Hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan face severe hunger and poverty, exacerbated by recurrent floods, earthquakes, dwindling humanitarian funding, and border crises. This challenging environment makes delivering essential aid a monumental task for organizations like the World Food Programme (WFP).
Logistical Labyrinth: The Challenge of Delivery
For many Afghan schoolchildren, fortified biscuits provided by the WFP are often their most nutritious meal of the day. However, getting these vital supplies into the country is a complex logistical challenge. A recent shipment of 397 metric tons of these biscuits, intended for 172,000 students and funded by a US$3.5 million contribution from the Government of Indonesia, illustrates the difficulties.
The supplies were initially shipped from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Karachi, Pakistan. The original plan was to transport them by truck across Pakistan, a 7,000 km journey. However, escalating tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan led to border closures, forcing the WFP to seek alternative routes.
Hunger Cannot Wait: Rerouting Aid
As Corinne Fleischer, Director of WFP Supply Chain and Delivery, emphasizes, “hunger doesn’t wait for routes to reopen.” The WFP shipping officers quickly rerouted the cargo to Jebel Ali port in Dubai, planning to ship it across the Persian Gulf to Iran and then by road. Yet, geopolitical instability in the Middle East, which effectively closed the critical Strait of Hormuz, forced another change of plans.
WFP logisticians returned to their maps, searching for a viable solution. They identified an entirely new land corridor: from Dubai to landlocked Afghanistan, traversing the Caucasus region. This route, while more costly and complex, added another 8,000 km to the journey but became the only remaining option.
A New Route, A Renewed Hope
One morning, a 21-truck convoy embarked from Dubai, crossing the desert highways of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, through Jordan, Syria, Türkiye, and Georgia. It then boarded a ferry in Baku, Azerbaijan, crossing the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan before finally entering Afghanistan through the remote Torghundi border crossing and continuing to Kabul. This epic journey required new customs clearances, security assessments, and transport permits across seven borders.
Along the route, truck drivers faced long waits at border crossings, managing paperwork and grabbing brief moments of sleep under the open sky. Hüseyin Sarraç Ulus, a Turkish truck driver who completed the 3,000 km segment from Dubai to the Caspian Sea, recounted the challenges: “I remember the ferry line at Alat port [Baku] where hundreds of trucks were waiting to cross – the line was close to 30 km long.”
Dedication to Delivery
“We drove around 11 hours a day and slept in the truck cabin most nights – it was not always comfortable, but we are used to it,” Ulus recalled. “We ate simple food like soup, bread, rice and tea. But it felt good. Knowing the cargo was helping children made me proud to be part of the journey.”
Inside a WFP warehouse in Kabul, Abdul Ahad Monib, a Supply Chain and Delivery officer, expressed relief as the trucks arrived. “We followed every step of the journey closely – every delay, every border crossing, every change of plan,” he said. After weeks on the road, the biscuits finally reached children in schools across Ghor, Nuristan, and Paktika provinces.
“For the children, it’s a packet of biscuits that helps them stay healthy,” Monib concluded. “For us, it’s a logistics feat. No one sees the thousands of kilometres, the delays or the rerouting behind each packet. But that’s exactly the point – whatever the obstacles, WFP delivers.”
