a house divided, 1933–73within its sphere of influence. The Afghan Foreign Minister went as far
as to state that the Soviet aide-memoire was the ‘most serious incident in
[Afghanistan’s] recent history’. The cabinet saved face by sending a ‘firm
rebuttal’ to the Soviets, but the French survey team was recalled and the
project shelved. Several years later the Afghan government signed an agree-
ment with the Soviet Union to extract gas from the Shibarghan field, most of
which was pumped directly across the frontier, for the gas was part payment
for a massive loan that the ussr had made to Afghanistan.
Despite this unpleasant confrontation, Da’ud continued to pursue
better relations with the Soviet Union. In 1955 the Afghan government
signed a five-year transit agreement and accepted a loan of $3.5 million
to construct grain silos and bakeries. In December of the same year the
Soviet premier made the first state visit to Afghanistan, during which the
two governments reaffirmed the 1931 Non-aggression Treaty and Prime
Minister Da’ud announced the government had agreed to accept the ussr’s
offer of a low-interest loan of $100 million. The majority of this money
was spent on the purchase of Soviet arms and military equipment; the
remainder went on infrastructure projects, which created the greatest
construction boom in Afghanistan prior to 2001 and provided employ-
ment for thousands of university graduates and labourers. Among the
many civil engineering projects undertaken were the construction of the
highways; the paving of Kabul’s streets; hydroelectric plants; irrigation
schemes; textile and cement factories; hospitals; post offices; Soviet-style
housing units for government officials; and the construction of Kabul’s
Polytechnic. The Soviet Union also supplied buses, hospital beds, medical
equipment, cars and trucks. The artificial boom also help stave off political
and social unrest, at least in the short term.
The greatest engineering feat of all, however, was the construction
of a new highway between Kabul and Mazar-i Sharif through the Salang
Tunnel, which, when it opened in 1964, was the longest road tunnel in the
world. The new highway cut hundreds of kilometres off the journey from
Kabul to the northern provinces and made it possible to drive from the
capital to Mazar-i Sharif in a single day. The road facilitated trade with
the ussr, as well as internal trade between north and south. Following the
completion of the extension of the railhead to the Afghan frontier port of
Hairatan and the road–rail bridge across the Amu Darya, Afghanistan was
linked into the Soviet rail network and had a reliable, alternative means of
shipping goods to Europe.
The surge in Soviet aid led to an influx of hundreds of Soviet and
Warsaw Pact technical and military advisers, while Army and Air Force