A Haven of Prosperity in Afghanistan
U.S. Building Effort Blooms in Panjshir

By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 29, 2007

PARAKH, Afghanistan -- Slashed across the side of a rugged mountain like the sign of Zorro, the Z Road started as a simple $59,000 U.S. project to put a radio tower atop a small peak in the Hindu Kush, so people in the remote Panjshir Valley could for the first time pick up commercial radio from Kabul, about 60 dusty, bone-jolting miles away.

After road crews conquered the mountain's 270-foot face last November, other forces took over. By the new year, private companies had extended the road to the next hilltop, two-thirds of a mile away and 640 feet higher, for a bank of cellphone towers. Then came another half-mile extension to the next peak for a TV tower, then plans for a wind farm and, last month, a series of switchbacks down the far side of the range to give villages in the next valley their first road to the outside.

This is the way reconstruction in Afghanistan was supposed to be. A little bit of U.S. pump priming, combined with profit motive and human need, would be harnessed by a grateful, liberated population to transform their lives and country. In the process, the people would become loyal allies in the fight against terrorism.

It hasn't always worked that way. Instead, Afghanistan is besieged by a growing insurgency that is shifting U.S. money and manpower from reconstruction to security, undermining vital road, electricity, school and other projects that are designed to extend the authority of the national government and win hearts and minds.

But in the famed Panjshir Valley -- a remote, sparsely populated mountain region that is almost entirely ethnic Tajik -- an unprecedented synergy among the local government, the people and U.S. soldiers has helped spark a development boom that is modernizing and transforming the valley, which became Afghanistan's 34th province three years ago. Underpinning it all is an unusual sense of calm that has come with the people's success in keeping the Taliban at bay.

When a U.S. reconstruction team recently returned to Forward Operating Base Lion about 10 miles inside the valley, troops parked their military vehicles for the duration of their stay and traveled throughout the province in regular sport-utility vehicles, without body armor and helmets. They often eschewed convoys and went out on missions in single vehicles.

Ambassadors, politicians, NATO and U.S. military officials "all ask the same thing: 'Can we do this in other provinces?' " said Panjshir Gov. Bahlol Bahij. He extols his zero tolerance for opium poppy cultivation and his systems for working with the U.S. military and foreign aid workers and for stopping the spread of the extremist Taliban into his province.

But many aspects of Panjshir make it unique.

Panjshir province is almost entirely Tajik and Sunni Muslim, so the region lacks many of the ethnic, religious and cultural differences that have fueled the insurgency elsewhere in Afghanistan. The province, about 1 1/2 times the size of Rhode Island, has 300,000 residents and is isolated. An indigenous intelligence network with a knowledge of the landscape enabled Panjshir fighters to repel repeated Soviet, mujaheddin and Taliban offenses in the 1980s and '90s and helped this region remain the only unconquered area of Afghanistan.

The fighters were led by national hero Ahmed Shah Massoud, the so-called Lion of Panjshir, who was killed in an al-Qaeda suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Today, nomad sheep herders graze their flocks on the valley floor among rusting Soviet tanks and decrepit armored vehicles. Terraced gardens line the lower slopes, which climb to slate gray mountaintops scarred by foxholes and trenches. Pictures of Massoud peer out from the windows of mud-brick houses, car windshields, billboards and storefronts. Women in all-encompassing sky blue burqas walk along roads with young girls in black dresses and white shawls -- the traditional school uniform in the valley. Irrigation canals feed groves of walnut, almond and mulberry trees and fields of potatoes, beans and grapes.

"This is the safest part of Afghanistan, because the people of Panjshir stick together," said Mansor Azimi Panjshir, 23, a construction worker. "There's new building all over. We have bridges now, wells, new schools, water -- everything looks good."

"It's 100 percent Tajik, homogeneous and very conservative, and it's been helped by its remoteness," said a U.N. official who was not authorized to speak on the record. The U.S. Agency for International Development and a special squad from the United States known as a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) "have good collaboration with the local government, and that has helped a lot in terms of capacity building and bringing dynamism into the valley."

The PRT -- one of 25 in Afghanistan -- is the main vehicle for coordinating the U.S. reconstruction efforts here. It has about 40 members from the Air Force, Army, Navy and Army Corps of Engineers, as well as representatives from USAID and the Departments of State and Agriculture, and several translators. The team's bases are protected by local Afghan guards.

"We are in the world's largest neighborhood watch program," quipped Air Force Lt. Col. Christopher J. Luedtke, 42, commander of the team. That luxury has allowed the unit to focus on development issues instead of security, permitting it to mentor local Afghans in planning, budgeting, modern construction techniques, maintenance and other areas that should help them build similar projects on their own and sustain them long-term.

"Panjshir is very much a model for the rest of the nation," Luedtke said. "Security and good governance have provided development, because you can build something and know it will still be here" in the future.

In addition to the Z Road, which helped bring regular telephone service to the valley six months ago, the Panjshir PRT has been involved in about 90 other projects worth more than $8 million in the two years since the team was created. USAID has pumped an additional $32 million into projects, including $20 million to build the province's first paved road, which snakes 30 miles along the banks of the Panjshir River on the valley's floor. The road opened five months ago and has cut driving time between the provincial capital, Bazarak, and Kabul from five hours to two, dramatically reducing the cost of transporting crops to the market and enticing more business into the valley, residents said.

"Now, we can go early to Kabul and come back in the same day," said Abdul Gafur, about 50, a Panjshiri truck driver. "And having the telephone is solving thousands of problems."

Local officials said that because of cellphone service, they received warnings about devastating floodwaters heading toward the area this summer and were able to mobilize emergency help within hours. The same should be true for Taliban incursions, they said.

Piggybacking on the private expansions of the Z Road, the PRT is erecting 10 windmills on a mountain 1,100 feet above the valley floor to provide a new government center with electricity 24 hours a day, vastly extending its reach to citizens. The team is also giving security training to local police.

Six 16-room schools have been built or are under construction by the PRT, and four more were constructed or refurbished by USAID, improving educational opportunities in the valley, especially for girls.

"Women are really clamoring for education," said Lt. Col. Michelle B. Atkins, 55, an Army reservist from Columbus, Ohio, who is the team's deputy commander. "These women know there's more out there, and they want it, and I see myself as offering it to them. But we're at least a generation away from seeing the real impact."

The team is also challenging long-standing cultural taboos, like men and women working together.

Teresa Morales, 37, a civilian with the Army Corps of Engineers from Corvallis, Ore., stands toe-to-toe with Afghan builders, explaining proper construction techniques, such as how to mix and pour cement, with an authority that leaves them looking dumbfounded.

"She's taught us a lot about construction that we can use in the future," said Feda Mohammad, 38, the head of a local construction company, as he stood on a school roof this week and reviewed the project.

Mohammad said he had two daughters, and after working with Morales, he figured that they, too, could do construction work and join his company when they were older. "That's why we're building these schools, so women can be educated," he said with a smile. "If they want to, I will let them in my business, and then I can sit at home."

But Morales is not so easily convinced: "We've cracked the door open, but it's a very elusive group of people. It's hard sometimes to understand what's going on."