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Withdrawal of US military gear out of Afghanistan after more than a decade of war will cost billions of dollars and prove far more difficult than last year's withdrawal from Iraq, a Pentagon official has said. "It is a very austere logistics environment to transport anything. Combat is still going on. Terrible terrain. Narrow roads. Long way to a seaport. Afghanistan is more challenging for ...(withdrawal) than was Iraq," The Nation quoted Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, the Pentagon's point man for overseeing the drawdown in Afghanistan, as saying. According to Carter, about 20,000 U.S. service members and their gear will be coming to the U.S. by October. There are about 88,000 American service members there now. All U.S. combat forces are to leave by 2014. Landlocked Afghanistan requires a 1,000-mile drive on rough, dangerous road to the port in Karachi , Pakistan . After the reopening of the NATO supply routes through Pakistan, so far, just a trickle of trucks has moved through the two Pakistani border crossings - five trucks in the north, and nine in the south, Carter said. It will take as long as three months for traffic to flow freely through Pakistan there, he added. Even so, that is the best option, as flying equipment out, or using the long, overland route through nations to the north, has added as much as 100 million dollars a month in transportation costs, he said.

Afghan withdrawal will cost US billions of dollars, says Pentagon