Nine Years Later, Afghan City is Buzzing But Still Menacing

Nine Years Later, Afghan City is Buzzing But Still Menacing
by Ted Rall
Published on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

TALOQAN, AFGHANISTAN -- Nine years ago, when I was using this provincial Afghan capital as a base to cover the battle of Kunduz, Taloqan was a dangerous place with medieval charm. Donkey carts and horse-drawn carriages, their steeds decked out with red pom-poms, plied muddy ruts that passed as roads. The only motorized transport belonged to Western NGOs. Commerce consisted of a few sad huts you'd recognize as primitive convenience stores and an outdoor bazaar where 90 percent of economic activity was attributable to sales of opium paste.

In 2001 I wrote that good roads would change everything. And they have. Some time after 2005, when The New York Times reported that the U.S. hadn't laid an inch of pavement in the entire country, road building happened--at least here in Takhar and in neighboring Kunduz province.

It's impressive. Based on my 2001 experience and the absence of media reports that anything had changed, I had budgeted three to four days to travel from the Tajik border to Taloqan. Cruising down smooth two-lane highways at 80-plus mph--Afghan drivers apparently had a long-repressed need for speed--we made it in half an afternoon. Towers for high-tension conduits (the wires haven't been strung yet) line the road, promising an electrified future.

The ghosts of '01 are here--burned-out armored personnel carriers, lumps of earth where villages stood, tank treads used as speed bumps--but hard to find. Khanabad, the blood-soaked eastern front line during the battle of Kunduz, where my fellow journalist had the skin torn off his body by Taliban POWs using their bare hands, is a farm community marked by the kind of green-and-white reflectorized sign you'd see in the Midwest.

Most of Taloqan is paved. The donkeys and horses are gone. The soccer field used by the Taliban for stonings and by a Northern Alliance warlord as a helicopter landing pad is filled with kids playing on green grass. There are traffic jams (of cars and Indian-style motorized rickshaws) and white-gloved traffic cops to direct the mayhem. Business is booming. America is finished, but Taloqan is looking good.