Delay in road repair could impede humanitarian assistance

Efforts to repair and restore a critical 60-km stretch of road between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan were being delayed due to bureaucracy, an official from the World Food Programme (WFP) charged on Sunday.

"We’re frustrated," a WFP civil engineer, Peter Risch, told IRIN in the Turkmen town of Kerki, a dusty frontier town north of the Afghan border. "We have teams and equipment on standby just waiting," he maintained.

As part of the United Nations ongoing humanitarian assistance to the beleaguered country, the route leading southeast from the eastern Turkmen city of Turkmenabad towards the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif provides a crucial access link to Afghanistan.

Turkmenistan, a landlocked Central Asian country sharing a 744-km border with Afghanistan, has become the second most important aid route into the country after Pakistan. Since 11 September, over 35 percent of all food assistance for Afghanistan has passed along three access routes into the country - two land and one rail - all of which begin in Turkmenabad. Indeed, Turkmenistan’s second-largest city is now one of the UN’s most important hubs of food assistance to the beleaguered country.

But for Risch, the road to Mazar-e Sharif is proving particularly problematic, and efforts to repair one section of the road are being hampered simply by paperwork and financial concerns - a fact which could later impede relief efforts when weather conditions deteriorate.

According to the engineer, the 200-km stretch of dual carriageway from Turkmenabad to Kerki is well paved and acceptable to large quantities of assistance being carried upon it. However, of the 130 km of road from Kerki to the Afghan border, the last 30 km between Ishkak and the Turkmen border post at Imamnazar remains a dusty, unpaved, dirt track, subsequently continuing for another 30 km on the Afghan side to the northern town of Andkhvoy.

"This segment is in urgent need of restoration," Risch said. "Lots of trucks are getting stuck. When the weather worsens and wet weather begins, it is going to prove impossible to pass," he warned, adding that in the winter, bulldozers would be needed to pull the trucks out of the snow.

While a Turkmen road crew is set to renovate the 60-km artery on both sides of the border, this will not happen until full contractual clearance is provided by WFP, and the Turkmen and Afghan authorities grant permission. "Without the contract, we can’t seek permission from the necessary ministries," he asserted. "This is a political question, and I can’t say how long that would take," he added.

Risch estimated that the 60 km route would require a minimum of 10 weeks to complete, followed by approximately six months of maintenance and monitoring.

Commenting on the dilemma, he said: "We’re here. We’re ready to go and can start yesterday."