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Potential for a Mining Boom Splits Factions in Afghanistan
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY September 8, 2012
KALU VALLEY, Afghanistan - If there is a road to a happy ending in Afghanistan, much of the path may run underground: in the trillion-dollar reservoir of natural resources — oil, gold, iron ore, copper, lithium and other minerals — that has brought hopes of a more self-sufficient country, if only the wealth can be wrested from blood-soaked soil.
But the wealth has inspired darker dreams as well. Officials and industry experts say the potential resource boom seems increasingly imperiled by corruption, violence and intrigue, and has put the Afghan government’s vulnerabilities on display.
It all comes at what is already a critically uncertain time here, with the impending departure of NATO troops in 2014 and old regional and ethnic rivalries resurfacing, raising concerns that the mineral wealth could become the fuel for civil conflict.
Powerful regional warlords and militant leaders are jockeying to widen their turf to include areas with mineral wealth, and the Taliban have begun to make murderous incursions into territory where development is planned. In the capital, Kabul, factional maneuvering is in full swing, including disputes over lucrative side contracts awarded to relatives of President Hamid Karzai.
Further, a proposed mining law vital to attracting foreign investment is up in the air, with the delay threatening several projects. The cabinet rejected it this summer, saying it was too generous to Western commercial interests. But some Western officials fear other motives are at work, too, including an internal fight for spoils, and perhaps an effort by some neighboring countries to sway sympathetic officials to keep Indian and Chinese state mining companies out.
“If you were to pick a country that involves high risk in developing a new mining sector, Afghanistan is it,” said Eleanor Nichol, campaign leader at Global Witness, a group that tries to break the link between natural resources, corruption and conflict. “But the genie is out of the bottle.”
Already this summer, the China National Petroleum Corporation, in partnership with a company controlled by relatives of President Karzai, began pumping oil from the Amu Darya field in the north. An investment consortium arranged by JPMorgan Chase is mining gold. Another Chinese company is trying to develop a huge copper mine. Four copper and gold contracts are being tendered, and contracts for rare earth metals could be offered soon.
The Ministry of Mines has also requested bids for a richer oil concession in the Afghan-Tajik basin, and American officials are optimistic it could come online soon.
And in the shadow of the Black Mountain, here in the Kalu Valley in remote Bamian Province, villagers hope that Indian and Canadian mining operations can turn buried iron ore into new lives for struggling families, breaking a cycle of poverty in this high place cut off by snow for six months of the year.
When the digging begins, Abbas Ali, a 30-year-old farmer here, will have to give up the four-acre potato field his family has worked for generations. He is more than ready.
“Our life will change 180 degrees,” Mr. Ali said this summer, staring up with fervent brown eyes at the bowed wooden roof beams in the white-walled madrasa where he teaches for extra income. “We support any effort to make it happen quickly.”
That hope, and the prospect of more self-sufficiency as international aid ebbs, is driving Afghan officials like the minister of mines, Wahidullah Shahrani, as he tries to get more projects going. The World Bank estimates that if things go very well, mining and agriculture together could raise annual growth rates by 3 to 4 percentage points between now and 2025.
But Mr. Shahrani is concerned about striking the right balance between generating revenue for the Afghan government and drawing in international investors, saying that getting contracts wrong would jeopardize critical development timelines.
“This is all about the credibility of the country,” he said.
There are other concerns, too. Some officials are worried about a swath of small mines — for gemstones, marble, chromite and other resources — that are out of the state’s control and might be fueling the insurgency.
A recent Defense Department analysis said criminal mining syndicates were smuggling chromite over the border, paying protection money to the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani insurgent network.
In the border province of Khost, the director of mines, Laiq Muhammad, said more than half the chromite there had been extracted illegally and smuggled to Pakistan, with no benefit to Afghanistan. “Not even one afghani has been added to national income from chromite mining,” he said. Senior Pentagon officials say they are trying hard to bring the mines into the legitimate economy by finding international buyers for the chromite.
In Bamian, up on the mountain above Abbas Ali’s home, 12 new wooden and brick security huts march across the hillsides of the 230-square-mile concession area, a sign of intent — maybe — that the soil will soon be broken and the mine’s promise fulfilled.
But they are also a nod to the possibly more violent times ahead.
Bamian’s chief geologist Mohammad Amin, 27, was striding through the boulders scattered on the hillside. “If the Taliban are able to make it to this part of the country, this project will be halted and nobody will be able to work,” he said.
There are signs, in fact, that is happening in this part of Bamian, which until the past year had been considered relatively secure. Now, the road to Kabul is no longer safe for foreigners, and there has been a string of attacks on government officials and security forces.
Beyond the concerns about security, there is the matter of creating the mines themselves. The prospecting project here — named Hajigak, after one of the treeless mountain ridges — has long been marked by yellow stripes. They are Soviet survey ditches, testament to efforts decades ago to tap Bamian’s iron ore that never panned out.
Before mining can actually begin, there is a need for a power plant, a smelter, and a road to bring the ore down the pristine red-rock ravines of the Kalu Valley.
There are also plans for a major railroad — a first on a large scale for Afghanistan — to take the iron ore out, perhaps west to an Iranian port or to join up with a rail route promised by the Chinese from the Mes Aynak copper mine east to Pakistan or north to Turkmenistan.
The Mes Aynak mine, in Logar Province, is another trove of potential Afghan wealth awarded to the Chinese in 2007. It is already behind schedule, and no work has begun on a railroad yet. Mr. Shahrani is adamant mining will start in two years and blames the discovery of Buddhist ruins and artifacts, as well as Soviet-era mines that had to be cleared, for the delay.
But in a country where the future always seems to be put off, the delays may also reflect an unwillingness, say officials who work closely with the mining industry, by international investors to put in hundreds of millions of dollars they could lose if Afghanistan again descends into turmoil.
“Everyone is hesitant to plan beyond 2014,” said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They have dragged their feet. The government might change and you have built your new roads and new power plants. It might all be gone.”
Doubts about the government’s role in any resource boom loom large for the Afghan public, too, where there is deep skepticism that the weak state and notoriously kleptocratic ministries can build a functioning mining economy that will help ordinary people.
Some outsiders fear that the recent delay in the new mining law represented, in the messy world of Afghan politics, an attempt to discredit Mr. Shahrani and win control of the mining ministry, one of the government’s most lucrative power bases.
Already, there are examples of how resource riches can spark conflict.
At the Amu Darya oil field in June, President Karzai’s government accused a rival, the warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, of putting pressure on the Chinese oil company to make illegal payoffs. General Dostum’s party said he wanted the Chinese only to hire more local labor. And at Mes Aynak, where the government says nine villages were displaced, the mining project has caused tensions among locals contending for compensation for their land.
As the details of the Hajigak contract are negotiated, the people of Bamian are clear about what they want in return for opening their lands to mining: paved roads, a gymnasium, a conference hall, a technical college, and guaranteed work for locals among the 50,000 jobs some say the mine could generate. Hoping to avoid the frictions that have arisen at other sites, they have formed a 114-member commission to work on issues like compensation and jobs and provide a mechanism for airing grievances.
Some of the people of Bamian — most of whom are Hazaras, wearily familiar with years of ethnic oppression by those in power in Kabul — remain dubious that wealth will automatically come their way. But there is still hope in the valley of the Black Mountain, in Abbas Ali’s village.
At a store in the dusty bazaar, Shir Ali, 38, a gangly man who drives a minibus, says that with a job as a day laborer or security guard or driver, he could buy uniforms and textbooks to send all of his 12 children to school.
Sitting at the counter behind open sacks of rice and beans, the storekeeper, Daoud, 38, cracks his bronzed face with a smile, sharing the optimism but also the trepidation about whether at last his country can really make something of itself.
“If the mine doesn’t come, we will be like those people who live on treasure,” he said, “but they cannot use it.”
Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan; Habib Zahori from Bamian Province, Afghanistan; and an employee of The New York Times from Khost Province, Afghanistan.
Afghan VP raises security concerns post 2014
AFP 08/09/2012
KABUL - Afghanistan's first vice president on Saturday warned deteriorating security could jeopardise transparent elections in 2014 as Kabul prepares to take over from NATO troops.
"We have two big challenges in the next one and a half years -- first the withdrawal of foreign troops and the second test is the 2014 presidential elections," Mohammad Qasim Fahim told a ceremony marking 11 years since the killing of anti-Taliban commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud.
President Hamid Karzai, who has been the only elected head of state in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion brought down the Taliban, is due to stand down in 2014.
His re-election in 2009 was accompanied by widespread fraud and the international community sees the next vote as one of the last major hurdles before NATO combat troops withdraw at the end of 2014.
Fahim, one of Afghanistan's most powerful warlords and a former defence minister, reiterated a common Afghan request for more weapons for the Afghan security forces who are being trained by NATO to take over.
"If the Afghan nation backs the security forces and the coalition forces equip and arm Afghan forces necessarily it will be good. If they don't, definitely there will be security problems in Afghanistan after 2014," he said.
Fahim fought in the 1980s resistance to Soviet troops under Massoud and then became a military commander in the Northern Alliance that joined with US-led troops to oust the Taliban regime in 2001.
"If the security turns bad, I don't believe we will have transparent and nationwide elections so that all Afghan people could take part and cast their votes," he said.
"The neighbours of Afghanistan... will then influence the country and bring back the past misery," he said in reference to the CIA, Saudi and Pakistani-sponsored fight against the Soviets, civil war in the 1990s and the Taliban regime.
Fahim is a Tajik, the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan behind Karzai's Pashtun community, from which the bulk of the Taliban are also drawn.
Deadly Kabul Blast Linked to U.S.-Terror Designation
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE , ZIAULHAQ SULTANI and HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL September 8, 2012
KABUL - A suicide attacker set off a bomb Saturday near the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul, killing six people in what the Taliban said was a deliberate response to the U.S. designating an affiliated insurgent group as a terrorist organization.
Elsewhere in the capital, a gun battle erupted in an unusual outbreak of ethnic fighting, just as many Afghans commemorated the anniversary of the 2001 assassination of Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Massoud by al Qaeda suicide bombers posing as journalists. While Afghan officials said no one was killed in the shootings, local witnesses claimed several casualties.
Saturday's bomb detonated in the vicinity of Camp Eggers, a heavily fortified installation in the heart of the capital that is close to the U.S. embassy. The blast, which occurred around noon, rang through Kabul's diplomatic quarter.
At least six Afghan civilians were killed and four others injured in the explosion, according to Kabul police. Witnesses and police said several of the casualties were Afghan street children who made a living begging and selling trinkets to foreigners living and working in the area.
Kabul police said that the suicide bomber was a child himself, putting his age between 12 and 14. A coalition statement described him as a "teenaged youth." German Brig. Gen. Günter Katz, a coalition spokesman, said the choice of the bomber demonstrated the "despicable tactics" of the insurgency. "If these reports are true, by taking advantage of an impressionable child to carry out this attack, the insurgents display cowardice," he said.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, denied those accounts, saying the bomber was a 28-year-old man. "This is government propaganda to overshadow our achievements," he said. The attack, according to the Taliban, had targeted a Central Intelligence Agency facility.
Mr. Mujahid added that Saturday's blast was the Taliban's response to the Obama administration's move to designate the Haqqani network, an operationally autonomous insurgent group affiliated with the Taliban, as a terrorist organization. The Haqqani network has been blamed for several high-profile attacks in the capital, including an assault last year on the U.S. Embassy.
"In this war every action has a reaction, and this was an appropriate reaction to the Americans for blacklisting" the Haqqani network, he said.
The Taliban said in a statement that there is no such thing as the Haqqani network, saying that the group's leaders were an integral part of the Taliban high command. The statement described Jalaluddin Haqqani, the group's founder and leader, as a "member of the leadership council" of the Taliban and called him "a very close, loyal and trustworthy" subordinate of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the movement's one-eyed spiritual leader.
Meanwhile, a senior Haqqani network member told the Associated Press that a U.S. soldier held by Afghan militants, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, wouldn't be harmed despite the terrorist designation. However, the United States and NATO can expect stepped up attacks, he said.
Attacks such as Saturday's bombing, in the vicinity of the heavily guarded coalition headquarters and Western embassies inside Kabul's diplomatic zone, are relatively rare.
It occurred as supporters of Mr. Massoud, the commander slain in 2001, had traveled into Kabul from the Panjshir, a province north of the capital that was his stronghold. They drove through the Afghan capital in cars and pickup trucks decorated with posters of their deceased leader.
Witnesses said that the exchange of gunfire in western Kabul erupted following a dispute between the Panjshiris and the area's ethnic Hazara residents, who were on the opposing sides of the 1990s civil war in Kabul.
A traffic dispute appears to have sparked the conflict. Witnesses said the confrontation started after a caravan of vehicles with black flags of mourning passed through the largely Hazara neighborhood of Pol-e Sokhta. A shopkeeper in the area said the clash started when a Panjshiri man on a motorcycle struck a Hazara boy riding on a bicycle.
Gunfire continued for one hour afterward, witnesses said. According to a witness named Fawad, police detained two Panjshiri men and fired into the air to disperse a growing crowd. In response, hundreds of Hazaras gathered and burned down four police booths and two police pickup trucks.
A spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry said that a local "quarrel" had prompted the exchange of fire in western Kabul, and that police were in control of the situation. Police said there were no fatalities in the midday confrontation.
Local residents, however, said as many as seven civilians had been killed. Later on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Fawad said that a white Toyota Corolla car decorated with Massoud posters pulled up in the neighborhood and one of the men inside opened fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. He said two people were killed in the drive-by shooting, although his claim could not be immediately verified. Police had not confirmed any deaths late Saturday.
Blood was still visible on the streets of western Kabul by midafternoon Saturday, and the neighborhood had a heavy security presence, with Afghan military, police and special-forces units on the scene.
Two Killed, 15 Injured in Violent Clash in Kabul on Massoud Holiday
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 08 September 2012
At least two people including a policeman were killed and 15 other policemen were injured in heavy fighting in the Pul-e-Sukhta area in Kabul city's west on Saturday morning.
Clashes broke out between two groups when a convoy of Ahmad Shah Massoud supporters drove through the area, according to witnesses. The number of civilians injured have not been confirmed, but officials say "dozens" were hurt in the fighting.
The groups also began to clash with the police who attempted to secure the area, torching their checkpoints and also setting alight several motorbikes.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a special investigation team to look into the incident, according to a statement from the President's Office.
The injured were taken to a nearby hospital with the clash ending after several hours in the area, local officials said.
Afghan Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said earlier that more security forces were sent to secure the area and to "solve the problem". Video footage shows rows of pick-up police trucks with men in full combat gear waiting to head into the clash.
The chief of the Kabul police criminal investigation unit Mohammad Zahir told TOLOnews that police were working on identifying the groups to arrest them.
The convoy which apparently triggered the violence was held to commemorate the Massoud national holiday, marking 11 years since his death at the hands of suicide attackers.
Massoud is a figurehead for anti-Taliban groups because he fought against the militant regime until his death on September 9, 2001.
President Hamid Karzai declared him a national hero in 2002 and the anniversary of his death a national holiday. This year the holiday was moved to September 8.
It comes on the same day that a teenage suicide bomber detonated his explosives near Isaf headquarters in Kabul, killing as many as six others, mostly children.
11 Suicide Bombers Captured in Parwan
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 09 September 2012
At least 11 suicide bombers were captured by Afghan security forces in several parts of northern Parwan province on Saturday, local officials said.
The suicide bombers were captured in four Afghan security forces operation in Kohi Safi, Bagram, Jabul-Seraj, Sayed Khil areas and in Charakar the capital of the province with improvised explosive devices (IED), provincial spokeswoman Roshna Khalid told TOLOnews.
"The men wanted to detonate the explosives in several parts of the province to target the supporters gathering to mark the 11th anniversary of the death Ahmad Shah Massoud the national hero of Afghanistan," she said.
Khalid said there was no exact information about the nationality of the suicide bombers and police had started "investigating about them."
It comes as on the same day in Kabul, six people were killed and four more were wounded, mostly children, when a teenage suicide bomber tried to attack the Isaf base in the Shashdarak area yesterday.
Five children and a 50-year-old Afghan man were killed, officials confirmed.
Afghan Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqqi blamed the attack on the militant Haqqani network.
However, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
Saturday was a national holiday to mark the anniversary of National Hero of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud.
He was killed by two suicide attackers in northern Takhar province on September 9, 2001.
Farah Blasts Kill 1, Injure 12 Near Governor Compound
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 09 September 2012
At least one civilian was killed when three separate bombs exploded near the governor's compound of western Farah province on Sunday, local officials said.
Twelve others civilians were injured in the blasts and taken to a nearby hospital, provincial spokesman Abdul Rahman Zhowandoon told TOLOnews.
The explosions happened about 11:30AM – the first one in an area near the compound, followed by "twin blasts", one of which was placed in a motorbike, Zhowandoon said.
More security forces have already arrived in the area and security has been tightened, he said.
"No government employees were hurt in the blasts," he added.
Of the reason for the explosions, Zhowandoon said: "It was insurgents wanting to target the government building."
No group including the Taliban has claimed responsibility for the blasts.
Meanwhile, witnesses said that as many as 12 people were injured in the blasts and were taken to hospital.
Insurgents frequently place improvised explosive devices (IED) in areas close to government buildings to target Afghan local officials, but many of the victims are civilians.
Kabul-Kandahar highway is a symbol of what's gone wrong in Afghanistan
It was built at massive expense as a symbol of success for the new Afghanistan, but instead the Kabul-Kandahar road has become a highway of death that shows what has gone wrong.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 09 Sep 2012
It is supposed to be a symbol of progress in the new Afghanistan, but as Nato prepares to withdraw its combat troops over the next two years the main road between the country's two largest cities has become instead a symbol of what has gone wrong.
Rather than providing a secure transport link between the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the country's second city, Kandahar, Highway One has become a highway of death.
Opened to great fanfare in 2003, it was hailed as a key element in rebuilding the economic infrastructure of the war-shattered nation. But today its once-pristine asphalt has become as scarred as the country's hopes for peace - a bomb-cratered, 300-mile long shooting gallery littered with the wrecks of vehicles attacked by Taliban insurgents.
Thousands of hard-up Afghans still have no choice but to brave its passage every day by car and bus, but for westerners - and anyone else who can afford to avoid it by paying out for a commercial flight ticket - the road is effectively a no-go zone. As well as the threat of shootings, hold-ups and roadside bombs, there is the risk of kidnap: anyone with money, and especially a foreigner, is a tempting target.
For that reason I had never expected to travel Highway One myself - until The Sunday Telegraph was invited to join an armed government convoy heading down the highway to Ghazni province, 100 miles away.
The arrangements were made by an Afghan government minister keen for reporters to see how locals in the area had turned against the Taliban. Photographer Jason Howe and I were escorted by heavily-armed Afghan special forces commandos as we prepared to travel through insurgent country in a large white 4x4 that obviously belonged to the disliked Kabul government.
As our convoy formed up on the south western outskirts of Kabul, it was clear that I was not the only one feeling apprehensive.
"I am going to be truthful: we don't know what's going to happen and there are some very dangerous stretches of road," said Idris, the driver of the Toyota Land Cruiser which was to carry me.
Idris, a curly-haired man in his thirties, said he had personally been attacked five times on the road, including one incident where a guard in his car had been shot dead.
It was not the kind of reassurance I had hoped for. As we waited for our convoy to assemble, he adjusted a pistol in his shoulder holster and cocked the AK-47 rifle nestling by his right knee in the foot well. "If we get attacked though, we'll fight back," he said.
Once complete, our convoy consisted of two Land Cruisers and six pick-up trucks full of commandoes, armed with an assortment of machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
With drivers scanning the roadsides and commandos watching the hills, we set off. The road snaking through Wardak, Ghazni and Zabul provinces is a critical artery binding the capital to the south of the country. Linking the seat of government with Kandahar - a city long regarded as the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban movement - it passes through villages, mountains and plains where President Hamid Karzai's administration struggles to exert influence.
It is also the route taken by vast caravans of Afghan civilian supply lorries ferrying food, fuel and equipment to Nato and Afghan military bases across the south.
The road's importance has not been lost on the Taliban, and it has been under relentless attack for at least five years. Statistics for violence on the road are sobering. By the middle of August, there had been 190 bomb attacks along the road in 2012 alone. On top of that, there had been another 284 shooting attacks, or nearly one for every mile of road.
No proper figures for casualties are available, but the best estimate from police officials is that several dozen people have been killed or wounded travelling the highway this year, and hundreds over the past few years.
Our convoy did not have to venture far from Kabul before signs of this bitter struggle were all too clear.
As the road passes through picturesque villages and farmland, it is lined by hundreds of filled craters left by years of roadside bombs, many of them detonated by remote control.
Some are several yards across, and at times they are so close together the traffic must slalom from one side of the road to the other.
American soldiers say they have uncovered devices made of 250lbs of home-made explosive - more than enough to obliterate our vehicles and even flip the hulking armoured trucks used by US troops.
The blast craters have created a cottage industry of road menders who fill them with rubble. Unfortunately, these rubble-filled craters then become prime spots to plant more bombs.
Idris' answer to that threat was speed. Each time a patch of rubble loomed, he floored the accelerator and we held our breath as we bumped over it, or screeched around its rim - at one point nearly pitching my photographer colleague from the back of his pickup truck.
"You have to get across it fast if there's a bomb," Idris explained. "Before the trigger man has time to press the button."
At one point we had to leave the road entirely to skirt an American military convoy which was trying to salvage a transporter trailer mangled by a blast.
Yet the road is chaotically far from deserted. Minibuses, saloon cars and coaches all jostle for space with the convoys of fuel tankers and container lorries carrying military supplies.
To try to reduce the risk of attack, many vehciles make the trip on special "convoy days", when the road is flooded with Afghan security guards to try to keep Taliban at bay while trucks pass.
Speeding up and down while armed to the teeth, the wild-looking guards are fearsome, but cannot completely prevent the onslaught of attacks.
As the road passed through its most dangerous stretch, south of the town of Sydabad, the carcasses of burnt-out tankers lined the sides of the road and twice blocked it.
This is Taliban heartland: an area where, try as they may, Nato forces have been unable to dislodge the insurgents who inhabit many of the towns and villages near to - and in some cases along - the road.
Scorched patches of asphalt showed where other lorries had been incinerated. The commandoes became visibly more tense, peering through their gun sights.
It is also this area that most Afghan travellers fear the most. For them, the trip has the added risk of Taliban checkpoints where traffic is halted and passengers are scrutinised for links to the government, or foreign organisations. A scrap of paper from a government document, or a suspicious number on a mobile phone, may be all that is required to merit a summary roadside execution, according to those who travel the route regularly.
Passengers claim that frequently the insurgents appear to have been tipped off about who is heading their way, probably by spies in Kabul's bus stations.
The risks meant we were unable to stop and talk to our fellow travellers. But days earlier, I had heard hair-raising tales from the bus drivers who ply the route each day from Kabul's Kandahar bus station.
Speaking outside his office, Hakimullah Khan, told me during his own eight-year driving career he has been stopped 20 times by Taliban checkpoints that spring up in the middle of the night.
Most recently, in April, the first sign of trouble he saw was when his headlights fixed on the insurgents' gun barrels, and by then it was too late to do anything. He had no choice but to bring his creaking bus to a halt before the half dozen gunmen, as they raised their assault rifles level with his windscreen.
On this occasion, after a cursory search, he and his passengers were allowed on their way - but as Mr Khan knows all too well, there is always a next time. "The road is very dangerous," he said. "But it is my job, what can I do?"
Thankfully our own trip passed off without any attack. But the scenes we saw along Highway One were a terrifying glimpse of the gauntlet run daily by ordinary Afghans. They show why the road remains a major headache for coalition forces as they try to forge an exit strategy - and are also a glaring sign of the weakness of Mr Karzai's government.
The counterinsurgency doctrine espoused by Nato commanders prizes freedom of movement for the local populace, yet after 10 years of international military help, the country's main artery remains too perilous for many to use. And soon its security will be entirely in Afghan army hands.
"We have to secure that road before we leave," one Nato general in Kabul lamented earlier this year. From what I saw during the journey along Highway One, they still have a long way to go.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY September 8, 2012
KALU VALLEY, Afghanistan - If there is a road to a happy ending in Afghanistan, much of the path may run underground: in the trillion-dollar reservoir of natural resources — oil, gold, iron ore, copper, lithium and other minerals — that has brought hopes of a more self-sufficient country, if only the wealth can be wrested from blood-soaked soil.
But the wealth has inspired darker dreams as well. Officials and industry experts say the potential resource boom seems increasingly imperiled by corruption, violence and intrigue, and has put the Afghan government’s vulnerabilities on display.
It all comes at what is already a critically uncertain time here, with the impending departure of NATO troops in 2014 and old regional and ethnic rivalries resurfacing, raising concerns that the mineral wealth could become the fuel for civil conflict.
Powerful regional warlords and militant leaders are jockeying to widen their turf to include areas with mineral wealth, and the Taliban have begun to make murderous incursions into territory where development is planned. In the capital, Kabul, factional maneuvering is in full swing, including disputes over lucrative side contracts awarded to relatives of President Hamid Karzai.
Further, a proposed mining law vital to attracting foreign investment is up in the air, with the delay threatening several projects. The cabinet rejected it this summer, saying it was too generous to Western commercial interests. But some Western officials fear other motives are at work, too, including an internal fight for spoils, and perhaps an effort by some neighboring countries to sway sympathetic officials to keep Indian and Chinese state mining companies out.
“If you were to pick a country that involves high risk in developing a new mining sector, Afghanistan is it,” said Eleanor Nichol, campaign leader at Global Witness, a group that tries to break the link between natural resources, corruption and conflict. “But the genie is out of the bottle.”
Already this summer, the China National Petroleum Corporation, in partnership with a company controlled by relatives of President Karzai, began pumping oil from the Amu Darya field in the north. An investment consortium arranged by JPMorgan Chase is mining gold. Another Chinese company is trying to develop a huge copper mine. Four copper and gold contracts are being tendered, and contracts for rare earth metals could be offered soon.
The Ministry of Mines has also requested bids for a richer oil concession in the Afghan-Tajik basin, and American officials are optimistic it could come online soon.
And in the shadow of the Black Mountain, here in the Kalu Valley in remote Bamian Province, villagers hope that Indian and Canadian mining operations can turn buried iron ore into new lives for struggling families, breaking a cycle of poverty in this high place cut off by snow for six months of the year.
When the digging begins, Abbas Ali, a 30-year-old farmer here, will have to give up the four-acre potato field his family has worked for generations. He is more than ready.
“Our life will change 180 degrees,” Mr. Ali said this summer, staring up with fervent brown eyes at the bowed wooden roof beams in the white-walled madrasa where he teaches for extra income. “We support any effort to make it happen quickly.”
That hope, and the prospect of more self-sufficiency as international aid ebbs, is driving Afghan officials like the minister of mines, Wahidullah Shahrani, as he tries to get more projects going. The World Bank estimates that if things go very well, mining and agriculture together could raise annual growth rates by 3 to 4 percentage points between now and 2025.
But Mr. Shahrani is concerned about striking the right balance between generating revenue for the Afghan government and drawing in international investors, saying that getting contracts wrong would jeopardize critical development timelines.
“This is all about the credibility of the country,” he said.
There are other concerns, too. Some officials are worried about a swath of small mines — for gemstones, marble, chromite and other resources — that are out of the state’s control and might be fueling the insurgency.
A recent Defense Department analysis said criminal mining syndicates were smuggling chromite over the border, paying protection money to the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani insurgent network.
In the border province of Khost, the director of mines, Laiq Muhammad, said more than half the chromite there had been extracted illegally and smuggled to Pakistan, with no benefit to Afghanistan. “Not even one afghani has been added to national income from chromite mining,” he said. Senior Pentagon officials say they are trying hard to bring the mines into the legitimate economy by finding international buyers for the chromite.
In Bamian, up on the mountain above Abbas Ali’s home, 12 new wooden and brick security huts march across the hillsides of the 230-square-mile concession area, a sign of intent — maybe — that the soil will soon be broken and the mine’s promise fulfilled.
But they are also a nod to the possibly more violent times ahead.
Bamian’s chief geologist Mohammad Amin, 27, was striding through the boulders scattered on the hillside. “If the Taliban are able to make it to this part of the country, this project will be halted and nobody will be able to work,” he said.
There are signs, in fact, that is happening in this part of Bamian, which until the past year had been considered relatively secure. Now, the road to Kabul is no longer safe for foreigners, and there has been a string of attacks on government officials and security forces.
Beyond the concerns about security, there is the matter of creating the mines themselves. The prospecting project here — named Hajigak, after one of the treeless mountain ridges — has long been marked by yellow stripes. They are Soviet survey ditches, testament to efforts decades ago to tap Bamian’s iron ore that never panned out.
Before mining can actually begin, there is a need for a power plant, a smelter, and a road to bring the ore down the pristine red-rock ravines of the Kalu Valley.
There are also plans for a major railroad — a first on a large scale for Afghanistan — to take the iron ore out, perhaps west to an Iranian port or to join up with a rail route promised by the Chinese from the Mes Aynak copper mine east to Pakistan or north to Turkmenistan.
The Mes Aynak mine, in Logar Province, is another trove of potential Afghan wealth awarded to the Chinese in 2007. It is already behind schedule, and no work has begun on a railroad yet. Mr. Shahrani is adamant mining will start in two years and blames the discovery of Buddhist ruins and artifacts, as well as Soviet-era mines that had to be cleared, for the delay.
But in a country where the future always seems to be put off, the delays may also reflect an unwillingness, say officials who work closely with the mining industry, by international investors to put in hundreds of millions of dollars they could lose if Afghanistan again descends into turmoil.
“Everyone is hesitant to plan beyond 2014,” said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They have dragged their feet. The government might change and you have built your new roads and new power plants. It might all be gone.”
Doubts about the government’s role in any resource boom loom large for the Afghan public, too, where there is deep skepticism that the weak state and notoriously kleptocratic ministries can build a functioning mining economy that will help ordinary people.
Some outsiders fear that the recent delay in the new mining law represented, in the messy world of Afghan politics, an attempt to discredit Mr. Shahrani and win control of the mining ministry, one of the government’s most lucrative power bases.
Already, there are examples of how resource riches can spark conflict.
At the Amu Darya oil field in June, President Karzai’s government accused a rival, the warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, of putting pressure on the Chinese oil company to make illegal payoffs. General Dostum’s party said he wanted the Chinese only to hire more local labor. And at Mes Aynak, where the government says nine villages were displaced, the mining project has caused tensions among locals contending for compensation for their land.
As the details of the Hajigak contract are negotiated, the people of Bamian are clear about what they want in return for opening their lands to mining: paved roads, a gymnasium, a conference hall, a technical college, and guaranteed work for locals among the 50,000 jobs some say the mine could generate. Hoping to avoid the frictions that have arisen at other sites, they have formed a 114-member commission to work on issues like compensation and jobs and provide a mechanism for airing grievances.
Some of the people of Bamian — most of whom are Hazaras, wearily familiar with years of ethnic oppression by those in power in Kabul — remain dubious that wealth will automatically come their way. But there is still hope in the valley of the Black Mountain, in Abbas Ali’s village.
At a store in the dusty bazaar, Shir Ali, 38, a gangly man who drives a minibus, says that with a job as a day laborer or security guard or driver, he could buy uniforms and textbooks to send all of his 12 children to school.
Sitting at the counter behind open sacks of rice and beans, the storekeeper, Daoud, 38, cracks his bronzed face with a smile, sharing the optimism but also the trepidation about whether at last his country can really make something of itself.
“If the mine doesn’t come, we will be like those people who live on treasure,” he said, “but they cannot use it.”
Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan; Habib Zahori from Bamian Province, Afghanistan; and an employee of The New York Times from Khost Province, Afghanistan.
Afghan VP raises security concerns post 2014
AFP 08/09/2012
KABUL - Afghanistan's first vice president on Saturday warned deteriorating security could jeopardise transparent elections in 2014 as Kabul prepares to take over from NATO troops.
"We have two big challenges in the next one and a half years -- first the withdrawal of foreign troops and the second test is the 2014 presidential elections," Mohammad Qasim Fahim told a ceremony marking 11 years since the killing of anti-Taliban commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud.
President Hamid Karzai, who has been the only elected head of state in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion brought down the Taliban, is due to stand down in 2014.
His re-election in 2009 was accompanied by widespread fraud and the international community sees the next vote as one of the last major hurdles before NATO combat troops withdraw at the end of 2014.
Fahim, one of Afghanistan's most powerful warlords and a former defence minister, reiterated a common Afghan request for more weapons for the Afghan security forces who are being trained by NATO to take over.
"If the Afghan nation backs the security forces and the coalition forces equip and arm Afghan forces necessarily it will be good. If they don't, definitely there will be security problems in Afghanistan after 2014," he said.
Fahim fought in the 1980s resistance to Soviet troops under Massoud and then became a military commander in the Northern Alliance that joined with US-led troops to oust the Taliban regime in 2001.
"If the security turns bad, I don't believe we will have transparent and nationwide elections so that all Afghan people could take part and cast their votes," he said.
"The neighbours of Afghanistan... will then influence the country and bring back the past misery," he said in reference to the CIA, Saudi and Pakistani-sponsored fight against the Soviets, civil war in the 1990s and the Taliban regime.
Fahim is a Tajik, the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan behind Karzai's Pashtun community, from which the bulk of the Taliban are also drawn.
Deadly Kabul Blast Linked to U.S.-Terror Designation
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE , ZIAULHAQ SULTANI and HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL September 8, 2012
KABUL - A suicide attacker set off a bomb Saturday near the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul, killing six people in what the Taliban said was a deliberate response to the U.S. designating an affiliated insurgent group as a terrorist organization.
Elsewhere in the capital, a gun battle erupted in an unusual outbreak of ethnic fighting, just as many Afghans commemorated the anniversary of the 2001 assassination of Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Massoud by al Qaeda suicide bombers posing as journalists. While Afghan officials said no one was killed in the shootings, local witnesses claimed several casualties.
Saturday's bomb detonated in the vicinity of Camp Eggers, a heavily fortified installation in the heart of the capital that is close to the U.S. embassy. The blast, which occurred around noon, rang through Kabul's diplomatic quarter.
At least six Afghan civilians were killed and four others injured in the explosion, according to Kabul police. Witnesses and police said several of the casualties were Afghan street children who made a living begging and selling trinkets to foreigners living and working in the area.
Kabul police said that the suicide bomber was a child himself, putting his age between 12 and 14. A coalition statement described him as a "teenaged youth." German Brig. Gen. Günter Katz, a coalition spokesman, said the choice of the bomber demonstrated the "despicable tactics" of the insurgency. "If these reports are true, by taking advantage of an impressionable child to carry out this attack, the insurgents display cowardice," he said.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, denied those accounts, saying the bomber was a 28-year-old man. "This is government propaganda to overshadow our achievements," he said. The attack, according to the Taliban, had targeted a Central Intelligence Agency facility.
Mr. Mujahid added that Saturday's blast was the Taliban's response to the Obama administration's move to designate the Haqqani network, an operationally autonomous insurgent group affiliated with the Taliban, as a terrorist organization. The Haqqani network has been blamed for several high-profile attacks in the capital, including an assault last year on the U.S. Embassy.
"In this war every action has a reaction, and this was an appropriate reaction to the Americans for blacklisting" the Haqqani network, he said.
The Taliban said in a statement that there is no such thing as the Haqqani network, saying that the group's leaders were an integral part of the Taliban high command. The statement described Jalaluddin Haqqani, the group's founder and leader, as a "member of the leadership council" of the Taliban and called him "a very close, loyal and trustworthy" subordinate of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the movement's one-eyed spiritual leader.
Meanwhile, a senior Haqqani network member told the Associated Press that a U.S. soldier held by Afghan militants, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, wouldn't be harmed despite the terrorist designation. However, the United States and NATO can expect stepped up attacks, he said.
Attacks such as Saturday's bombing, in the vicinity of the heavily guarded coalition headquarters and Western embassies inside Kabul's diplomatic zone, are relatively rare.
It occurred as supporters of Mr. Massoud, the commander slain in 2001, had traveled into Kabul from the Panjshir, a province north of the capital that was his stronghold. They drove through the Afghan capital in cars and pickup trucks decorated with posters of their deceased leader.
Witnesses said that the exchange of gunfire in western Kabul erupted following a dispute between the Panjshiris and the area's ethnic Hazara residents, who were on the opposing sides of the 1990s civil war in Kabul.
A traffic dispute appears to have sparked the conflict. Witnesses said the confrontation started after a caravan of vehicles with black flags of mourning passed through the largely Hazara neighborhood of Pol-e Sokhta. A shopkeeper in the area said the clash started when a Panjshiri man on a motorcycle struck a Hazara boy riding on a bicycle.
Gunfire continued for one hour afterward, witnesses said. According to a witness named Fawad, police detained two Panjshiri men and fired into the air to disperse a growing crowd. In response, hundreds of Hazaras gathered and burned down four police booths and two police pickup trucks.
A spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry said that a local "quarrel" had prompted the exchange of fire in western Kabul, and that police were in control of the situation. Police said there were no fatalities in the midday confrontation.
Local residents, however, said as many as seven civilians had been killed. Later on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Fawad said that a white Toyota Corolla car decorated with Massoud posters pulled up in the neighborhood and one of the men inside opened fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. He said two people were killed in the drive-by shooting, although his claim could not be immediately verified. Police had not confirmed any deaths late Saturday.
Blood was still visible on the streets of western Kabul by midafternoon Saturday, and the neighborhood had a heavy security presence, with Afghan military, police and special-forces units on the scene.
Two Killed, 15 Injured in Violent Clash in Kabul on Massoud Holiday
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 08 September 2012
At least two people including a policeman were killed and 15 other policemen were injured in heavy fighting in the Pul-e-Sukhta area in Kabul city's west on Saturday morning.
Clashes broke out between two groups when a convoy of Ahmad Shah Massoud supporters drove through the area, according to witnesses. The number of civilians injured have not been confirmed, but officials say "dozens" were hurt in the fighting.
The groups also began to clash with the police who attempted to secure the area, torching their checkpoints and also setting alight several motorbikes.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a special investigation team to look into the incident, according to a statement from the President's Office.
The injured were taken to a nearby hospital with the clash ending after several hours in the area, local officials said.
Afghan Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said earlier that more security forces were sent to secure the area and to "solve the problem". Video footage shows rows of pick-up police trucks with men in full combat gear waiting to head into the clash.
The chief of the Kabul police criminal investigation unit Mohammad Zahir told TOLOnews that police were working on identifying the groups to arrest them.
The convoy which apparently triggered the violence was held to commemorate the Massoud national holiday, marking 11 years since his death at the hands of suicide attackers.
Massoud is a figurehead for anti-Taliban groups because he fought against the militant regime until his death on September 9, 2001.
President Hamid Karzai declared him a national hero in 2002 and the anniversary of his death a national holiday. This year the holiday was moved to September 8.
It comes on the same day that a teenage suicide bomber detonated his explosives near Isaf headquarters in Kabul, killing as many as six others, mostly children.
11 Suicide Bombers Captured in Parwan
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 09 September 2012
At least 11 suicide bombers were captured by Afghan security forces in several parts of northern Parwan province on Saturday, local officials said.
The suicide bombers were captured in four Afghan security forces operation in Kohi Safi, Bagram, Jabul-Seraj, Sayed Khil areas and in Charakar the capital of the province with improvised explosive devices (IED), provincial spokeswoman Roshna Khalid told TOLOnews.
"The men wanted to detonate the explosives in several parts of the province to target the supporters gathering to mark the 11th anniversary of the death Ahmad Shah Massoud the national hero of Afghanistan," she said.
Khalid said there was no exact information about the nationality of the suicide bombers and police had started "investigating about them."
It comes as on the same day in Kabul, six people were killed and four more were wounded, mostly children, when a teenage suicide bomber tried to attack the Isaf base in the Shashdarak area yesterday.
Five children and a 50-year-old Afghan man were killed, officials confirmed.
Afghan Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqqi blamed the attack on the militant Haqqani network.
However, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
Saturday was a national holiday to mark the anniversary of National Hero of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud.
He was killed by two suicide attackers in northern Takhar province on September 9, 2001.
Farah Blasts Kill 1, Injure 12 Near Governor Compound
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 09 September 2012
At least one civilian was killed when three separate bombs exploded near the governor's compound of western Farah province on Sunday, local officials said.
Twelve others civilians were injured in the blasts and taken to a nearby hospital, provincial spokesman Abdul Rahman Zhowandoon told TOLOnews.
The explosions happened about 11:30AM – the first one in an area near the compound, followed by "twin blasts", one of which was placed in a motorbike, Zhowandoon said.
More security forces have already arrived in the area and security has been tightened, he said.
"No government employees were hurt in the blasts," he added.
Of the reason for the explosions, Zhowandoon said: "It was insurgents wanting to target the government building."
No group including the Taliban has claimed responsibility for the blasts.
Meanwhile, witnesses said that as many as 12 people were injured in the blasts and were taken to hospital.
Insurgents frequently place improvised explosive devices (IED) in areas close to government buildings to target Afghan local officials, but many of the victims are civilians.
Kabul-Kandahar highway is a symbol of what's gone wrong in Afghanistan
It was built at massive expense as a symbol of success for the new Afghanistan, but instead the Kabul-Kandahar road has become a highway of death that shows what has gone wrong.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 09 Sep 2012
It is supposed to be a symbol of progress in the new Afghanistan, but as Nato prepares to withdraw its combat troops over the next two years the main road between the country's two largest cities has become instead a symbol of what has gone wrong.
Rather than providing a secure transport link between the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the country's second city, Kandahar, Highway One has become a highway of death.
Opened to great fanfare in 2003, it was hailed as a key element in rebuilding the economic infrastructure of the war-shattered nation. But today its once-pristine asphalt has become as scarred as the country's hopes for peace - a bomb-cratered, 300-mile long shooting gallery littered with the wrecks of vehicles attacked by Taliban insurgents.
Thousands of hard-up Afghans still have no choice but to brave its passage every day by car and bus, but for westerners - and anyone else who can afford to avoid it by paying out for a commercial flight ticket - the road is effectively a no-go zone. As well as the threat of shootings, hold-ups and roadside bombs, there is the risk of kidnap: anyone with money, and especially a foreigner, is a tempting target.
For that reason I had never expected to travel Highway One myself - until The Sunday Telegraph was invited to join an armed government convoy heading down the highway to Ghazni province, 100 miles away.
The arrangements were made by an Afghan government minister keen for reporters to see how locals in the area had turned against the Taliban. Photographer Jason Howe and I were escorted by heavily-armed Afghan special forces commandos as we prepared to travel through insurgent country in a large white 4x4 that obviously belonged to the disliked Kabul government.
As our convoy formed up on the south western outskirts of Kabul, it was clear that I was not the only one feeling apprehensive.
"I am going to be truthful: we don't know what's going to happen and there are some very dangerous stretches of road," said Idris, the driver of the Toyota Land Cruiser which was to carry me.
Idris, a curly-haired man in his thirties, said he had personally been attacked five times on the road, including one incident where a guard in his car had been shot dead.
It was not the kind of reassurance I had hoped for. As we waited for our convoy to assemble, he adjusted a pistol in his shoulder holster and cocked the AK-47 rifle nestling by his right knee in the foot well. "If we get attacked though, we'll fight back," he said.
Once complete, our convoy consisted of two Land Cruisers and six pick-up trucks full of commandoes, armed with an assortment of machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
With drivers scanning the roadsides and commandos watching the hills, we set off. The road snaking through Wardak, Ghazni and Zabul provinces is a critical artery binding the capital to the south of the country. Linking the seat of government with Kandahar - a city long regarded as the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban movement - it passes through villages, mountains and plains where President Hamid Karzai's administration struggles to exert influence.
It is also the route taken by vast caravans of Afghan civilian supply lorries ferrying food, fuel and equipment to Nato and Afghan military bases across the south.
The road's importance has not been lost on the Taliban, and it has been under relentless attack for at least five years. Statistics for violence on the road are sobering. By the middle of August, there had been 190 bomb attacks along the road in 2012 alone. On top of that, there had been another 284 shooting attacks, or nearly one for every mile of road.
No proper figures for casualties are available, but the best estimate from police officials is that several dozen people have been killed or wounded travelling the highway this year, and hundreds over the past few years.
Our convoy did not have to venture far from Kabul before signs of this bitter struggle were all too clear.
As the road passes through picturesque villages and farmland, it is lined by hundreds of filled craters left by years of roadside bombs, many of them detonated by remote control.
Some are several yards across, and at times they are so close together the traffic must slalom from one side of the road to the other.
American soldiers say they have uncovered devices made of 250lbs of home-made explosive - more than enough to obliterate our vehicles and even flip the hulking armoured trucks used by US troops.
The blast craters have created a cottage industry of road menders who fill them with rubble. Unfortunately, these rubble-filled craters then become prime spots to plant more bombs.
Idris' answer to that threat was speed. Each time a patch of rubble loomed, he floored the accelerator and we held our breath as we bumped over it, or screeched around its rim - at one point nearly pitching my photographer colleague from the back of his pickup truck.
"You have to get across it fast if there's a bomb," Idris explained. "Before the trigger man has time to press the button."
At one point we had to leave the road entirely to skirt an American military convoy which was trying to salvage a transporter trailer mangled by a blast.
Yet the road is chaotically far from deserted. Minibuses, saloon cars and coaches all jostle for space with the convoys of fuel tankers and container lorries carrying military supplies.
To try to reduce the risk of attack, many vehciles make the trip on special "convoy days", when the road is flooded with Afghan security guards to try to keep Taliban at bay while trucks pass.
Speeding up and down while armed to the teeth, the wild-looking guards are fearsome, but cannot completely prevent the onslaught of attacks.
As the road passed through its most dangerous stretch, south of the town of Sydabad, the carcasses of burnt-out tankers lined the sides of the road and twice blocked it.
This is Taliban heartland: an area where, try as they may, Nato forces have been unable to dislodge the insurgents who inhabit many of the towns and villages near to - and in some cases along - the road.
Scorched patches of asphalt showed where other lorries had been incinerated. The commandoes became visibly more tense, peering through their gun sights.
It is also this area that most Afghan travellers fear the most. For them, the trip has the added risk of Taliban checkpoints where traffic is halted and passengers are scrutinised for links to the government, or foreign organisations. A scrap of paper from a government document, or a suspicious number on a mobile phone, may be all that is required to merit a summary roadside execution, according to those who travel the route regularly.
Passengers claim that frequently the insurgents appear to have been tipped off about who is heading their way, probably by spies in Kabul's bus stations.
The risks meant we were unable to stop and talk to our fellow travellers. But days earlier, I had heard hair-raising tales from the bus drivers who ply the route each day from Kabul's Kandahar bus station.
Speaking outside his office, Hakimullah Khan, told me during his own eight-year driving career he has been stopped 20 times by Taliban checkpoints that spring up in the middle of the night.
Most recently, in April, the first sign of trouble he saw was when his headlights fixed on the insurgents' gun barrels, and by then it was too late to do anything. He had no choice but to bring his creaking bus to a halt before the half dozen gunmen, as they raised their assault rifles level with his windscreen.
On this occasion, after a cursory search, he and his passengers were allowed on their way - but as Mr Khan knows all too well, there is always a next time. "The road is very dangerous," he said. "But it is my job, what can I do?"
Thankfully our own trip passed off without any attack. But the scenes we saw along Highway One were a terrifying glimpse of the gauntlet run daily by ordinary Afghans. They show why the road remains a major headache for coalition forces as they try to forge an exit strategy - and are also a glaring sign of the weakness of Mr Karzai's government.
The counterinsurgency doctrine espoused by Nato commanders prizes freedom of movement for the local populace, yet after 10 years of international military help, the country's main artery remains too perilous for many to use. And soon its security will be entirely in Afghan army hands.
"We have to secure that road before we leave," one Nato general in Kabul lamented earlier this year. From what I saw during the journey along Highway One, they still have a long way to go.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com