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Greenery on the march
THE air around Bagram airfield, the main American base in Afghanistan, is thick with the smell of jet fuel, the roar of aircraft taking off on bombing missions and the constant drone of electricity generators. Outside the ramparts, a snakelike convoy of brightly coloured lorries waits to unload fuel hauled from Pakistan and Central Asia.
These are the modern equivalents of the pack mules that once carried military supplies"much of it fodder for the beasts themselves. The British army calculates that it takes seven gallons of fuel to deliver one gallon to Afghanistan.
Modern warfare would be impossible without vast quantities of fossil fuel. It is needed to power everything from tanks to jets to electricity generators that run the communications networks on which Western armies depend. In the punishing climate of Iraq and Afghanistan, moreover, soldiers' accommodation must be kept cool in hot weather, and warm in the cold.
American forces consume more than 1m gallons of fuel a day in Afghanistan, and a similar quantity in Iraq.