Afghan railroads, past, present and future
The view from the Archaeology Museum. In the foreground are early trains, a form of transportation first brought to Afghanistan by the British. Unfortunately there is no train service in Afghanistan today.
Flickr photo taken on 14 January 2009 by Lauras Eye (CC BY-ND 2.0). The locos were supplied from Germany.
The Royal Geographical Society Picture Library has a photograph showing Railway & telegraph plant for Kandahar / Defence tower & barracks for troops / Railway terminus at Charman, taken by AC Yate in 1896.
The preview is a bit too small to see very much, but it might show the railway stores which were allegedly in place ready for rapid construction of a line across the border from British India to Kandahar in the event that Imperial Russia made a move on Herat.
There is also a view of the Railway station at Chaman: tug of war – Pathan v Punjabi Mohammedan (2nd) Baluchis in Pakistan, also by AC Yate and dated 1896-97.
Presumably the photographer is the Captain AC Yate who wrote The Transcaspian Railway and the Power of the Russians to Occupy Herat in 1891, arguing for building a railway to Sistan (the Afghanistan/Iran/Pakistan border area), rather than Kandahar: The press and the public are at this moment advocating the extension of our railways to Kandahar; but that this could be done without precipitating a rupture of our relations with the Amir is doubtful
.
The RGS has various other interesting photos – a search for railway brings up shots of colonial (and other) lines, and there are views of the Bolan Pass line.
“View Of The Khyber Pass From Shagai Fort”, a photograph by Private J W Linley of 2nd Battalion the Northamptonshire Regiment, uploaded to Flickr by Northampton Museums Service. There is a bit of railway in the bottom right corner.
There are also other interesting pictures on the Northampton Museums Service’s Flickr collection.
Some photos of the Khyber Pass in 1932 uploaded to Flickr by Emmyeustace. One shows the wrong sort of train.
Also an 1891 photo.
An interesting NBC article from 2009 discussing China’s involvement in Afghanistan, and the Aynak copper mine in particular.
In addition to setting up the copper production infrastructure, which includes a smelter, power generation station, coal mine and groundwater system, the Chinese joint venture is also building roads, Afghanistan’s first national railway, new homes for villagers who will be resettled from the immediate area of the mine, hospitals and schools.
Source: Resource-hungry China heads to Afghanistan, Adrienne Mong, NBC News, 2009-10-14
Afghanistan’s Minister for Mines, Wahidullah Shahrani, speaks to India’s Business Standard about tendering of the Hajigak iron ore mine project, which includes an integrated steel plant that will consume high-grade coking coal from nearby deposits; a road or rail evacuation route
.
[…]
China, which was awarded the Aynak copper mines in Loghar province, Afghanistan’s first big sale of mining rights in the post-Taliban era, has undertaken to build a railway line from the northern provinces, to Bamiyan (where Hajigak is located), to Kabul, and then to Torkham on the Pakistan border at the Khyber Pass.Shahrani believes that a viable alternative that could form the Hajigak evacuation infrastructure would be a railway line running westwards to Iran, along the Zaranj-Delaram highway that India had built in the mid-2000s, to the Iranian port of Chabahar.
Source: New Afghanistan mining projects create opportunity for India, Ajai Shukla, Business Standard, 2011-06-07
Regional Cooperation
The EU is increasing its work on regional cooperation, with a particular focus on Central Asia. We are currently supporting customs and border management, the Centre for Regional Cooperation within the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs which follows up on Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA) as well as regional economic cooperation issues, including the establishment of a Secretariat for Railway Development. A €22 million programme was committed for this purpose in 2010.
Source: Commissioner Piebalgs visits Afghanistan: Examples of EU aid to Afghanistan, Europa.eu, 2001-06-19
Get your open-access bids in now…
…the British Indian government had just started making inroads to the Khyber Agency by extending it’s railway beyond Jamrud.
The Peshawar – Jamrud railway had already been constructed on which the “Flying Afridi” train service would make a trip once a day. This train service, part of the greater Kabul River Railway or the Loye Shilman railway project, was to be extended much deeper into the Khyber Agency. The initial survey by Captain Macdonald was to follow the upstream right banks of the River Kabul along the Loye Shilman territory till the village of Palosi on the Afghan border. Although less challenging, this route was scrapped due to political issues of the time with the then Amir of Afghanistan, Amir Habibullah Khan and also probably due to the sheer number of bends in the River along the route.
Source: The Frontier Clasp and its Railways, Omar Usman, Khyber.org, 2011-03-14
There is a map which shows the Kabul River railway.
The 2010-11 brochure of the Freeport of Riga Authority (“Your Reliable Partner on the Shores of the Baltic Sea”) has a page entitled The Fastest Way to Link the EU to the CIS and Asia, showing connections between the Latvian port and central Asia.
This includes a map of the route taken by trains carrying (non-lethal) supplies to Afghanistan.
A BLOCK TRAIN BETWEEN
RIGA AND HAIRATON
(AFGHANISTAN )
A dedicated block train service between
Riga and Hairaton (Afghanistan) for the
delivery of non-military goods to US troops
in Afghanistan. The train is operated by the
TransContainer company in Russia, and the
transit time is 10-11 days.
The map shows a route via Moscow, Samara, western Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, back into Uzbekistan to what appears to be Termez, and then to Dushanbe in Tajikistan. From Dushanbe the route runs south to Afghanistan, then via Kabul to somewhere in the middle of Afghanistan, and terminates at a place which is labelled “Hairaton” but is actually about where Herat is.
Presumably if the map is correct then transport onwards from Dushanbe is by road, although I might expect that traffic for central Afghanistan would actually be transshipped at Hayratan, while that for Herat would actually go by rail to Towraghondi; maybe there are political problems with going through Turkmenistan, and these can be avoided by using the route along the Uzbek/Turkmen border on a “corridor” basis?
According to the Port Authority’s website, the Afghan traffic was due to begin in 2009:
Regular cargo transit from Riga to Afganistan to be launched
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs consignment goods for international forces involved into peace maintenance mission will be sent from Riga to Afghanistan in the nearest two weeks. The agreement was concluded after General Duncan McNab, the commander of the US Armed Forces Transportation Command, has visited Latvia this week. Both American and Latvian representatives specify that these cargoes will not be military ones.
It was necessary to seek for other cargo transit routes due to security situation deterioration in Pakistan. That is why certain part of goods is delivered to Afghanistan through Georgia. Riga port will be the only port in the European region. From Latvia cargo will be delivered by rail through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
At present there are 500 containers at Riga port. “In the framework of his visit General McNab has visited Riga port, assessed Latvia’s participation in the process and said that everything is all right,” said high-ranking US Embassy diplomat that did not want to mention his name. The speed of transshipment of cargoes that are now in Riga will mostly depend on freight forwarding companies and countries involved into transportation chain. It is planned that several cargo trains will be sent from Riga to Afghanistan every week.
Source: Freeport of Riga Authority, 2009-05-08
A train seems to have run in February 2009,1 although NATO only announced a first trial shipment from Riga on 14 May 2010, arriving in Afghanistan on 9 June.2 There seem to various subtleties about NATO or individual countries making shipments, and lethal and non-lethal cargoes.
As well as the USA, other NATO members have sent supplies by rail via Riga. The first trains with cargos of the Great Britain, Belgium and Spain arrived already in May 14 [2010]. The cargos comprise construction materials, food. To a certain extent it is connected with safety of the cargos which is difficult to guarantee, for example, in Pakistan where a train of NATO cargos has already been attacked.
3
“Gate could open doors to something much bigger” is a 29 April 2011 report on the Hayratan border facilities by Philip Grey, military affairs reporter of The Leaf-Chronicle, who is embedded with the US 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan.
Some highlights:
There also photos of the Hayratan facilties, and a Colin Kelly/Military Times video dated 27 April 2011 which suggest the “about 72 km” railway to Mazar-i-Sharif is operational.
There seems to be a rebranding of the Friendship Bridge as the Freedom Bridge, which I have also seen in reports elsewhere. Different name, or different translation?
A linked 30 April 2011 article (the Leaf Chronicle website’s dates seem a bit broken, changing depending where you click – I’ve found an article which apparently isn’t going to be written for another two years!), ‘Most Diverse Force’ keeps train rolling in Afghanistan, gives some more details of what is happening at the Afghan-Uzbek border:
For example, there is the mission to develop the Northern Distribution Network in Afghanistan, of which the centerpiece is the rail yard at Hairaton Gate. The 101st SB team on the ground has been tasked with teaching the Afghans how to handle the complex issues of cross-border commerce and the utilization of road and rail assets to restore the economy of the region for the long term, a mission that will greatly improve the U.S. military’s logistical situation in the near term if it is successful.
The effort requires more than logistical skills. It requires a genuine, full-fledged effort at partnering with the Afghans as equals, requiring a flexible mindset and reams of patience.
[More…]
And a 29 April 2011 story about a visit to the Friendship (or Freedom) Bridge: Afghan officials bristle at bridge photos:
Frankly, the bridge itself is no great shakes to look at, being a completely utilitarian piece of Soviet construction totally absent of any aesthetic value. In other words, it’s kind of ugly, gray and dull, which describes about 90 percent (being charitable) of everything built by the Russians during the Soviet era.
However, the bridge is a big deal to the Afghans – not because the Soviets built it, but because they used it to leave. As a matter of fact, the Afghans just celebrated that event a few days ago, on April 27.
[More…]
