IHT : Danger rules lawless Highway 1 in Afghanistan

Danger rules lawless Highway 1 in Afghanistan

By C.J. Chivers | December 3, 2007

SALAR, Afghanistan: The ruined Afghan police truck smoldered on the highway in the village bazaar, flames rising from its cargo bed.

The village was silent. Its residents had hidden themselves ahead of an American patrol.

The remains of a second truck, a tanker, sat on its wheel rims 90 meters, or 300 feet, to the north. To the south, another patrol was removing two other freshly burned tankers from the highway, clearing the lanes so traffic might pass.

The Americans examined the police truck. Holes marked where bullets had passed through. The front passenger door was gone; a rocket-propelled grenade had struck and exploded there.

This vehicle graveyard here on Highway 1, roughly 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, south of Kabul, the Afghan capital, symbolizes both the ambitions and frustrations in Afghanistan six years after the Taliban were chased from power.

Highway 1 is the country's main road, the route between Kabul and Kandahar, the country's second largest city. It lies atop an ancient trade route that, in theory, could connect Central Asia and Afghanistan with ports in Pakistan, restoring Afghanistan's place as a transit hub for something besides heroin.

The highway, which has been rebuilt with $250 million from the United States and other nations, accommodates a daily flow of automobiles, buses and ornately decorated cargo carriers, which the soldiers call "jingle trucks." The Afghan and American governments say the road's restored condition is a tangible step toward a self-sufficient Afghanistan.

But Highway 1 remains bedeviled by danger, extortion and treachery.

Police corruption and insurgent attacks sow fear and make traveling many sections of the road a lottery. The risks limit its contribution to the economy and underscore the government's weakness beyond Kabul.

Training indigenous security forces to police the road honestly is one of the primary long-term goals of the American and NATO forces in outposts along the route. In the short term, the goal is to keep traffic flowing with a minimum of graft and attacks.

"Right now, freedom of movement is our main task on Highway 1," said Lieutenant Colonel Timothy McAteer, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry, a unit of the 82nd Airborne Division that operates in two provinces bisected by the highway, Wardak and Ghazni.

The road is different in many ways from its recent past. But in some ways it is the same.

In 2001, after more than two decades of war, Highway 1 was almost impassable. It had been washed out by floods, ground apart by tank treads and bombed in repeated military campaigns. The husks of looted cars and abandoned Russian armor lined its shoulders. In places, it was mined or littered with unexploded rockets, shells and bombs.

Armed men set up roadblocks and chased victims on motorcycles and trucks. The 370-kilometer journey from Kabul to Kandahar, assuming the trip was not delayed by robbery or breakdown, often took more than 12 hours.

The road is now paved, with two lanes, wide shoulders and bridges over gullies and streams. Convoys of pickup trucks, newly purchased vehicles for the police, roam its length. Most bombs and mines have been removed.

Although stretches of the road are now generally safe, several sections remain plagued by violence. Some attacks are Taliban guerrilla operations, several officers said. Others are the sort of crimes that have afflicted Afghan trails for centuries.

"You go back in history, and people made money here by hitting caravans," McAteer said. "Now they hit buses and jingle trucks."

The colonel said that within two or three years, the Afghan police might be competent enough to secure the road. Since last year, American financing for police equipment and training has sharply increased.

For now, Captain Matthew Fogarty, an intelligence officer, and Captain Matthew Hagerman, an officer in the operations section, described three threats.

The first, they said, are police officers themselves, who set up impromptu checkpoints and shake down passing drivers and their passengers. There are three legal toll points on Highway 1 in the battalion's area, they said. The police typically set up five to seven more each day - and pocket what they collect.

Afghan police officers and supervisors are scheduled to receive significant pay raises in January; Afghan government officials and their American mentors say they hope the raises will reduce the shakedowns.

The second threat, the officers said, comes from criminals, some of whom masquerade as police officers and order drivers to pull over. They sack vehicles and seize their goods.

"They pretend to be ANP, because they can get someone to stop with a Kalashnikov and half a uniform," Hagerman said, using the initials of the Afghan National Police.

The third threat comes from insurgents, who make checkpoints but also ambush patrols. As the insurgents steal, the officers said, they warn Afghan drivers not to carry cargo for NATO forces and warn passengers not to work on military bases.

Concentrating military resources in one district means others receive less attention. In the area around Salar, insurgents prey on traffic with near impunity.

On a recent patrol, a platoon from the 2nd Battalion's Company D entered Salar and found it silent. Every business was shuttered.

Three coalition patrols and a police convoy had been ambushed here in the past 10 days. The paratroopers watched nervously, expecting to be ambushed, too. They had seen gunmen run to a compound on the far side of a stream. The soldiers had not called in an airstrike, unsure whether civilians were inside.

Captain Aaron White, the company commander, wanted to search the compound. As he gathered about a dozen paratroopers, an Afghan police convoy stopped. The police commander greeted the Americans.

Approaching the compound would require the paratroopers to cross several hundred meters of open ground, exposed to anyone who might fire on them. White asked the police officers to join them.

The police commander refused and led the convoy away. White allowed himself a smile. He ordered the paratroopers into the field. They crossed the terraced cropland, descended into the stream bed and followed it to the compound.

An Afghan woman, who said her name was Shafiqa, appeared and unlocked the compound's metal door. The paratroopers rushed inside. No one was home.

Shafiqa insisted that the Taliban did not operate here. The paratroopers found a military-style parka hidden under leaves. White held it up. Shafiqa's story changed.

"All the time, Taliban come here!" she shouted. "We tell them, 'Go away from this area.' If they attack on anybody, you know, they will bombard our houses."

"This is the place," the captain said.

He thanked her and led the patrol back to Highway 1. Sergeant Ryan Gloyer, a squad leader, said Shafiqa's behavior was typical of the protection that insurgents received in a land where the police were weak. "It's kind of like a mobster mentality," he said. "They're afraid to give anybody up."