Following the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, the international community attempted to spur growth and stability in Afghanistan by channeling aid into infrastructure, governance, and social services in the aftermath of serial war since 1979. Despite historical animosities, Russia, the US, and neighboring Central Asia all enacted informal and formal defensive policies to mitigate a potentially deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and perceived fears of spillover.
In 2011, as the US began planning its exit strategy from Afghanistan, the Obama administration proposed the ‘new Silk Road initiative,’ a strategy that was intended to leverage Central Asia’s help in spurring peace in Afghanistan through cross-border trade, investments, and energy exports. This vision provided a theoretical justification for mega infrastructure projects designed to link Afghanistan to Central Asia that were conceptualized in the 1990s, reviving construction for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Pipeline (TAPI) and the Central Asia-South Asia power project (CASA-1000).
Despite delays in construction due to persistent security, financial, and political challenges, both the former Afghan republic and international stakeholders uncompromisingly championed TAPI and CASA-1000 as game changers for regional stability and electrification. Following the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’s fall in August 2021, the Taliban recycled the decade-old cliche, once touted by the former Afghan government and its allies, that regional peace rests upon Afghanistan’s integration with its northern neighbors through mega infrastructure projects like TAPI and CASA-1000. As the international community continues to articulate its unwavering conviction in TAPI and CASA-1000’s transformational potential, despite an ongoing history of incessant setbacks and an unprecedented political transition that has ushered in a new era of social and political unrest, it is urgent to revisit the Afghan-Central Asian borderscape, and based on this investigation, to identify and to discuss barriers and alternate opportunities for enhancing economic cooperation.
The history of development aid in Afghanistan
From the 1950s to 1970s, Afghanistan served as a historic site for the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union, competing with one another for influence by funding large-scale infrastructure projects. Following the devastation ensued by decades of war, including the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989), civil war (1989-1994), civil war involving the Taliban (1994-2001), and the US War in Afghanistan (2001-2021), development aid undertook a new purpose: to support nation-building.
Aid between 2001 and 2021, characterized by top-down projects focused on supporting a fortified, centralized order. Afghanistan’s political vacuum, ethnic fractionalization, and recent history of serial conflict were linked to the absence of a strong state with the ability to regulate domestic social, economic, and political relationships. The international community consequently channeled investments and efforts into molding a strong central government. In 2001, international and local stakeholders gathered at the Bonn Conference to negotiate Afghanistan’s future, creating a new Afghan constitution that enshrined an overly centralized government situated around a powerful president with the decision-making powers to appoint all political positions. In adhering to the idea that a strong central government serves as a panacea to Afghanistan’s political, economic, and social problems, the international community engaged with Afghanistan through a limited scope that rendered stakeholders, grievances, and realities outside of Kabul invisible. As the president’s office grew callously distant and unaware of local needs, opportunities to improve the often-fraught relationship between development schemes and locals were perpetually forsaken through programs such as the 2013 World Bank-inaugurated National Solidarity Program (NSP). Although claiming to reconstruct communities along democratic principles, the NSP uprooted resilient local governance structures that were perceived as more legitimate than the national government by citizens, leading to higher cases of inter-community disputes and corruption levels.
With the Taliban’s ascension to power and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’s fall in August 2021, the future direction of aid is once again uncertain. Harboring an extensive human rights violation record that entails gender apartheid, restrictions to freedom of speech, ethnic cleansing, and calculated attacks on Afghan and foreign nationals, the Taliban and its leaders are sanctioned by the United Nations. In response to Afghanistan’s escalating humanitarian crisis, the UN Security Council announced exemptions for humanitarian assistance in December 2021, creating legal grounds for organizations to operate in Afghanistan while minimizing accrued benefits to the Taliban.
An overview of transnational energy projects
Transnational projects like TAPI and CASA-1000 were designed in response to Afghanistan’s dire energy needs, a consequence of the decade-long Soviet-Afghan war and subsequent civil war which left much of the existing energy infrastructure in ruins. CASA-1000 was conceptualized to export surplus hydroelectricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to energy-hungry Afghanistan and Pakistan. Launched in 2016, the project was initially expected to be completed in 2015 before being pushed to 2023 due to unforeseen delays. On the other hand, the then newly independent Turkmen government conceptualized the TAPI pipeline in 1991 to transmit Turkmen gas to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India in cooperation with the Afghan Taliban. Plans, however, collapsed after stakeholders withdrew due to international condemnation of the Taliban’s human rights record. Discussions over the future of the project resumed after the downfall of the Taliban regime in 2001, originally targeting 2019 as its completion date before the Turkmen government indefinitely pushed the target due to security and financial challenges in 2018.
Barriers to success
Although TAPI and CASA-1000 were championed by the US and its allies for their potential to contribute to peace and security in Afghanistan, neither have been successfully realized as both have a history of long delays in negotiations and implementation. As mega infrastructure projects, TAPI and CASA-1000 both traverse large expanses of conflict-ridden territory in Afghanistan, incurring both financial and security barriers that have impeded progress. Insurgency in Afghanistan is arguably the biggest challenge that historically impacted the projects. Prior to assuming control over Kabul, Taliban militants attacked construction sites, cutting transmission lines connecting Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to Kabul. Although the Taliban announced that their military campaign ended with their ascent to power, their claims of ushering in peace are disingenuous as Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) escalates its attacks on the Taliban, in-fighting among Taliban factions intensifies, and a coordinated anti-Taliban resistance gains traction. Moreover, TAPI and CASA-1000 have historically struggled with gaining the necessary funding since inception and such a goal is unlikely to materialize in the near future as international financiers grapple with Afghanistan’s new political and legal reality.
TAPI and CASA-1000 are the products of overly ambitious goals articulated by both Kabul and the international community. The very same factors that are minimized by proponents of the pipelines continue to hinder the pipeline’s progress. Though less publicized, civil society has repeatedly voiced concerns that the pipelines have contributed to the marginalization of non-dominant social groups, deepening the fissure between Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan. In 2016, members of the Hazara community accused the Afghan government of influencing a power transmission line to purposefully bypass Hazara-majority Bamiyan province despite recommendations by external consulting companies, triggering protests across the country. In 2021, residents of northeastern Afghanistan alleged that the Afghan government engaged in illegal land acquisition after failing to fully compensate property owners whose private lands were acquired for CASA-1000’s proposed route.
Micro-connectivity projects
In a stark contrast to the various challenges that have impeded the progress of transnational ‘peace pipelines,’ micro-level connectivity initiatives with district-wide focuses along the Afghan-Central Asian border have proved more effective. Affiliated with corruption and isolation from the metropoles of their respective nation-states, this border region has been traditionally regarded as a transit corridor for narco-trafficking and to a degree, insurgency. As a result, Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics have largely emphasized fortification as a means to secure the region. This orientation slightly shifted with the rise of CASA-1000 and TAPI. In solely focusing on the feasibility of mega infrastructure projects, however, the border and the communities who dwell within this space were neglected. Recent efforts by the Aga Khan Foundation in facilitating people-to-people connections and cross-border economic activities among the communities of Afghan Badakhshan and Tajik Badakhshan provide an alternative framing to this borderscape. The Afghan-Central border itself is increasingly proving to be a source of micro-level economic and social capital.
Badakhshan is a mountainous region spanning modern northeastern Afghanistan and eastern Tajikistan that was demarcated into separate states during the Great Game. Both Badakhshans were relegated to the peripheries of their respective nations, experiencing some degree of economic, social, and political isolation and marginalization. Following the collapse of the USSR and the Tajik Civil War, Tajik Badakhshan’s infrastructure fell into disrepair and the Human Development Index rapidly deteriorated. On the other hand, Afghan Badakhshan experienced consistent exclusion over Afghanistan’s modern history, claiming some of the lowest human development indicators in the world. Development interventions by the Aga Khan Foundation, therefore, provided critical social services and infrastructural support that were otherwise not provided by the Afghan and Tajik governments.
Though receiving less attention from development institutions than mega infrastructure projects, micro-level connectivity initiatives along the Afghan-Central Asian border took root in the early 2000s with the support of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), spurring opportunities for economic activity, healthcare, and education. Since 2002, AKDN has been cooperating with the governments of Afghanistan and Tajikistan to construct cross-border markets, joint healthcare programs, and electricity grids. Such initiatives successfully navigated the security and financial barriers impeding TAPI and CASA-1000 not only due to their smaller scopes, advancing projects at the village and district level, but also scalability. AKDN projects are built to expand to more territories upon the success of preceding projects, therefore creating a mechanism to ensure community engagement and satisfaction.
A 2010 cross-border AKDN community health is widely viewed as having transformed healthcare in Badakhshan, a previously nearly non-existent service. The AKDN established 3 clinics in Afghanistan where skilled Tajik specialists provided expertise. A referral system was created where Afghans could receive more advanced treatments in Tajik hospitals, allowing for critically ill patients from Afghanistan to access care in a time-sensitive manner. Afghans travelled to Tajik facilities for treatment visa-free under a joint healthcare agreement. From 2010 to 2019, the AKDN cross-border health program provided approximately 3000 consultations and performed 300 surgeries on an annual basis. Given the program’s success, AKDN has been expanding operations to additional districts in Afghan Badakhshan.
AKDN’s Badakhshan-focused programming also experienced tremendous success in the energy sector. The Tajik Civil War of the 1990s left much of Tajik Badakhshan’s infrastructure in disrepair. Upon the creation of Pamir Energy in 2021, Tajikistan’s first energy company born out of a public-private partnership involving the Aga Khan Foundation, Tajik Badakhshan’s electricity access rose from 12% to 96% by 2021. In 2012, with the support of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Pamir Energy’s expanded coverage to bordering Sheghnan, Afghanistan and plans to increase its reach across all of Afghan Badakhshan. Given that infrastructure construction efforts in Afghanistan have been historically vulnerable to security threats, a decentralized power grid strategy like the one offered by Pamir Energy with the capacity to scale operations when the security or financial situation arises is a sustainable and pragmatic approach to electrification policy. In fervently pursuing large-scale power transmission networks over the past two decades despite tenacious security barriers, the Afghan power sector has evidently failed in reaping substantial benefits.
Scalable and cost-effective in nature, micro-connectivity projects in the trans-Badakhshan region have not only trumped conventional security and financial barriers impeding development projects in Afghanistan but also created the grounds for long-term cooperation. By facilitating people-to-people contact in a border region where mobility was curtailed over the twentieth century, cross-border projects have been playing an important role in overturning stereotypes that have painted Afghans as objects of war and violence, rather than as consumers and neighbors. In 2002, the AKDN created a weekly cross-border market at the Afghan-Tajik border, constructing bridges over the riparian border to allow Afghan and Tajik citizens to shop and mingle in a visa-free market. Though the volume of trade is modest, the markets allowed residents of the Afghan-Tajik border to take advantage of price differentials, purchase items that were otherwise difficult to acquire, and avoid traversing large distances over mountain passes to attain goods in provincial or national capitals. The markets brought economic and social benefits to the trans-Badakhshan region, creating positive sentiments among both Afghan and Tajik citizens.
AKDN’s successes, however, have been widely susceptible to security-induced border closures. Many Afghan and Tajik residents expressed that the depiction of the Afghan-Tajik border as volatile and unsafe by donor agencies and national governments, rather than locals themselves, contributed to such closures. Nevertheless, since August 2021, the Afghan-Tajik border has been the source of newfound tension and security concerns as the Tajik government lodged complaints over the Taliban’s management of border security and their exclusion of non-Pashtuns within Afghanistan’s governance structure. These developments hinder the future of cross-border initiatives along the Afghan-Tajik border.
The success of cross-border initiatives in the trans-Badakhshan region proves that local, community-based initiatives can spur economic development and social cohesion. The case of the Afghan-Tajik border support ethnographic findings across rural Afghanistan which highlight that Afghanistan’s ‘ungoverned’ rural communities are in fact managed by robust and resilient local governance structures that provided order and cohesion even throughout the political vacuum of the Afghan civil war. Yet, the international community’s relentless adherence to the idea of a strong state being the solution to social, economic, and political afflictions overlooked alternative development models or ways of engaging with the locals. Even the Afghan-Central Asian borderscape was relegated to a staging ground for mega infrastructure projects such as TAPI and CASA-1000, rather than as a source of economic and human capital. Therefore, there is a critical need for the international community to pivot from spearheading development interventions through the paradigm of the state. Micro-level connectivity projects along the Afghan-Central Asian borderscape present a viable channel to catalyze local economic activity and provide healthcare and electricity access.
The way forward
The successes of the AKDN projects along the Afghan-Tajik border challenge the essentialist caricature of the Afghan-Central Asian border as a source of conflict. By propagating mega infrastructure projects such as TAPI and CASA-1000 despite persistent setbacks, the international community supported this perception by consistently neglecting the potential of the borderscape in spurring mutually beneficial outcomes. As Afghanistan enters another round of instability, threatening the viability of transnational pipelines, the border’s inherent economic and social capital presents an alternative route to stage resilient development interventions in post-2021 Afghanistan. By targeting long-term investments in healthcare, trade, and electricity, cross-border activities will likely remain resilient to shifting circumstances.
While the Afghan-Tajik border has become the source of newfound tension between the Taliban regime and the Tajik government, the Afghan-Uzbek border on the other hand is a viable space for replicating cross-border trade and healthcare programs. Afghan small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have consistently articulated that limited transportation means and customs capacity at northern points of entry along the Afghan-Uzbek border have hindered cross-border trade. This suggests that improvements will have stimulating effects on the economy as SMEs compromise 85% of Afghan businesses and half the country’s GDP. Since assuming power in 2016, Uzbekistan’s self-styled reformist president, Shavkat Mirzoyoyev, has embarked on a quest to strengthen its relationship with its neighbors, particularly Afghanistan. In a clear break from the isolationist policies that characterized Uzbek foreign policy before 2016, Uzbekistan is spearheading a functionalist approach in its engagement, seeking cooperation on issue-specific matters. In 2017, Tashkent commenced a series of transnational projects regarding trade, transportation, communications, and education with the goal to bolster regional interconnectivity, including the construction of railways, bridges, and roads connecting northern Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. In line with its functionalist ideology, the Uzbek government demonstrated a willingness to continue pursuing projects in Afghanistan regardless of the Taliban’s ascension to power.
In addition to pivoting from mega projects to micro-connectivity projects along the Afghan-Central Asian border, the international community must acknowledge its complicity in excluding relevant stakeholders and alternate forms of governance. Following the Taliban’s fall in 2001, NATO forces and western humanitarian aid organizations propagated the idea that a strong, centralized state is the cure-all to Afghanistan’s social disunity. In supporting this vision, relevant stakeholders and legitimate grievances from marginalized social groups were consistently neglected. Support for TAPI and CASA-1000 is emblematic of this unrelenting aversion to grapple with Afghanistan’s social and political dynamics, as messy and complicated as it was and still is. In August 2021, the Taliban stormed the Afghan capital despite rosy intelligence briefings espoused by Kabul and NATO, indicating the astonishing level of disconnect between centers of powers and peripheries. The greatest cost of this negligence has been to the people of Afghanistan as the Taliban arbitrarily target female activists, critics, journalists, and perceived rival ethnic groups. In light of the humanitarian catastrophe looming over Afghanistan, the international community still possesses the opportunity to provide much-needed assistance in the form of sustainable development interventions that will persist even through unprecedented socio-political changes.
I would like to extend my gratitude to Khamza Sharifzoda for his assistance in this project’s conceptualization and fruition.