KABUL, Jan 14: The strategically vital Salang Tunnel linking northern and southern Afghanistan has been reopened to vehicles after thousands of tons of debris were removed from its confines.

The Halo Trust demining agency said on Monday the first cars and trucks were now using the tunnel, although electric lighting had been installed along only two-thirds of its length.

The 3.2-kilometre tunnel is around four kilometres above sea level, making it the highest passage of its kind in the world.

Afghanistan’s interim government is yet to announce a date for an official reopening, although sources said it could be delayed until a major Russian aid convoy retraces the route once taken by invading Soviet forces through the tunnel in mid-February.

The tunnel, about 80 kilometres north of Kabul, is the main pass through the Hindu Kush mountains dividing north and south Afghanistan.

It was dramatically blown up by late Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Masood to stop advancing Taliban troops after the militia captured Kabul in 1996.

Masood’s troops also dynamited the mountain sides, creating avalanches that buried the tunnel entrances.

The area was also heavily mined and strewn with unexploded munitions.

Its destruction blocked the major land route to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and the Panjshir Valley to the northeast.

The Halo Trust’s assistant program manager in Afghanistan, Dr Nasir Ahmed, said that the first vehicles were now using the tunnel to cross Afghanistan’s north-south divide.

He said that north-bound and south-bound travellers were being allotted alternate days for their journey through the 1.9-kilometre main tunnel and a series of inter-connecting galleries.

“The first vehicles are going through the tunnel now,” Nasir said. “Vehicles have been moving through the tunnel for the past two days.”

A Halo Trust statement said that 11 anti-tank and almost a hundred anti-personnel mines had been removed from the entrances to the tunnel, as well as inside.

More than 800 unexploded artillery rounds, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades were also removed by Halo Trust de-miners.

The Halo Trust statement said the re-opening of the tunnel was likely to increase the rate at which refugees — some of whom have sheltered in the Panjshir Valley for years — were able to return to their homes in central and southern Afghanistan.

“Immediately after the collapse of the Taliban regime in Kabul, the clearance of the tunnel seemed vital,” the statement said.

A damage assessment in December revealed that Afghans determined to reach the north of their country were braving the tunnel and clambering through it in pitch blackness.

“Thousands of people, including women and children — some barefoot — were crossing the tunnel in extremely cold temperatures (surrounded) by thousands of tons of debris ... and in total darkness,” the statement said.

A further 12 kilometres of road leading to the mouth of the tunnel on the main highway north from the Afghan capital of Kabul has been cleared of rubble and other obstacles.

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