KABUL: When the month-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent most Asian countries into energy crises, Afghanistan enjoyed some of the lowest fuel and gas rates in the region — a quiet achievement born of decades of hard-learned lessons.
The price of petrol in the Afghan capital stayed below $1 a liter, while diesel cost only a few cents more.
While many countries introduced fuel purchase caps at gas stations and imposed work-from-home measures as people struggled to afford rising transportation costs, there were no shifts in the Afghan market or supply.
“The situation is good here compared to the rest of the world,” said Ahmad Yusuf Raoufi, manager of Raoufi Petrol Pump in Kabul.
“Our customers are the same as before. There are no changes in the fares of taxis and buses either.”
In neighboring Pakistan, fuel prices increased by over 40 percent, with petrol surging past $1.6 and diesel to nearly $1.9 per liter.
“We are much better than Pakistan,” Raoufi said. “We have a diversified market and low taxes here. We are not importing through the Strait of Hormuz.”
As one of the least developed countries, Afghanistan’s energy consumption is also among the lowest in the world. The country of 45 million people lacks high-energy-consuming industries, which for many developed nations represent the highest concentration of energy demand.
In case of supply, however, neighborhood relations play a role too.
For decades, landlocked Afghanistan depended heavily on Pakistan for essential goods such as meat, flour, rice, cooking oil and medicines. In times of tension, Afghan authorities often accused Pakistan of using border closures as political leverage, sending prices soaring overnight.
“Every time the route was blocked, the flour price would go up by a few hundred afghanis,” Shafi Azam, director of the Economic Affairs Directorate at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Arab News. “Pakistan used the routes as a political pressure on us.”
While Pakistan remains Afghanistan’s main trading partner, especially for exports, Afghan authorities started working on decreasing dependence on imports.
First steps were undertaken by the previous, Western-backed administration. As the Taliban took control of the country — after US-led troops withdrew in 2021 — they continued the strategy.
The previous government redirected flour and edible oil imports from Central Asia, sourcing supplies from Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. The Taliban made a similar move in relation to pharmaceuticals — 80 percent of which used to be imported from Pakistan — and when their importation was blocked last October, diversified to the Bangladeshi, Indian, Turkish, and Uzbek pharmaceutical markets.
Afghanistan’s non-dependence on one energy source follows the same pattern.
In 2025, Afghan imports of petrol, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas were worth nearly $2.5 billion, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.
Though Iran has traditionally been a key energy supplier for Afghanistan, it was the “stable import flows from Central Asian countries” that drove fuel prices to their lowest since October 2024 in recent months, according to an Afghan market report issued by the UN.
The diversification helped shield Afghanistan — unlike others in South Asia and the Far East — from a crisis after the US–Israeli war on Iran effectively disrupted fuel exports from the Middle East from early last month.
“If you compare Afghanistan with Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, China, or other countries, the rates in Afghanistan are the lowest,” Azam said.
“Fortunately, Afghanistan was not dependent only on Iran. At the same time, we imported from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Russia. We worked on alternative routes … If we depend on one market, even in a normal situation, it will turn into a pressure tool against us.”
