Afghan railroads, past, present and future
Chris Austin, Afghanistan Country Director for the UK’s Department for International Development, tweets a picture of Naibabad station (bottom left).
Great to go to #Mazar_e_Sharif to see how #UKaid is helping improve roads, rail and electricity in #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/SelwaHC6dv
— Chris Austin (@ChrisAustinDFID) September 1, 2015
Tajikistan provides training to the staff of Afghanistan Railway Authority
According to (100 days) work plan of the ministry and railway department of Afghanistan, Tajikistan’s Ministry of Transport provides vocational trainings for the staff of Railway department.
Recently for the improvement of technical & professional capacity of staff, a short-term training program for three months provided to 30 personnel of Railway Authority in Tajikistan. The training is mostly over the operation and maintenance of railway. Other technical and vocational trainings has already been provided by Iran & China.
Railway Authority was created within the Ministry of Public Works in 1391 [=AD 2012] and the ministry is responsible to facilitate the formation as well as an independent organization Synchronized with the formation of this department, 106 km of the railways starting from Hairatan Port to Mazar-e-Sharif been constructed and every year millions tones of goods transported through this railway.
Railway’s Department have lots of infrastructure projects and with the implementation of these projects, fundamental changes will be executed in transportation system.
Source: Ministry of Public Works, 13 October 2015
Mehr News Agency reports1 that Iran’s Minister for Road & Urban Development, Abbas Akhoundi, has announced that the “Khaf – Herat railway will soon become operational”.
Akhoundi met Afghanistan’s Minister of Urban Development Affairs, Sadat Mansoor Naderi, and said “the project needs to continue till the railway is connected to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and China to accomplish the Silk Road railway grid from the south of Iran to China.” Akhoundi also said Iran was making efforts to organise a summit with Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and China in order to reach agreement on the proposed railway.
Trend reports that the railway line to Herat will open by March (presumably 2016).2 Although we have heard “real soon now” style opening dates for the railway before…
What young Afghans want for their country – a rail network, Dari as an international language, equal rights for women, more candy shops, more parks and peace. Young Afghans at a workshop on citizenship in Kabul conducted by Jalebi Ink (www.jalebiink.com) and Barefoot Communications.
(Photo: Anuradha Sengupta/Flickr, 8 June 2008)
The report The Humanitarian and Developmental Impact of Anti-Vehicle Mines (PDF) discusses the problems land mines caused for the Hairatan – Mazar-i-Sharif railway construction project:
Late into the execution of the project, [anti-vehicle mines, anti-personnel mines and explosive remnants of war] were discovered. The initial assessment revealed a 3 sq km area of contamination at an estimated cost of USD 3 million to clear, which came close to matching Afghanistan’s national contribution to the project.
This pattern has been repeated in other infrastructure development projects, particularly with AVMs due their low detectability in Afghanistan. MACCA contacted development projects throughout the country in 2013 and found that a number were in hazardous areas. Out of 430 registered development projects in Afghanistan (roads, bridges, dams, rail, agriculture, electricity expansion), 71 of these projects are affected by mines and ERW, and at least 21 are heavily affected by AT mines, consisting of roughly 225 square kilometres of land.
As a result, MACCA actively encourages a sustainable and continuous process in communication with the development sector; otherwise, as in the case of the railway project, the country suffers huge financial losses that it cannot afford.
Source: The Humanitarian and Developmental Impact of Anti-Vehicle Mines, Geneva International Centre For Humanitarian Demining and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, September 2014, pages 63-64)
On pages 64-65 the report discusses the impact of mines (of the explosive variety) on the Aynak copper mining project.
A light rail line is included in the plans for Kabul New City, a proposed a new city 1.5 times larger than the existing one which would be developed between Bagram Airbase and Kabul International Airport.1
Accordng to Dehsabz-Barikab City Development Authority, “there is a LRT line planned on the main city road at the mid term development period”2
@andrew_grantham Yeah, there is a LRT line planned on the main city road at the mid term development period.
— Kabul New City (@KNC_DCDA) May 20, 2015
That looks rather like a passenger station, despite the Uzbekistan to Mazar-i-Sharif railway being freight only.
Gliding over #Afghanistan's first railway, a 75km line that goes from Mazar-e-Sharif to #Uzbekistan. pic.twitter.com/6UTCQTa7wK
— Elissa Mirzaei (@ElissaMirzaei) November 12, 2014
Some 1891 photographs of Persia and the Russian Empire – including the Transcaspian Railway – taken by William Sachtleben and Thomas Allen Jr, two Americans who cycled around the world on safety bicycles.
General Aleksei Kuropatkin (who would become a major figure in the Russo-Japanese War a dozen years later) entertained them, but insisted that they take the new Trans-Caspian Railway some 600 miles, across the desert to Samarkand in Uzbekistan.
A Radio Bayanshamal video about Hairatan. It is in Pashto (and is also available in Dari) so I don’t know what the commentary says, but it has some footage of TEM2-hauled freight trains and tank wagons.
The 14th CAREC Transport Sector Coordinating Committee Meeting was held in Ulaanbaatar on 28-29 April 2015. Its webpage links to various presentations, which seem to contain some good stuff about Afghan and Central Asian railway development plans in a mixture of English and Russian.
14-ое заседание Координационного комитета по транспортному сектору ЦАРЭС (ККТС). http://t.co/V4LzyIXZPf #transport pic.twitter.com/2nsqmjidzm
— CAREC Program (@CARECProgram) May 12, 2015
One presentation by Kubatbek Rakhimov covers the Railway Development in Central Asia. The review of the Soviet period up to the present. This provides a quick overview of the strategic issues, in particular the problems arrising as a result of the unified Soviet rail network being fragmented as the USSR disolved and the newly-independent countries focused on building bypasses with their territory rather than on developing international corridors.
There was a presentation on the future CAREC railway network by ADB consultant Thomas Kennedy. This says the “new railway country of Afghanistan offers new route potential”. It explains that CAREC railways are still in the transition from a command economy to a market-based structure, while road transport is becoming more competitive, and there is a shift in trading partners and routes as China gains economic significance. There is a need to agree on a near-term strategic vision for CAREC railways, which also need changes in four primary areas: political/institutional, infrastructure, intergration/interoperability, technical. The most critical aspect is that railways need to understand the costs of their own services, as this is essential for setting pricing policies, business agreements and track access charges.
Kennedy concludes by saying the next step should be to identify a “designated rail corridor” for development as a pilot. This sounds like the situation in the EU, where it became apparent that it makes more sense to focus on international corridors, rather than on separate national projects which could end up leaving bottlenecks on important routes.
The CAREC Working Group on Railways sets out timescales, and sets out a two year timescale for the Khorgas – Tashkent – Termez – Mazar-i-Sharif or Aqina – Turkmenabat – Ashgabat – Aktau routes.