Affective Labor: Afghanistan’s Road To China

As in many countries in the region, the promise of connectivity to China has become a political fetish. In Afghanistan, links to China have flourished at several points in history: from the transmission of Buddhism from India, to the provisioning of Chinese weapons to the mujahedin in the 1980s, to the current influx of Chinese goods. Against this backdrop, Afghan and Chinese politicians have passionately reproduced the trope of the Silk Road to frame economic projects from copper mining to road construction. Paradoxically, the stretch of road covering the sixty-eight kilometers from Sarhad-e Broghil to Baza’i Gonbad, and then possibly across the border with China, has received comparatively little publicity. This arduous and slow ten-year project does not lend itself very well to political marketing and in Afghan politics a decade is an eternity. Thus, while many economic endeavors across the region have become sites of intense emotional investment due to their official inclusion in the Belt and Road Initiative, this particular road has not. Instead, the affective dimensions of Afghanistan’s road to China manifest on a much more personal, local and tangible scale. As we approach the end of the road and the makeshift camp of a government subcontractor on this cold spring afternoon, the workers pause to extend warm greetings. Asfand, an excavator driver from Kunduz, comes for a cigarette and a chat, and Farid invites Tobias to join him at the jackhammer.