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PANJSHIR PROVINCE, Afghanistan (June 4, 2008) - More than 1,000
people attended the groundbreaking ceremony May 28 for a new $6
million road in Barak, a village in the Bazarak district of
Afghanistan's Panjshir province.
During the ceremony, Afghan officials from the highest levels of
government discussed the critical importance of the road, which
will extend from Barak to Khenj, to Panjshir and to all of
Afghanistan.
Ahmad Zia Massoud, Afghanistan's first vice president and the
brother of famed Panjshir martyr and Afghan national hero Ahmad
Shah Massoud, was the main speaker during the hour-long ceremony,
held adjacent to the construction site.
Massoud, as well as other dignitaries from the Afghan
Parliament, local government and the Panjshir Provincial
Reconstruction Team, spoke to the crowd about the history of
Panjshir and the benefits the new 18-kilometer stretch of paved
road will bring to the people in the central reaches of the
province.
"This road provides two main benefits to the people of
Panjshir," said Mohammad Tarik, former Khenj district manager. "The
finished road will help people sustain and improve their lives in
the future, and will provide a lot of near-term jobs and the people
of Panjshir will be paid for their work."
Massoud spoke on the subject.
"I am very happy that we will have more vehicular traffic and
increased construction projects in this beautiful valley of
Panjshir," he said. "One of my brother's hopes was that one day
there would be construction in Panjshir and that he would see a
paved road that would improve the lives of the people here. We are
seeing that now in the Panjshir valley, and I know that we are
making my brother's dream come true."
Another of Ahmed Shah Massoud's hopes was to connect Panjshir
with the other provinces of Afghanistan.
"This portion of the paved road will take us up to the Khenj
District Center," Massoud explained. "We wish to have the third
part of the road to Paryan built after this portion is constructed,
and then someday connect Panjshir to Badakshan and then to
Tajikistan. We think that the Panjshir road will be a very popular
route from Kabul to Tajikistan when it is fully complete."
Mohammed Yousef, an engineer from Unique Construction Co., the
contractor building the road, agreed with the first vice
president.
"This is a new step for the reconstruction in Afghanistan," he
said. "The road is very important for connecting the villages and
provinces of Afghanistan together; it will be the artery that
carries the lifeblood throughout Afghanistan."
The lifeblood of Afghanistan is not only its people, but also
its economic capacity. Often, travel time is a hindrance to
development.
"The road not only offers greater access to Kabul, providing
economic security for the people of Panjshir, it also brings
quicker and easier access to lifesaving providers such as
ambulances and the Afghan National Police," said U.S. Air Force Lt.
Col. Russell T. Kaskel, Panjshir PRT commander.
Tarik focused on the fact that this road represents more than
the solution to a lot of basic transportation problems. In the eyes
of Afghans, it represents freedom and independence.
"This road is important, because the people of Afghanistan want
freedom," he explained. "So many other oppressed places in the
world, such as Berlin and the former USSR, received their freedom,
and now we can add Afghanistan to that list.
"We have had to fight for so long," he continued, noting the
country's past 30 years of struggle. "We no longer have to do that
here in Panjshir. I promise as a representative of Khenj that, as
we fought hard these past 30 years, we'll work just as hard to help
the construction company build this road and make it a
success."
Success for the Panjshir road means success for the country as a
whole, Massoud said.
"Security is the responsibility of all Afghans, and the economy
causes a lot of the security issues," he said. "This road will
create economic capacity if the people of Afghanistan work and try
to make a good economic situation for themselves. We have many
needs, and we can't solve all of the problems of the people, but if
we stand united, we will succeed."
The two-lane road is scheduled to be completed in March.
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