AndrewGrantham.co.uk

Railway Gazette International June 2008 reports:

At a meeting with his Iranian and Afghan counterparts, the Foreign Minister of Tajikistan proposed that a railway which is planned to serve a Chinese copper mining concession at Aynak, east of Kabul, be routed through Kunduz, Panj and then to the Tajik capital Dushanbe. A line would be built up the Vakhsh River valley and onwards to Kashi in China. This route avoids the difficult Wakhan corridor.

An article in Dawn dated May 14, 2006 quotes M H A Beg visiting Central Asia to follow Babar’s passage from the Amu Darya to Nilab:

Babar must have crossed the river Amu somewhere near Termiz. This is the famous crossing site of men and armies. The most famous in recent history being the Russian army of 1979 through the Bridge of Friendship, named in contrast to the act of invasion.

The bridge still stands. It is used by the trade traffic. Not only does it have a road but also a railway crossing from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. To establish a station for unloading goods, they built a town named Hayratan, a dismal place with a railway yard and some houses belonging to the railway workers and army personnel. The town is so recent that it doesn’t even show on some of the older maps of Afghanistan. These days you cannot go on the bridge directly, but a guard will direct you to a place from where the bridge and Amu Darya are within sight.

The bridge is a steel construction, painted pale yellow on the top. Amu is a big river in the region, made famous in Arabic historical writings as the “Nehar”. Arab historians have given the area beyond a name so beautiful and descriptive, “Mavara-un-nehar”. The railway does not go beyond Hayratan. This is the only part of Afghanistan where there is a railway built by the invading Russians. It is their legacy.

Babar writes in his book that after crossing the Amu on a raft, he landed in Afghan Turkistan where he was greeted by vast flat grasslands.

Fuel Line Vol. 3, 2006 from Defense Energy Support has an article “Voruz Earns Bronze Star Thanks to Many Logistics Professionals”. This describes removing a vast quantity of fuel from a US base in Uzbekistan to one in Afghanistan in a hurry during 2005, by rail and lorry. There is a small photo of railway tracks at Hayratan.

The railway line under construction to provide a link between the Iranian network and Herat in Afghanistan is progressing, according to Hamid Behbahani, Iran’s Deputy Minister of Roads & Transportation, in a report by the Fars news agency:

Railroad to Link Pakistan to Europe via Iran
15:14 | 2008-05-14

[...The Bam-Zahedan line is to be completed by March 2009, ...]

The construction of the railroad between Khaf in northeastern Iran and Herrat in western Afghanistan is making progress, he said, adding 60 percent of the Iranian side and 40 percent of the Afghan’s side are completed.

Upon completion of the project, Afghanistan will have a railroad link to Europe via Iran, Behbahani said.

This line starts at Khaf in Iran, then heads slightly south and then east across the border through arid and rugged terrain., reported the January 2008 issue of Railway Gazette International. The new line will be 191 km long, of which 77 km is on the Iranian side of the border and 114 km within Afghanistan.

NATO is “Making progress on Afghanistan rail route”, according to a Eurasia Insight report dated May 5. It seems NATO is hoping to move freight between Europe and Afghanistan via the rail connection from Uzbekistan to Hayratan, across the Friendship Bridge.

NATO is striving to rapidly conclude a deal with Central Asian states on an inter-continental rail link that would ease the supply of non-lethal equipment and assistance for both military and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan.

The rail project is an outgrowth of NATO’s efforts to reinvigorate its Afghan operations. Discussions on how to improve Afghan reconstruction efforts featured prominently at the alliance’s early April summit in Bucharest. [see previous posting] …

At present, the cost of supplying NATO operations in Afghanistan is astronomical, due mainly to the fact that most supplies must be brought in by air. According to NATO estimates, airlifting supplies to Afghanistan costs a whopping $14,000 per ton, or roughly $7 per pound. In addition to the high cost, the air option may not be able to handle the requirements necessitated by an expansion of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

A Europe-Afghan rail link could cut supply costs to roughly $300-$500 per ton, allowing the bloc to both save tremendously on transportation and increase supply for its Afghanistan operations. The optimal route envisioned at this time would traverse Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. By all appearances, NATO has secured approval in principle from all the potential transit states.

…

… no new railroads are expected to be built at this point; the route will follow existing Soviet-era high-capacity tracks. … NATO indicated that if route proves reliable and efficient, the alliance will seek the permission of transit states to allow military equipment to travel over the railway. This option would necessitate closer cooperation between NATO and the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which several transit states are members.

The full article has a lot of background to the political implications of allowing such traffic through the surrounding countries.

Other than the Europe-Afghan railway, there would seem to be no other viable options for the overland supply of Afghan reconstruction efforts.

Photos of a train crossing the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan border, taken by Australian humanitarian relief worker Liz Johnson. The loco is an Uzbek Railways’ TEM2 diesel, built at the Bryansk Engineering Works in Russia to a design which evolved from some US Alco locos supplied to the USSR under the World War II lend-lease scheme.

Some old articles from Railway Gazette regarding a unrealised 1960s scheme for a rail link from the Pakistan Railways railhead at Chaman to Spin Boldak, a short distance across the border in Afghanistan.

Spin Boldak is a major border crossing point, and it seems that railway extension plans have been talked about every so often.

20 May 1966
Talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan were held on May 4 1966 regarding building a railway to Spin Baldak.

2 September 1966
Construction to Spin Baldak “is to begin soon”.

17 May 1968
Bad news: the Spinbaldak scheme, which was to have been financed by the US Agency for International Development, has been abandoned.

(clippings © Railway Gazette International)

The website of the UAE-based Azizi Hotak General Trading Group has some December 2007 photographs of rail operations at Hairaton terminal in Afghanistan, showing Uzbek Railways’ loco TEM2 3199.

The address by Uzbekistan’s President at the NATO Summit in Bucharest on April 3 2008 mentions rail access on the Uzbek Railways line to Afghanistan.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to state that Uzbekistan stands ready to discuss and sign with NATO the Agreement on providing for corridor and transit through its territory to deliver the non-military cargos through the border junction Termez-Khayraton, practically the sole railway connection with Afghanistan.

At the same time, the sovereign interests on maintaining the security and legislation of our country must be observed.

The agreement on railway transit of Bundeswehr cargos through the territory of Uzbekistan signed by Uzbekistan with the German side on March 4 this year could be taken as basis for the future Agreement.

An agreement has also been reached “to allow the alliance to ship non-lethal freight across Russian territory to military forces in Afghanistan”