New supply routes for Afghanistan

The NYTimes recovers the story we've been reading for awhile, that the US military is trying to re-lay its supply routes into Afghanistan. I got a little curious, so I looked up a few maps.

The current supply line lands at Karachi (port city at the bend,) then follows up the river to Peshawar (in the very north of the country,) and then cuts across the Khyber Pass to Kabul. It's about 700 miles.

The new proposed supply lines either land in the Black Sea, likely in Russia, travel north around the Caspian (Iran to the south,) travel a great distance through Kazakhstan, and then travel south through the next group of 'stans into Kabul from the north or, an alternate route would be Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Caspian, then the Russia, Turkmenistan, etc, etc.

It seems to hold lots of potential future complications, from Russia and continued goodwill across a whole bunch of tin pot totalitarians, but, on the other hand, it does relieve some of the leverage Pakistan now holds if you want to get tougher with them.

"Never fight a land war in Asia," right?