Afghanistan’s Deadliest Highway Comes Back to Life

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Yaqoob Akbary Photographs by David Guttenfelder March 15, 2022

Afghanistan has been mostly at peace since the Taliban took over seven months ago.

But a crippling economic and humanitarian crisis underlies almost every facet of life.

We traveled the 300-mile road from Kabul to Kandahar, the country’s two largest cities, to see how things have changed.

For years, this trip was perilous. Gunfire, roadside bombs, crime and extortion were rampant. Countless people have been killed.

But not anymore.

The trip begins with a Taliban checkpoint just outside of Kabul, where the road splits in neighboring Wardak Province.

Fighters seized this outpost right before Kabul fell in a gun battle. Now they check ID cards and registrations.

Remnants of abandoned outposts sit among orchards, streams and potato fields. Wahdat, 12, peels an old barrier apart to make a chicken coop. “We are hungry,” he says. His family’s farm was hit hard by last year's drought.

Approaching Ghazni, the mountains recede as the land between widens. Before the U.S. spent millions to pave the road, this drive took nearly 20 hours. So Anar Gul, 70, built a hotel for travelers. Now, he is building shops. But “things have never been this expensive.”

There are sounds of passing cars. Young men laughing and playing volleyball near the highway. Months ago, this would have been almost unheard of. There was so much violence here.

As we arrive in Ghazni’s capital, the old city is a din of people buying supplies for winter. With U.S. sanctions, banks practically frozen and border closures, prices for items like cooking oil have skyrocketed. Many just don’t have the cash to buy enough food for their family.

With Ghazni behind and Kandahar approaching, the road soon turns back to its gnarled self. Its reconstruction was the pinnacle of U.S. nation-building efforts, only to be destroyed and worn down afterward.

One construction company has been trying to repave parts of the highway for years. Vehicles veer into opposing lanes at high speed, trying to stay on undamaged pavement. The Taliban recently hired the company to repair the road, but aren't paying the workers.

At this roadside stop, a cluster of passengers, coughing, wait beside a broken-down white bus, disabled briefly by the harsh road. They’re headed to Pakistan, a passenger says. His aunt has a stomach problem. “The doctors say they can’t get care here,” another chimes in.

As the passengers load onto the bus, a few run to grab tea boiled on these makeshift stoves. They are but a small portion of the thousands leaving Afghanistan.

The hollowed shells of destroyed vehicles and bullet-ridden homes are a constant reminder of the war. Pedestrians and motorists pass without much of a glance.

After the former government fell, old symbols of that era were scraped off and removed from car windshields and dashboards, now often replaced by Taliban flags and Qurans to appease the new hardline Islamist rulers.

Just yards from the highway in Zabul, one of the most violent provinces during the war, we witness a new phenomenon: grape farmers safely digging their fields and sitting for tea.

“Before we weren’t able to work so close to the road,” Nur Ahmad, 18, says.

For Hafiz Qadim, 32, and his new roadside shop, the end of the war, and fate — a bomb crater that forces traffic to slow down — gave him the perfect business opportunity. But his parents and sister are no longer around to congratulate him.

They were killed in the crossfire from a now-abandoned outpost nearby.

The road isn’t all craters and destroyed bridges. There are stretches of paved serenity as Kandahar approaches.

During the war, peace marchers walked alongside it. The Taliban placed bombs beneath it. But even battered and destroyed in some places, the road perseveres, much like the Afghans who travel it.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff, The Times Kabul bureau chief; Yaqoob Akbary, a reporter; and David Guttenfelder, a photographer, traveled the road from Kabul to Kandahar in December.