Ministry of Transport (Afghanistan)

In the 1970s and 1980s the Ministry of Transport and its Tasadies possessed vast capabilities. The Ariana Afghan Airline owned modern aircraft operated by well-trained staff and was among the safest and most respected airlines in the region. The public bus Tasadies owned thousands of buses that provided quality and affordable inter-city, intra-city and international passenger transportation services. Similarly, the freight Tasadies owned several thousand trucks across the country that provided most of the carrier service. Moreover, twenty-five airports were fully functional and the airspace was managed through five fully functional radars. During the years of war and devastation, virtually all of the Ministry of Transport’s infrastructure and technical capacity were destroyed. The Ministry took a hard hit in the areas of human capital, with many qualified experts forced to leave the country and the aviation school non-operational for a long period of time. In the area of infrastructure the devastation was even greater. Most of the air traffic management infrastructure was destroyed because of fighting in the 1990s. Since then, with the help of the International Community, there have been huge efforts to rebuild the aviation infrastructure and to train a new cadre of aviation professionals. Major projects have been succesfully undertaken to rebuild Kabul International Airport and other major regional airports and in most major airports the basic air traffic management infrastructure is now in place. The Ministry is now focusing on building human capacity in order to be able to regulate civil aviation in accordance with international standards. Organisationally, the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation has been in its current form in December 2004, when two former ministries of Civil Aviation and Transport were merged. Currently, the Ministry itself employs over 2,000 people and the Tasadies employ thousands more.