Impacts of Conflict on Markets and Supply Chains in Afghanistan (July – August 2026)

Please refer to the attached file. Context & Rationale Trade and regional connectivity have long played an important role in Afghanistan. Historically, the country occupied a strategic position along the Silk Road, with major routes passing through cities including Balkh, Herat and Ghazni. Today, as a landlocked country, Afghanistan remains heavily reliant on imports of essential food and non-food commodities, with most goods entering through overland routes and neighbouring countries. These supply routes are vulnerable to environmental and human-induced disruptions. Heavy snowfall, floods and landslides can temporarily isolate communities, while conflict can result in road closures, infrastructure damage and movement restrictions. For remote communities dependent on limited access routes, such disruptions can significantly affect access to markets, essential goods and services. The availabile data on prolonged supply chain disruptions in Afghanistan highlighted severe impacts associated with conflict-related disruptions on essential supplies. More recently, in 2026, damage to access routes during Afghanistan–Pakistan hostilities disrupted supply chains to remote areas of Nuristan Province, where some communities experienced severe constraints in the availability of food and non-food items for an extended period of 2 months. Against this backdrop, WFP and REACH, with support of Taylor Geospatial (TG), are collaborating to enhance the Afghanistan Platform for Understanding Local Shocks in Emergencies (AF-PULSE), into a geoAI-enabled, open-source platform for identifying localized shocks and disruptions. WFP is developing the model, while REACH collected field-level information to verify identified disruptions and assess their impacts on affected communities. This brief combines conflict, market and accessibility data to examine how conflict-related disruptions have affected local markets and supply routes, and to identify factors that may increase communities’ vulnerability to such disruptions.

Read full story on Reliefweb