KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan—It is a striking vision for a country torn to pieces by war and jihadi insurrection: A series of airports—built by North Atlantic Treaty Organization to fight the Taliban—are being handed over to the—Afghan government in a civil-aviation upgrade that optimists hope will fuel not only regional trade, but even tourism.
The eight airfields, worth an estimated $2 billion, are scattered around a landlocked and mountainous land, whose lack of rail transport or decent roads makes almost every intercity journey a perilous adventure—even without factoring in attacks from Taliban militants.
Ex-lawmaker Mohammad Daud Sultanzoy, who is overseeing the project for the government, said the airfields—self-contained cities that housed thousands of foreign troops who are now pulling out—will amount to a latter-day “Silk Road” that “will connect Afghanistan internally and to South Asia and Central Asia, and beyond.”
The billions of people living in Asia and the Middle East “can constitute a huge number of tourists and related other activities: cargo, passenger and export/import,” Sultanzoy said.
Pessimists will have little trouble imagining the Taliban trying to shoot down planes as they land, but officials say the militants do not currently have that ability, making air travel a reasonable and safe option.
United States Maj. Gen. Todd Semonite, who oversees $5 billion in funding to Afghanistan’s security sector, said the decision to transfer, rather than close the airfields, was made in conjunction with President Ashraf Ghani’s government after he took power last year, in the belief they could help “jump start the economy.”
Military teams are upgrading them ahead of an international roadshow organized by the Afghan and US governments due to be held in Dubai next month.
Under an agreement with the US, only the top-drawer facilities are being transferred, while small, remote military bases and airfields are being dismantled.
Afghanistan has an aviation infrastructure in place already, but it is rickety. Many of the country’s 27 airports—four of them international—are little more than a shack at the end of a tarmac.
About 130 domestic and international flights land and take off weekly in these existing fields, said Qassim Rahimi, spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority of Afghanistan (CAAA), itself a new operation. He said that with the establishment of the CAAA, regulation and service have improved dramatically, and that change has fueled a leap in both passenger numbers and revenues. Up to 45,000 passengers now fly domestically each month, already a sharp rise compared to 12,000 monthly in 2013. The sector generated $2 billion in revenue last year, and Rahimi estimates a 25-percent rise this year.
Challenges aplenty stand in the way of further progress.
One is the country’s inexperience with air-traffic control. Afghanistan will take over air-traffic control starting in 2016; the US government ended its contract in June after controlling Afghan air space since 2001, and Japan’s government will run it to the end of the year. The CAAA has expressed confidence it will be ready to take on the responsibility starting in January.
Corruption is another issue.
“Corruption will increase if these airports are under the control of the government, and the government does not have the capacity to run these airports,” former Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Daoud Ali Najafi said. He also cited a lack of trained staff, as many who had been trained had left the industry for higher incomes in the private sector. Privatization of the new fields will be key, he said.
Image credits: AP/Massoud Hossaini