[sustran] Can better highways save Afghanistan?

[Todd Edelman, Green Idea Factory]

Down the ... road a bit, what will be filling up these highways when 
things become more "stable", buses... or cars?

- T

***

Asphalt Dreams
<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/world-in-numbers>

Afghanistan’s high plateaus and steep mountains have served throughout 
history as obstacles to foreign intrusion. Alexander the Great’s 
campaign through Afghanistan led to a temporary fusion of Western and 
Eastern art and culture but left no lasting roads in its wake. Centuries 
later, the Turco-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane complained in his memoirs of 
rough travel through the region, lamenting that he had to submit to 
being lowered down cliffs in a basket. When his horses were subjected to 
the same procedure, many flailed and were battered to death upon the 
rocks. His exit from the Hindu Kush mountain range was preceded by a 
prayer for his deliverance.

When the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan, in 2001, they 
found the conditions to be nearly as rough. A dearth of traversable 
roads hindered the attack on al-Qaeda forces at Tora Bora, and has 
complicated the country’s governance. NATO allies squabble over many 
things, but on one they all agree: if Afghanistan is ever to be secure, 
prosperous, and cohesive, it must first be paved.

The country’s main roadway, known as the Ring Road and intended to link 
Afghanistan’s largest cities, was begun in the 1960s. But war in the 
1970s prevented the 1,900-mile ring from being completed; bombings, 
flash floods, and harsh winters badly degraded what had been built. 
Since 2001, international development groups have devoted some $2 
billion to rebuilding and expanding the country’s road network. The 
Asian Development Bank alone has allocated $600 million for rebuilding 
the Ring Road.

Road building is by far Afghanistan’s largest public-works program 
today, and as such it is to some extent an end in itself. One U.S. 
military engineer, Army Commander Larry LeGree, boasts that—with his 
extensive budget—he can outspend the Taliban and al-Qaeda at every bend 
in the road. If, for example, al-Qaeda-backed insurgents are getting $5 
a day, he’ll pay a road worker $5.50. He says he is banking on the 
belief that many insurgents will—for the right price—opt out of the 
fight in favor of roadwork.

The completion of the Ring Road (scheduled for 2010), along with key 
bridges and border-crossing points, is expected to raise the nation’s 
official trade from $4.7 billion in 2005 to some $12 billion in 2016. 
Already, the 300-mile ride south from Kabul to Kandahar on this route, 
which used to take 14 hours, can be completed in five, or fewer if you 
are in a hurry, which is invariably the case. Fresh asphalt hasn’t kept 
the Taliban and assorted brigands from setting up mobile “gantlets” 
along the highway, where they sometimes extort, rob, kidnap, or behead 
passersby. Still, these security threats seem to be only a limited 
deterrent for Afghan truck drivers, who are renowned across South Asia 
for their stamina and courage.

Will better roads really make a big difference to Afghanistan’s future? 
The Taliban certainly seem to think so: the group’s forces have made a 
concerted effort to stop construction. Insurgents regularly target road 
crews in their camps and as they work. Indeed, LeGree’s wage math leaves 
out an important variable: al-Qaeda not only pays insurgents a day rate, 
but also—according to U.S. platoon leaders—offers incentives for killing 
U.S. soldiers and Afghan road workers, dozens of whom have been 
slaughtered in eastern Afghanistan alone. The need for fortified camps 
and armed guards makes the cost of road construction in Afghanistan 30 
to 50 percent higher than elsewhere in South Asia.

The lion’s share of U.S. road money is now directed toward smaller roads 
and bridges—many of them entirely new—in eastern Afghanistan, the very 
terrain that hindered Alexander and Tamerlane and that helped Osama bin 
Laden escape from Tora Bora. When completed, these roads—which snake 
into the remotest valleys and toward the hottest insurgent 
strongholds—will, in theory, serve as a “fire wall” against infiltration 
from Pakistan, by allowing more-comprehensive patrols and exposing the 
winding goat paths used by inbound insurgents and arms smugglers.

The cost of this latest endeavor is high, and progress slow. Sealing the 
unmarked and largely unguarded 1,400-mile border between Afghanistan and 
Pakistan, with its endless valleys and passes, would appear to be a 
near-Sisyphean task. Yet at the same time, it is clear that 
Afghanistan’s mountains, which for so long guaranteed the country’s 
security and independence, are now helping to destabilize it—acting as a 
sieve for insurgents slipping in and out. It is perhaps ironic that one 
key to the country’s viability—its border security—may turn out to 
involve the paving-over of the natural barriers that have always 
protected it.

*Asphalt Dreams*
*The Ring *

Afghanistan’s main highway, the Ring Road, is almost complete. Only 
three major portions are still unfinished: a Japanese-financed stretch 
between Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where the British and Canadians 
do daily battle with the Taliban; a rough section in the northwest near 
Turkmenistan, which has also come under heavy attack in recent months; 
and a section close to Tajikistan. Workers regularly face roadside 
bombs, gunfights, and rocket attacks.

*Hope Through Better Highways? *

Heavy fighting continues in isolated valleys, particularly in the 
Korengal Valley, where road building is under way. But a road through 
the Pech Valley, now complete, has provided the kind of economic and 
security boost that U.S. officers say they anticipated. Senator Joseph 
Biden, who visited Kunar province in February, told the Associated 
Press, “How do you spell /hope/ in Dari and Pashtu? A-S-P-H-A-L-T.”

*Bombs Away *

U.S. commanders in Kunar province say that the number of roadside bomb 
attacks has been cut by more than half over the past year, in part 
because of road improvements—mines are more difficult to conceal on 
asphalt roads than on dirt ones. Overall, confirmed deaths of NATO and 
coalition forces in Kunar have dropped, from about 30 in 2006 to 10 or 
so in 2007, and to just one during the first three months of this year.



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Todd Edelman
Director
Green Idea Factory

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