Fatal avalanches on Afghan mountain road rivet nation

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan — 

While the eyes of the West are on Helmand province, where one of the war’s biggest military offensives looms, Afghans’ attention this week has been riveted by a lethal drama in the high-altitude heart of the country.

Authorities said Wednesday that the death toll had risen to at least 166 in a series of avalanches that thundered down the Salang Pass, the historic route through the rugged mountains of the Hindu Kush. An additional 125 people were injured when snowslides struck, tossing some vehicles hundreds of yards. The snow engulfed three miles of roadway.

Thousands of travelers have been plucked since Monday from the bitter cold of the 12,700-foot-high pass, but more were feared trapped in buried cars or in buses that were swept off the narrow road into gorges. The tunnel through the pass, built in the 1960s by the Soviets, was considered an engineering marvel of its era -- and one that shaved days off the travel time between Kabul, the capital, and Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan’s main northern city.

But it also has a long history as a deathtrap. Hundreds died in a catastrophic fire in 1982.

The tunnel fell into disuse and disrepair during the country’s civil war, reopening to the public only after the fall of the Taliban movement in late 2001.

Even now, the road through the pass remains a reminder of the perilous fragility of much of Afghanistan’s infrastructure, despite the billions of dollars in international aid pumped into the country in recent years. A crash inside the dimly lighted, poorly ventilated mile-and-a-half-long tunnel can easily prove fatal if it disables the vehicles involved because anyone trying to make his way out on foot is liable to be overcome by fumes.

Road travel through the soaring peaks of the Salang Pass is a great leveler. On any given day, the route is packed with ramshackle buses and trucks overflowing with goods and passengers, sharing rutted asphalt with sleek late-model cars whisking the well-off to their destinations, north or south.

Afghanistan’s army is primed to play a significant role in the expected coalition assault on the Helmand province town of Marja, a Taliban haven that also serves as a hub for bomb making and narcotics trafficking. But a far greater rush of national pride has been generated by its search-and-rescue role in the Salang Pass, where hundreds of soldiers and police worked frantically to dig out stranded cars, pulling out passengers weak from hunger and cold.

“Our security forces have saved the lives of many, many of their countrymen,” Zemari Bashary, an Interior Ministry spokesman, told reporters in Kabul on Wednesday.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization aided in the rescue, providing four Chinook helicopters and medical care for survivors at Bagram airfield, the country’s biggest military base.

Scenes of dazed survivors being helped to safety have become a staple on Afghan television. Harrowing tales, including that of seven children who survived the ordeal but lost their mother, have prompted an outpouring of sympathy.

Bashary said the rescue effort was “95%” complete, suggesting that chances of finding more survivors were considered slim.

laura.king@latimes.com