Hairatan – Mazar-i-Sharif line project is part of the transport strategy and of the action plan of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation and aims to increase traffic volumes and to consolidate Afghanistan’s position as freight transit hub.
Funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with USD165 Million, with a government share of USD 5 Million, the 75-km long Hairatan – Mazar-i-Sharif railway highlights the cooperation between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, both member countries of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Program.
The Hairatan–Mazar-e-Sharif railway is part of a larger rail network planned across the north and other parts of the country. It was built by Uzbekistan Railways, company which will operate the line for three years. The program includes links to Herat (western Afghanistan) and further to Iran and to the east to Shirkhan Bandar (Tajikistan) and Pakistan. The project also adds capacity to two CAREC transport corridors—Corridor 3 and Corridor 6.
Afghanistan’s first train route is considered a milestone as it connects the country to its neighbours in Central Asia and opens up new trade routes for goods travelling between Europe and Asia.
Afghanistan has never had a functional rail network, though many projects have been initiated and later abandoned, victims of manoeuvres of the 19th-century rivalry between Russia and Britain due to the intention of both countries of disputing control over the Central Asian state. The political situation in the early 20th century has not favoured the initiation of other railway projects either. A few rail projects in the 1980s were abandoned and later years of bitter civil war made such construction impossible.
Today we can say that Hairatan–Mazar-i-Sharif railway is on the right path for a country that has long waited for good news. It also could be a key route for the US troop withdrawal that will continue until 2014, eventually, a gateway for Afghan exports.
In the short term the service will help release a bottleneck at Hairatan dry port that is now holding up goods while they are loaded from trains and onto trucks for a hazardous journey over Afghanistan’s northern mountain roads.
“This dry port of Hairatan is where the bulk of commercial cargo is coming from into the country, so it is very important,” said Juan Miranda, head of Central and West Asia department of the Asian Development Bank, which funded the project.
Uzbekistan Railways is to build a new railway from Mazar-i-Sharif to Andkhoy in western Afghanistan. This railway section is part of the project to construct a railway line in Afghanistan with a total length of 2,000 kilometres from Mazar-i-Sharif through Kabul and Kandahar.
The board of directors of the Asian Deve-lopment Bank (ADB) has recently approved a multi-tranche loan worth USD 734 Million (EUR 550 Million) to the Afghan Government to rehabilitate roads and construct railway lines in the country.
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