Trouble On A Vital Road In Afghanistan

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 before an American patrol arrived.

Insurgents prey on vehicles using Highway 1 near Salar. More Photos

The remains of a second truck, a tanker, sat on its wheel rims 100 yards to the north. To the south, another patrol was removing two other freshly burned tankers from the highway, clearing the lanes so traffic could 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 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 countrys main road, the route between Kabul and Kandahar, the countrys second largest city. It lies atop an ancient trade route that, in theory, could connect Central Asia and Afghanistan with ports in Pakistan, restoring Afghanistans 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 roads 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 governments 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 Lt. Col. Timothy J. McAteer, commanding officer of the Second 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 deserted 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 230-mile 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.

But 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, Colonel 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. Their improvement has become a priority.

For now, Capt. Matthew R. Fogarty, an intelligence officer, and Capt. Matthew T. 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 battalions 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 A.N.P., because they can get someone to stop with a Kalashnikov and half a uniform, Captain Hagerman said, using the initials of the Afghan National Police.

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