termez. The NDN operation is longer and far more expensive than SDN and for its establishment the US had to grant political concessions to Russia and the Central Asian states through which the goods were being ferried. The US has already paid the political price for the NDN, and NATO has accepted the higher costs that it has to incur for the use of these routes because the SDN, from their perspective, had become unreliable. By 2012, 85 percent of the coalition fuel supplies go through the northern routes. The NDN is also the preferred option for moving equipment out of Afghanistan as part of the NATO drawdown. Reports from Germany and Britain indicate that their personnel and sensitive equipment have already been sent out by air, and the heavy expensive ones via the NDN. The additional cost of bypassing the SDN and using the NDN for both incoming and outgoing war materiel, according to rough estimates, is about $ 85-100 million annually. Compared to the overall cost of NATO operations in Afghanistan since the Obama surge, which is close to $ 100 billion annually, the increase is less than a percentage point. If Pakistan goes ahead and again suspends the use of the SDN by NATO, will it force the US to announce a unilateral end to the drone attacks in Pakistan? The chances of such an event are slim considering that the US has already paid the political price of opening the alternate NDN routes and the additional cost as a result for them is affordable. The US is unlikely to review its current drone policy because it has declared it officially as a vital component of its national interest. Closing of the route, however, will vitiate the US-Pakistan relationship, which was just on the mend following the recent official visit by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to the US. An overwhelming majority of Pakistanis would support any measures that would convince the US to terminate the drone policy in Pakistan, but the closure of the SDN is unlikely to achieve this objective, and in the process, it is likely to hurt the country economically and further isolate it from the rest of the world. Diplomatic engagement at the bilateral and international levels by the nation’s politicians and academia in an effort to convince the US public and its administration about the futility of their current drone policy, which is spreading terrorism further rather than containing it, appears to be the only viable option for Pakistan in the present situation. The writer is a defence analyst and director of Centre of Airpower Studies and can be reached at jamal4701@yahoo.co.uk