AFGHANISTAN Officials open new road with hopes for economy

Taliban insurgents kidnapped or killed some of the highway workers.
DURANI, Afghanistan (AP) -- Several dozen delegates broke away from a crucial constitutional assembly today to celebrate the inauguration of the Kabul-Kandahar highway, a vital artery linking the capital with the lawless and poverty-stricken south.
Helicopters brought the delegates -- many wearing traditional flowing robes and sporting turbans or flat woolen hats -- to a sparse stretch of the highway about 25 miles southwest of the capital. President Hamid Karzai cut a ribbon stretched across the smooth new pavement.
The project, funded mostly by the American government, was vital to Afghanistan's recovery after 23 years of war, Karzai said. "I'm sure it will have its effect and its impact on the economy."
"We are standing, literally, on the road to Afghanistan's future," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said. "The opening of the Kabul-Kandahar road is not the end of our work -- it is just the beginning."
A dangerous project
The road has been built amid increased attacks by Taliban insurgents, many in the rugged provinces it winds through -- Ghazni, Wardak, Zabul and Kandahar.
Workers on the $270 million project have been targeted for kidnappings, and several have been killed. Two Indian engineers abducted Dec. 6 while shopping in a village near the road remain in the hands of suspected Taliban militants.
"We can call them the martyrs of the road-reconstruction," Karzai said at the opening ceremony, which was guarded by hundreds of U.S. and Afghan soldiers.
Billions in reconstruction aid has flowed into Afghanistan after a U.S.-led offensive drove the Taliban from power two years ago for harboring Osama bin Laden.
Work is under way on several main roads and the Salang Tunnel, which passes through the daunting Hindu Kush mountains and is the main link to the north. But the 300-mile highway from the capital to Kandahar, the Taliban's former southern stronghold, is the country's main route. About one-third of the population lives within 30 miles of the road.