Journeys in Afghanistan

Kabul podcast with Nicolas Lunt
NATO's civilian spokesman in Afghanistan

Traveling around Afghanistan is a challenge.  Despite the 4000kms of road constructed since ISAF began its mission and the billion square metres of mines cleared since 2001 most of the old hands here will tell you that road travel over long distances is still best avoided if there’s an alternative. 

But things are improving slowly.  A few weeks ago I drove from Kabul to Jalalabad, and back, in one day.  This is a journey that would have been unthinkable in that timeframe a few years ago.  Once the driver has negotiated his way out of Kabul on potholed dirt tracks that look more like a tank training area than a road, the new blacktop begins at the eastern edge of the city. 

This new road snakes 80kms through the Kabul Gorge before bursting out of the mountains and dropping dramatically to the Jalalabad plain.  The drive is part spectacular, beautiful views and part hair-raising ones.  The sight of the crumpled remains of trucks and cars in the bottom of the gorge a constant reminder of the need for caution and of the treacherous conditions here over the winter months.  But mostly these wrecks are a reminder (not that one is really needed) of the utterly appalling driving standards of almost every Afghan motorist. 

I’m not too sure what happens to Afghan men when they get behind the wheel of a car or truck (women don’t drive of course).  But clearly consideration of their own and other road user’s safety is very far from their minds.

The Kabul to Jalalabad road is the Afghan end of the Grand Trunk Road, one of South Asia's oldest and longest major trading routes. For several centuries it has linked the eastern and western regions of the Indian subcontinent, running from what is now Pakistan, across north India, into Bangladesh. The route was formalized by the British in the 19th century in order to connect Calcutta to Peshawar within British India.  The Afghans extended the road through the Kyber Pass to Kabul.   The Grand Trunk is centre stage in what is probably Kipling’s greatest novel, “Kim”. 

“And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred miles - such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world”

In Afghanistan it is the primary commercial artery to and from Pakistan.  The quantity of laden trucks that we saw on our way to Jalalabad are a visible sign of Afghanistan’s growing economy, growth which some estimates put at between 10 and 12 per cent a year at the moment. 

Most people agree that if the economy can expand fast enough many of the challenges we are all facing here will begin to melt away.  History shows that men with jobs or at least a decent standard of living have a very direct interest in a stable society.  And they don’t tend to get involved in violent insurrections either.  So, maybe the scale of commercial transport winding its way along the Afghan end of the Grand Trunk Road provides a barometer of sorts for the growth of peace and stability in this country.  It would be good to think so.

Although for most people here there is no alternative to traveling by road, some of us are lucky enough to have access to the growing air transport facilities of ISAF.  What a difference this makes.  And it’s not just the time factor – Afghanistan from the air is a beautiful sight which means that journeys are always a pleasure.  A few weeks back I flew with the Deputy Sec. Gen, the SCR and SACEUR to Bamyan Province, reckoned by those who claim to know to be one of the most beautiful parts of the country.  I doubt that the Chinhook helicopter I flew in would normally have been given an escort of Blackhawks but perhaps the presence of three VVIP’s had something to do with it. 

It’s quite a flight up in to the isolation and soaring magnificence of Bamyan.  Sometimes hugging snow-covered outcrops and at others winding our way above verdant valleys filled with blossoming apple trees and bright green terraced fields.  The trip had a serious purpose, to visit a PRT (being exceptionally well run by the New Zealanders) but I freely admit that the journey there and back was the most special part of our day.

Coordinating the vast array of air transport at ISAF’s disposal (although more would be welcomed by COMISAF!) is a feat requiring great skill.  Personnel and machines need to be linked up in a complex web involving first and foremost calculations about operational requirements and medical evacuations.  Then the planners have to factor in mechanical serviceability and craft availability.  Fuel supplies need to be in the right place and the right quantities. And the crews who fly and service the fleet need to have their rest.  It is a massive task and one that I suspect is not always appreciated by the more earthbound of the ISAF contingent.

So, as I sat fuming about my delayed flight from Kandahar back to Kabul the other morning I forced myself to remember the role played by ISAF air planners each day as they coordinate many hundreds of journeys around and in and out of the country. 

Then there are the journeys no-one wants to plan or be a part of.  That evening, still stuck in Kandahar, I joined around 1500 ISAF servicemen and women parading on the airstrip in the fading light of an April evening.  The mood was serious, solemn even.  Our purpose was to be witnesses, to pay our respects, at a ramp ceremony.  A few days earlier, six Canadian soldiers, on patrol in Kandahar Province, had been killed in a massive mine strike on their armoured vehicle.  Now their bodies were to be flown back to Canada and we were there to honour them before they began their final journey.

The sight of six coffins, each draped by the Canadian flag and carried by young comrades seemed to me to still the air around us.  Once the padre had finished his few words the piper struck up and all around me young men and women braced themselves. 

Fighting is what some servicemen and women have to do in this country but we all realize that it isn’t the defining contribution to be made by the NATO-ISAF mission.  Our legacy here will be roads, hospitals, schools, thriving markets, healthy children, wheat-filled fields, decent policemen and competent administrators.  But standing on Kandahar airfield that evening was a reminder that there is a contribution that is by some measure greater than all of these.  Its symbol, the final journey about to be made by six brave young men.