Leaving Afghanistan Is a $7 Billion Moving Task for U.S.
While the fighting continues, the U.S. is mounting what may become a $7 billion effort to withdraw most of its forces from Afghanistan by the end of next year. It will require sending Humvees, helicopters, drones and 12 1/2-ton mine-resistant vehicles home by rail and truck networks stretching from Karachi to ports in the Baltic Sea.
Unlike Iraq, where “the fighting had for a good extent stopped” before the U.S. began to withdraw, in Afghanistan “there’s still certainly an active insurgency and an active fight and essentially we’re in contact with the enemy as we do this,” Alan Estevez, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for logistics, said. “All of those things make it difficult and increase the risk of our departure as we pull out.”
Among the biggest contractors involved in the move are A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S (MAERSKB), the Copenhagen-based owner of the world’s largest container line, the American President Lines unit of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines Ltd. (NOL), and Hamburg, Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd AG, according to Estevez.
The shipping companies contract in turn with local trucking companies such as those in Pakistan to carry the cargo to ports, he said.
The U.S. has begun withdrawing troops and war materiel from Afghanistan after the longest war in American history. So far, the conflict has cost about $600 billion, led to the deaths of 2,205 American troops and injured 18,462. About 16,725 Afghan civilians also have been killed.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-13/leaving-afghanistan-is-a-7-billion-moving-task-for-u-s-.html
Afghan war costs $300 million a day: Pentagon
AP: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gNQ3JbWwd6t-PzkuECkRJvsAlNkA
