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Reconnecting Afghanistan
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As symbolic towns go, Afghanistan’s Spin Boldak is a deceptively nondescript sort of a place: a gritty truck stop in the southeast of the country about halfway between Kandahar and the Pakistan city of Quetta. Yet exactly 11 years after the Taliban marked its rise to power with an important strategic victory here, this desert border crossing is again pointing the way ahead, this time for the better.
Major repairs on the Kandahar-Spin Boldak road, once deeply rutted, unpaved, or otherwise scarred by decades of war, were finished in October 2005 under a project that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) administered. The new road slashes travel time between the two towns, helps boost security, and smooths over one of the last rough patches on what is the shortest route connecting Kabul, Herat, and Kandahar to cargo ports in Pakistan on the Arabian Sea.
The road is part of a massive international effort to rebuild Afghanistan’s transport network and economy. At the center of the program, quite literally, is a ring road that circles the country, tying the major cities and regions together. Kandahar-Spin Boldak is one of several link roads that run off the central ring toward the country’s borders, like rays from the sun (see map).
Other ADB work on the ring includes two projects totaling $135 million for repair of a rugged section of the northwestern route running between Herat and Andkhoy. So badly had it deteriorated in sections that large parts had disappeared altogether. Work has also begun under a $30 million ADB loan to repair seven of Afghanistan’s regional airports and air transport system, helping reconnect remote regions to the center.
The road network is very much a work in progress at this point. But once it is complete, organizers envision Afghanistan as a landbridge linking the country to bigger regional commercial centers and to the sea, tying Central Asia, Iran, and Pakistan intoa central and south Asian economic corridor with easy access to a booming Indian market, the Middle East, and beyond. The economic potential is huge.
Getting to this point has been an undertaking of Gordian complexity. “Post- Taliban Afghanistan was a disorderly place. There was no capacity to do anything. Remaining government staff had few road building and planning skills,” says Natin Patel, principal project management specialist in ADB’s South Asia Department.
A comprehensive early assessment revealed that 54% of national roads, totaling 6,100 kilometers (km) in length, were in poor condition, 26% in fair condition, and just 20% in good condition.
Infrastructure was devastated, says Mr. Patel, and sections of the national roads had disappeared after years of abuse and neglect. Just getting supplies to construction sites was a huge logistical challenge. Materials and equipment had to be brought in and outside expertise tapped extensively, all the while building the capacity of the Afghanistan government to guide the program. Landmines littered roadsides, freezing winters slowed progress, and high mountain ranges posed numerous problems.
Just to overcome the [procurement] obstacles as it repaired the important Kabul-to-Kandahar route, the US Agency for International Development resorted to airlifting supplies from Dubai, at great expense.
“The challenge was so large we realized that [from the start] donors should not overlap efforts,” says Mr. Patel. Donor countries and development agencies divided up the ring road, color coding each section according to the country or agency designated for overseeing its repair.
“ Post-Taliban Afghanistan was a disorderly place. There was no capacity to do anything. Remaining government staff had few road building and planning skills "
- Natin PatelAside from ADB, donors involved in Afghanistan’s transport sector include the European Union, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United States, as well as World Bank and Islamic Development Bank.
In rehabilitating sections of the country’s national roads, ADB employs an innovative “design-as-you-build” approach that allows work to start quickly on one section, while cost and procurement estimates are developed for subsequent sections.
As conflict wound down in 2002, the situation was a vacuum that needed filling, says Mr. Patel. And after those early, initial assessments, the development community realized it had to move quickly to reestablish critical infrastructure.
Less resolute intervention risked missing the opportunity to set Afghanistan on a course away from chaos. The Afghan Government itself recognized the gravity and requested that rehabilitation focus first on the country’s essential infrastructure.
As Afghan Minister of Finance Anwar Ul Haq Ahady says, if homes and factories remained without power, farmers could not readily get their produce to domestic and foreign markets, and entrepreneurs saw no basic infrastructure to justify investment, the economy would not grow. Without economic growth, “Afghanistan at best would remain a dependent ward of the international community and, at worst, an impoverished, insecure, and potentially destabilizing failed state” (see Afghanistan Reborn).
Three years after the international community stepped in, the transport program is bringing Afghan’s diverse and remote regions closer together, preparing the country for greater trade with its neighbors, promoting unity, and extending the authority of the Kabul government.
The Afghanistan Government has set a target to double the amount of paved road in the country to 32% of the total by 2010, from 16% now. An estimated $4.3 billion in investments is needed from 2004 to 2010 to reach this target, on top of about $1.0 billion already committed. ADB has already provided $239 million and is administering another $50 million in road rehabilitation grants from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development.
Spin Boldak’s importance to this process is not only symbolic; its strategic location has for decades attracted diverse economic interest. At times a den of weapons and drug smugglers, it has also been a major transit point for businessmen plying their goods in Pakistan, India, and markets further afield through the Pakistan ports at Karachi-Port Qasim on the Arabian Sea.
The town also served the Taliban well in its rise to power. In October 1994, Taliban forces captured a large cache of weapons after a battle with important Kandahar-based forces, and began their takeover of much of the country.
After the Taliban fell in late 2001, many thousands of refugees from Pakistan poured across this same border on their way home from years, or even decades of exile. They traveled a devastated route. Bridges were out, unpaved sections threw up clouds of dust reducing visibility to zero, and jarring potholes made progress extremely slow. “The Spin Boldak road was a real problem. It was in the heart of Taliban territory, and a hive of smuggling activity,” says Mr. Patel.
The new road, built with grants totaling $30 million from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, has cut travel time to about 1.5 hours—from 4 hours or more. Improved facilities are also expected to aid in monitoring the traffic through the border.
ADB has also begun work, under an $80 million loan and $55 million grant from the Asian Development Fund, on one of the last major unpaved stretches of the ring itself. These are two projects among several under ADB’s authority being carried out in the north of the country. Work completion is expected in June 2008.
Running 300 km from Andkhoy to Bala Murghab, a city just below the Turkmenistan border in the north, this last section is part of the route connecting the important city of Herat, about 100 km from the western border with Iran.
The road projects will include toll facilities, such as plazas and weighing machines, and will support HIV/AIDS prevention and human trafficking awareness campaigns.
ADB is also preparing a road development master plan through a $2.0 million technical assistance (TA) grant that will identify the main road systems required to link major markets and production centers in the country. The project is prioritizing development on the north-south corridor, aiming to better link the north of the country with the south, and to better connect poorer central regions that lie well off the ring road. The master plan will be used to draw up a road investment program for the next 5–10 years.
“Rehabilitating the road system is critical, especially for a landlocked country like Afghanistan,” says Brian Fawcett, Country Director, ADB Afghanistan Resident Mission. Damaged roads hinder the movement of people and goods, and aggravate division and disintegration.
“Roads are needed to establish major economic linkages domestically as well as with neighboring countries,” adds Dong-Soo Pyo, an ADB principal financial specialist.
When the primary road network is completed in 2008, alongside major upgrades of adjoining roads in the Central Asian republics (CARs), Iran, and Pakistan, it should help realize an envisioned transport corridor. “Afghanistan’s opening of its borders has provided new opportunities for landlocked countries in Central Asia to take advantage of the transit corridors to access the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf through Iranian and Pakistan ports,” says Hyunjung Lee, an ADB economist.
Quite simply, if Afghanistan is a landlocked country, then the CARs are double-landlocked. Afghanistan offers the quickest and cheapest route for many to the Arabian Sea ports of Karachi, Port Qasim, and Gwadar in Pakistan; and Chabahar and Bandar-e-Abbas in Iran.
Working toward that goal, delegates from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan endorsed the Articles of Establishment of the Central and South Asia Transport and Trade Forum (CSATTF) at the second ministerial conference at ADB’s Manila headquarters in March 2005. Turkmenistan is also a member, but did not attend this meeting, while observer delegations from the People’s Republic of China, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic did.
“ Rehabilitating the road system was critical, especially for a landlocked country like Afghanistan "
- Brian FawcettADB has served as facilitator to the CSATTF initiative since it began in 2003.
Planners face a dizzying array of concerns, most prominently issues of security and the illegal arms and drugs trade. But they must also grapple with customs issues, trade policies, preferential trading arrangements, cargo transshipment at borders, transit permits, vehicle standards, visa regulations, unofficial charges, protection of local trucking, and others. Transit agreements —bilateral and/or multilateral—are either nonexistent or poorly implemented.
Moreover, from Afghanistan’s perspective, things changed while it was mired in conflict. Markets have shifted and empires have fallen. And even without the war damage, the country’s road network is inadequate for linking Afghanistan to a greater regional trade network.
In the long term, “we see this as a strategic alternative to traditional transit routes through Russia or the Caucasus for the CARs. It makes sense from an economic point of view,” says Ms. Lee. In the short term, security, governance, and ethnic divisions raise significant hurdles. “Our objective is to improve the physical and operational condition of transport corridors to gain private sector interest and political support from the member countries with a long-term perspective,” says Ms. Lee.
Mohiuddin Alamgir, an economist and ADB consultant, now working on a TA project to assess transport and cross-border trade potential, estimated in a report in March 2005 that establishing a corridor connecting Central and South Asia requires an investment of $5.0 billion. This represents a small percentage of the combined total investment of the countries involved.
In return, at full development in 2010, combined regional trade would be 160% greater and transit trade 111% greater than they would have been without the corridor.
Participating countries must synchronize strategy if they are to realize the full benefits of an economic corridor, he says.
But the benefits undoubtedly justify the investments. The report proposed 52 road corridors through Afghanistan, connecting the CARs to the warm water ports.
Underscoring the natural importance of the plan, the idea of reestablishing Afghanistan as a transit route came up only as a way to help the country raise revenues for road maintenance. Yet as ADB officials looked into regional interest, Uzbekistan was clearly well ahead of the game. Officials there had immense interest, hoping to use Afghanistan as a cheaper route to bring its highgrade cotton to markets in Pakistan and India, says Mr. Patel. They had done considerable work in advance, including surveys and designs. The other central republics were quick to express their own interest.
Work is also under way with ADB’s help to repair Afghanistan’s airports at Bamyan, Chaghcharan, Faizabad, Farah, Maimana, Qalai-Naw, and Zaranj, an important part of efforts to prepare the country for greater trade with its neighbors, connect communities and promote unity, and extend the authority of the Kabul government.
“Afghanistan relies greatly on civil aviation for keeping most of its remote communities within reach of much-needed humanitarian aid and basic public services,” says Mr. Pyo. Strong civil aviation will help tie the country together through cheaper, more comfortable, and safer travel.
The project will reconstruct runways and taxiways, build new passenger terminals or renovate existing ones, reconstruct road access and car parks, connect water supply and sewerage, provide airport maintenance equipment, and put up security and boundary fences and gates.
The ADB capacity development TA also will upgrade air safety oversight, improve financial governance of airport operations, and provide staff development packages to strengthen sector management and airport operation and maintenance.
Three decades ago, Afghanistan’s road network was one of the best in the region, and Afghan truckers could be found as far afield as Moscow, Amsterdam, and the Middle East, hauling fine carpets, dried fruits, and other products. The country was once the world’s largest producer of dried fruit.
Now, with the international community’s help to restore its transport links, especially roads, Afghanistan has a unique opportunity. “As part of the ancient Silk road, [it can] resume its role in regional economic cooperation by linking South Asia with Iran, and with Central Asia,” says Mr. Alamgir. “If Afghanistan can only collect tolls and transit fees, it will be rich. Trade once bubbled and can bubble again.”
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