Uzbekistan new indd

The Weakness and Ineffectiveness of 
International Efforts to restore the 
Transportation Infrastructure of Afghanistan
The rebuilding of the transportation infrastructure 
of Afghanistan is one of the main preconditions un-
dergirding the country’s economic reconstruction. 
However, international efforts have yet to address 
this issue adequately with the result that the Afghan 
transportation infrastructure today remains weakly 
developed, even though the country in geographic 
terms occupies a very favorable position for the cre-
ation of transportation corridors from Central Asia 
to South Asia, and also to the Middle East. Today 
the country has practically no railway network—
there exists only the 75- kilometer branch line be-
tween Khairaton and Mazar-i-Sharif recently build 
with aid from Uzbekistan. This clearly does not suf-
fice to substantially intensify freight flows through 
Afghanistan. In fact, the sole form of transportation 
in Afghanistan is by motor vehicle. There are about 
21,000 kilometers of motor roads in the country, of 
which only 2,800 kilometers (about 13 percent) have 
a hard surface. Due to the endless fighting and the 
virtual absence of road repairs, however, road surfac-
es are in an extremely unsatisfactory condition, while 
the throughput capacity of the roads themselves is 
small. Moreover, for four to five months of the year 
(late autumn, winter, and early spring) the majority 
of the roads are almost or completely impassable. The 
routes connecting Afghanistan with its neighbors 
also continue to be extremely poor. Consequently, 
Afghanistan’s existing transportation infrastructure 
prevents it from becoming a regional transportation 
crossroads: regional trade flows continue to bypass 
Afghanistan and do not “feed” the process of its re-
construction and development.

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Vladimir Paramonov and Alexey Strokov