NATOS use of Pakistans highway network to transport its requirements in Afghanistan to combat resistance has two main dimensions. It is not only the extensive damage the overloaded vehicles cause to the roads, for which Pakistan intends filing a claim, but also, carrying a far more serious implications, is the danger that the passage of goods, which include both items of civilian use and military equipment, poses to our security. It is a great pity that while the heavy movement on the roads began to do damage from the day the NATO vehicles began plying in 2002, neither the Musharraf nor the present government filed any claim during the past eight years, which can only be attributed to sheer inefficiency and utter disregard of national interests both by the ruling leadership and the officials concerned. Now, considering the US attitude of callously delaying the reimbursement of the Coalition Support Fund, one cannot be too hopeful about the acceptance of Islamabads claim of Rs 580 million, and, if at all it is accepted, about its timely recovery to avoid further inconvenience to other users of the roads. Nevertheless, the formalities must be completed at the earliest and the demand pressed. The innumerable instances of the destruction of trucks and their loads on Pakistani roads are not only an expression of hostility by the militants who destroy them but also of the wrath of the general public. The over-extension of our resources to meet the needs of the war, as the unwise military operations that the government has launched against our own people, have queered our developmental priorities and led to social turmoil in the country. That is what we have earned out of our alliance with the US in the so-called war on international terrorism. We have repeatedly pointed to the authorities the intensity of public anger and resentment, which these military operations and the resultant sense of widespread insecurity have caused. It is high time that Islamabad saw through the US designs and withdrew itself from the war and avoided further fatal consequences.