Calcutta, July 10: The army will shortly take up development work, particularly construction of roads, in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Lieutenant General Mathew Mammen, the army’s engineer-in-chief, said “reconnaissance work” is already underway in Afghanistan and the final project report should take shape soon, paving the way for army personnel to fly to the country.

“In about six months, the Indian Army will help Afghanistan rebuild its roads. The project has been cleared by the governments of both sides,” Mammen said today. A similar project will simultaneously get underway in Kyrgyzstan, announced the officer, who is on a short visit to the Eastern Command headquarters here.

The Afghanistan project will not be under the UN banner, as is the norm, but will be exclusive work undertaken by the army. The force had in the past undertaken similar projects in Sierra Leone, Lebanon and Somalia, Mammen said.

The army officer also voiced concern on the regular use of hi-tech explosive devices by militants in Kashmir, which the army has to counter “very frequently”.

“We are concerned over their access to hi-tech IEDs from the global arms bazaar. We have, therefore, come with a new anti-IED arsenal. But, as the militants come up with more sophisticated ones, we also keep changing,” he said.

Mammen, who is scheduled to fly back to Delhi tomorrow, expressed satisfaction with the border-fencing work underway in Jammu and Kashmir.

“Almost 95 per cent of the work is complete on the Indo-Pak border in Kashmir and we have fixed September 30 as the deadline for the completion of the project,” he said.

The project would have been completed by now, but work has stopped in some parts of the Valley due to incessant snowfall.