Highway 1 was once among the most dangerous, damaged arteries in Afghanistan. But on a recent 500km road trip between Afghanistan’s two largest cities, it offered order and security – and not a single pothole.
Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, they have worked to replace the violence that largely defined this highway, and the country, with strengthened security and administration.
Once littered with bomb craters and trenches dug by overweight trucks, the road is now smooth enough for travellers to nap while riding through the barren plains of Afghanistan’s east.
Seen through car and bus windows, some of the damage from generations of war is beginning to fade.
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On a recent evening, we watched a man training his pigeons as the sun set. Bus and truck drivers queued at shiny gas stations before stopping for a bite of lamb kebab. Young boys cycled past solar-panel-covered religious schools, some of them nested in former military outposts.
This is the Afghanistan that the Taliban government has rebuilt over the past four-and-a-half years, after the US withdrawal. It is what the Taliban wants the world to see as it tries to attract foreign investment and recognition. There is order, security and signs of an economic rebound, it says. The Afghan economy grew by 4.3 per cent last year, according to the World Bank, up from 2.5 per cent in 2024.
“All the heavy weapons and the money of the previous government didn’t accomplish much,” said Iqbal Noori, the owner of a mobile phone shop in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. “We have to trust the Taliban. We don’t have another option.”
Highway 1 was once the showpiece of the US reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. But it also became a symbol of squandered billions in western aid. In 2016, an audit by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction found that 95 per cent of the paved roads had been damaged or destroyed. Amid frequent fighting, the 500km trip between Kabul and Kandahar could stretch to 18 hours. Travellers can now complete the journey in eight.
The Taliban is now renovating what it once sought to dismantle during its insurgency. It is expanding Highway 1 with two extra lanes and strictly enforcing weight limits on trucks to preserve the new tarmac surface. It is erecting a mosque every 40 miles and urging real-estate developers to build around them.
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In the evening, we stopped at a roadside stall where Nasibullah Khaksar sold almonds and dried apricots. Growing up next to Highway 1 meant a life of constant interruption, where playing outside or going to school was often impossible. “The sight of a Taliban patrol was a sign that fighting would start soon,” he said.
Now, Khaksar said, he can ride his motorcycle at night without fear, and he never locks his shop.
The fields nearby are just fields, not battlefields.
But the flawless tarmac can be a thin veneer. From the hills, the road looks like a lonely snake cutting through a parched landscape. Farmers say their fields have grown barren because of drought and contaminated groundwater.
Women and girls were all but invisible on the journey save for a few glimpsed in the back of passing taxis and buses. The Taliban has effectively erased them from public life, banning them from most jobs and school beyond primary level, and forbidding them to travel long distances without a male companion. The Afghan economy may be losing $1.4 billion (€1.2 billion) every year because of it, according to World Bank estimates.
The men we encountered at every stop shared concerns about their livelihoods. Truck drivers and fruit sellers, welders and butchers all said that better security was welcome but not enough. They kept asking about the development needed to lift Afghans out of deprivation.
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“The youth are jobless and sit at home doing nothing. We need factories,” said Noor Agha Rahmani, a carpenter working by the side of the road in Ghazni province.
More than 40 per cent of the population faces acute malnutrition, according to the World Food Programme.
“There was no security before, but work was okay,” Rahmani said about opportunities under the old US-supported government. “Now there’s security but far fewer jobs.”
As we approached Kabul, military bases in ruins lined the route. So did rows of abandoned houses.
In a village in Maidan Wardak province, a handful of the 300 houses are inhabited. The mosque has also been abandoned, its walls peppered with bullet holes.
The war is over, but in many places, those who remain said the silence of peace was paired with the quiet of neglect.
“If you don’t know anyone in the higher ranks, you’re not getting anything,” said Gul Rahman Himayat, a former Taliban fighter, as he stood before the ruins of his home.
The war took his mother and two siblings, Himayat said, but at least he was fighting for a cause – the establishment of Taliban rule. Now that it is here, “there is nothing for us”.
– This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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