NATO- built airports going to Afghans
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — A series of airports built by NATO to fight the Taliban are being handed over to the Afghan government in a civil- aviation upgrade that officials hope will fuel not only regional trade but also tourism.
The eight airfields, worth an estimated $ 2 billion, are scattered around a landlocked and mountainous land that lacks rail transport and decent roads.
Former 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 withdrawing — will amount to a latter- day “Silk Road” that “will connect Afghanistan internally and to South Asia and Central Asia and beyond.”
U. S. 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 “jumpstart the economy.”
Under an agreement with the U. S., only the biggest 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, a new agency. He said that with the establishment of the agency, regulation and service have improved dramatically.
That change has fueled a leap in both passenger numbers and revenue, Rahimi said. Up to 45,000 passengers now fly domestically each month, a sharp rise compared with 12,000 monthly in 2013. The sector generated $ 2 billion in revenue last year, and Rahimi estimates a 25 percent rise this year.
But challenges 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 U. S. government ended its contract in June after controlling Afghan airspace since 2001. Japan’s government will run it until the end of the year. The aviation agency has expressed confidence that 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,” said former Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Daoud Ali Najafi. He also cited a lack of trained staff, as many who had been trained left the industry for higher incomes in the private sector.
Among the modern airports is one in Kandahar in the south. At the height of the Afghan war, Kandahar Airfield was one of the world’s busiest in terms of frequency, with an aircraft taking off or landing every minute. Kandahar Airfield has two airports — one military, one civilian — both with air traffic control towers.
More than 35,000 people were stationed at the airfield, with cafes, restaurants, banks and fast- food outlets around a wooden boardwalk that also had carpet, computer and cellphone shops.
There are also airfields at Shindand in the western Herat province; Mazar- i- Sharif in northern Balkh province; Bagram, 30 miles northeast of Kabul; Jalalabad in eastern Nangarhar province; and Kabul, adjacent to Kabul International Airport.
Bastion, in southern Helmand province, has already been transferred. A small section is used by the Afghan army. The other airfields will pass to Afghan government control in the next 18 months.
According to the plan, the facilities are to be offered as special economic zones with regulations, concessions, tax holidays and legal guarantees, Sultanzoy said.
He envisages an initial boom in agricultural exports, saying trade is already worth around $ 100 million a year but is “held hostage” by high tariffs at border crossings into Pakistan. Kandahar is famous for pomegranates, apricots, grapes and mulberries, but much of it rots before it can reach markets.
Eventually, the growth generated by the airfields would require extra power generation and financial and technological services, Sultanzoy said.
“The airfields will be the kingpin of all other growth the government wants to bring,” Sultanzoy said. “An economic chain creates its own ripple effects and leads to larger and larger expansion into other areas. This will propel decades of growth.”