Key humanitarian route reopens

Aziz Agha, a driver, told IRIN that since the closure of the Salang tunnel in July it had been taking him five days to drive his 20,000-litre diesel tanker south to the capital, Kabul, from the northern city of Heyratan along unmade roads across the Hindu Kush mountains. Now, this key route via the tunnel has been partially reopened, coinciding with the blocking of the high passes by snow and ice. "It is only a day and half now that the tunnel has been reopened," the 35-year- old said in Salang. According to the Kabul-Salang highway department, the tunnel is now operational for traffic from 1800 to 0600, with 70 percent of the reconstruction work having been completed. The route will become fully operational in mid-December, then enabling between 1,500 and 2,000 vehicles a day to bypass the hazards and delays otherwise incurred by having to cross the mountains Built by Soviet engineers and opened in 1964, the 2.7-km Salang tunnel and adjoining road system provided the first direct all-weather link between country's northern and southern regions. The tunnel lies about 180 km north of Kabul and, since it was reopened last year after repairs to rectify war damage and neglect has been heavily used by aid convoys from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, thereby playing an important role in keeping central parts of the country fed . According to Norconsult, an engineering and management consultant company which monitored the complete rehabilitation of the tunnel by two Turkish construction companies, the work was expected to be completed by the end of November, but as a result of last week's snowfalls and other problems the Turkish companies will need another two weeks to finish the work. Running costs for the tunnel are also down by virtue of a US $5 million World Bank-funded programme. "The tunnel has been renovated and rehabilitated to international standard levels of safety and it is now much more energy effective with a 1,300 kW power system, compared to its Russian system, which required 6,000 kW," Morten Knudsmoen, a senior civil engineer for Norconsult, told IRIN in Salang. Despite these successes, there is still a question mark over whether the tunnel can remain open throughout the harsh winter because of lack of resources for staff and equipment. "We already had 1.5 metres of snow in the last two weeks and we can expect much more. But we have only two bulldozers in the whole 108 km of our area of responsibility," a maintenance staffer working on the tunnel told IRIN.