Feb 03 Afghanistan War: A Trip Down Kabul-Kandahar Road, the Highway to Hell – Rolling Stone

by Jason Motlagh

The $300 million Kabul-Kandahar road was meant to be a symbol of the new Afghanistan. Today it reveals everything that has gone wrong in America’s longest war.

Now in its 20th year, the U.S. military’s war in Afghanistan has long faded from global headlines. But when historians appraise the cost of the longest war in American history and how it all unraveled, they will inevitably talk about roads: the roughly 10,000 miles’ worth of highways and byways that were built, repaved, and repaired over hostile terrain on the far side of the world at an astronomical cost to U.S. taxpayers, at a time when aging infrastructure was falling deeper into disrepair back home.