SAYDEBAD, Afghanistan — Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the United States reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed seven weeks ago. The soldiers — two of them members of the National Guard from New York — died as their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades. At least one was dragged off and chopped to pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials. The body was so badly mutilated that at first the military announced that it had found the remains of two men, not one, in a nearby field.
The attack, on June 26, was notable not only for its brutality, but also because it came amid a series of spectacular insurgent attacks along the road that have highlighted the precariousness of the international effort to secure Afghanistan six years after the United States intervened to drive off the Taliban government.
Security in the provinces ringing the capital, Kabul, has deteriorated rapidly in recent months. Today it is as bad as at any time since the beginning of the war, as militants have surged into new areas and taken advantage of an increasingly paralyzed local government and police force and the thinly stretched international military presence here.
This district is just 50 miles or so south of Kabul. Farther south, beyond the town of Salar, the road — also known as Highway 1 — is even more dangerous, and to drive beyond that point is to risk ambush, explosions and possible slaughter.
When it was refurbished several years ago, the Kabul-Kandahar highway was a demonstration of AmericaÂ’s commitment to building a new, democratic Afghanistan. A critical artery, the highway quite literally holds this country together.
A Precarious Thread
For the shaky Afghan state, it binds the countryÂ’s center to the insurgent-ridden south, and provides a tenuous thread to unite AfghanistanÂ’s increasingly divided ethnic halves: the insurgent-ridden, Pashtun dominated south with the more stable, mainly Tajik, Hazara and Turkic populated north.
For the United States and the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, it is an important supply route for the war effort, linking the two largest foreign military bases in the country, at Bagram and Kandahar, and a number of smaller bases along the way.
But today the highway is a dangerous gantlet of mines and attacks from insurgents and criminals, pocked with bomb craters and blown-up bridges. The governor of Ghazni Province came under fire driving through Salar on Tuesday and two of his guards were wounded, officials said.
The insurgents have made the route a main target, with the apparent aim of undercutting AfghanistanÂ’s economy and infrastructure, said Gen. Zaher Azimi, the Afghan military spokesman.
The road has become the site of extreme carnage in the last six weeks, disrupting supply lines for American and NATO forces and tying down Afghan Army forces. One of the worst attacks occurred in Salar on June 24 when some 50 fuel tankers and food trucks carrying supplies for the United States military were ambushed.
The convoy was set on fire. Seven of its drivers were dragged out and beheaded, said Abdul Ghayur, the commander of the private security force that supplied the drivers. “Those ones who were driving the refrigerated trucks,” which presumably looked more foreign, were singled out, he said.
That attack was followed two days later by the ambush that killed the three Americans and their Afghan interpreter, farther north, near a village called Tangi.
Calling In the Army
The ferocity of their killing, coming amid a sudden spiral of insurgent violence along the road and in the surrounding provinces, forced the Afghan government to send several battalions of the Afghan National Army in July here to Wardak Province, which lies just south of Kabul, to try to secure the road.
Soldiers of AfghanistanÂ’s 201st Corps are now posted in old hilltop positions that the Soviet army used in the 1980s, surveying the road and the green side valleys that provide easy cover for the insurgents.
Since their arrival three weeks ago, the Afghan soldiers say they have been engaged in repeated firefights with insurgents and have surprised several groups trying to lay roadside bombs.
Soldiers from one Afghan unit, which had recently set up camp in a school building in Salar, said they were called out Aug. 1 to reinforce the local police, who were besieged in their own station less than three miles down the road.
The Afghan soldiers ran into an ambush almost immediately and had to battle for three hours before they could relieve the police station, said the commander, Capt. Gul Jan, 42.
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