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On the Road to the Future
12/17/2003

There was something familiar about a New York Times article to which John Cole links:

The once-torturous but now silkily reconstructed road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar was formally completed today, just as President Bush had promised President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan more than a year ago that it would be.

"We are standing — literally — on the road to Afghanistan's future," Mr. Khalilzad said, speaking to a group of dignitaries gathered for an inauguration ceremony at kilometer 43 of the seductively smooth strip of gray. "It is a future of national unity. It is a future of prosperity. It is a future of peace."

The resurfacing of the road, which has reduced the travel time on its 300-mile distance from as much as 30 hours to 6 hours or less, has become the most visible sign of Afghanistan's postwar reconstruction, which many Afghans say has otherwise been frustratingly slow. It has given the Afghans who live nearby easier access to health care and markets and linked the Pashtun-dominated south with the north.

"Where have I heard something like this before?" I wondered. Then I remembered — "Aha!" — this classic 1993 Robert Fisk fawning piece about Osama bin Laden:

With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend. Chadored children danced in front of him, preachers acknowledged his wisdom. ''We have been waiting for this road through all the revolutions in Sudan,'' a sheikh said.

''We waited until we had given up on everybody - and then Osama Bin Laden came along.''

Outside Sudan, Mr Bin Ladin is not regarded with quite such high esteem. The Egyptian press claims he brought hundreds of former Arab fighters back to Sudan from Afghanistan, while the Western embassy circuit in Khartoum has suggested that some of the ''Afghans'' whom this Saudi entrepreneur flew to Sudan are now busy training for further jihad wars in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt. Mr Bin Laden is well aware of this. ''The rubbish of the media and the embassies,'' he calls it. ''I am a construction engineer and an agriculturalist. If I had training camps here in Sudan, I couldn't possibly do this job.''

And ''this job'' is certainly an ambitious one: a brand-new highway stretching all the way from Khartoum to Port Sudan, a distance of 1,200km (745miles) on the old road, now shortened to 800km by the new Bin Laden route that will turn the coastal run from the capital into a mere day's journey. Into a country that is despised by Saudi Arabia for its support of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf war almost as much as it is condemned by the United States, Mr Bin Laden has brought the very construction equipment that he used only five years ago to build the guerrilla trails of Afghanistan.

The Times piece inadvertently notes the central difference:

"President Bush personally committed himself to the success of this project and he is a man who keeps his promises," Mr. Khalilzad said, referring to Mr. Bush's determination that the highway be finished before the end of the year.

Of course, Times writer Amy Waldman thereafter makes a point of contradicting the spirit of Mr. Khalilzad's compliment with a technical matter. Wonder why she didn't note the President's proud walk and kind eyes... "every inch the tough-but-fair cowboy of Texan legend."

Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:56 PM EST