Ah! Who but the British Sunday press could write such a romantic love story about yet another foreign power trying to build a road through the mountains of Afghanistan?

The Chinese investment of O(millions) into building this road is likely to have a much better economic and political payoff for both China and Afghanistan than the O(billions) spent by the US on war in Afghanistan.

The US and other donors did try to build some roads but the Taliban weren't that keen on it.

https://medium.com/@annetdavid/seeing-it-through-the-afghani...

Well that is one advantage the Chinese also have. They are ruthless enough to either work with them or wipe them from existence.

> They are ruthless enough to either work with them or wipe them from existence.

Were the Soveits/Russians more or less than the Chinese? Were the British in the late 1800s? Alexander the Great?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herat_Citadel

It was tail end of Soviet Union and at the time Gorbachev was too wimp to shut down protests inside USSR much less being ruthless anywhere.

Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Chechens_an... was very doable to do in Afghanistan before recent population explosion and could have pacified the country. Obviously impractical with modern sensibilities and current Afghan population size.

What can work to bring country together is ruthless dictator with Stalin, Mao or Ho Chi Min determination. US university professor as president is exactly the wrong person to lead Afghanistan at this moment. If current government falls, Taliban can bring somebody reasonable as head of state and country will evolve to something like Iran. Could be good for everyone involved from Afghan population to other countries.

The chinese also have an advantage in that there is no reason for particular islamic solidarity movements that lean violent to target them with terrorist attacks.

Why does the situation with the Uighurs not count as a reason?

That's what China is doing: they invest in infrastructure in many countries, and this solves significantly more problems and ties countries to China more deeply than the current vicious circle that Western countries employ: give out large grants and credits to largely corrupt governments, that money gets mostly stolen, give more money (and also more money to cover the interest rates from previous credits), repeat.

Chinese investments into infrastructure are hardly corruption-free. Look at the case of the new port in Sri Lanka, which was a fairly obvious debt trap from the beginning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambantota_International_Port

Or at the highway in Montenegro, a small and poorish Balkan country that cannot really afford a $1 bn project going through the worst mountainous terrain in Europe.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/28/1010832606/road-deal-with-chi...

This kind of bad investments tend to be signed by corrupt politicians and sometimes backfire spectacularly.

did you not read the article? It is the best road in montenegro.

I can buy a Porsche and have the best car in my neighbourhood, but does it make sense if I go broke from the purchase?

Same with Montenegro. The road does not make economic sense, either for Montenegro itself, or for a connection between Belgrade and Bar. The demand that would justify building and maintenance of such a behemoth in the wildest Balkan mountains just isn't there.

If the region was flat, there would have been a (much cheaper) highway a long time ago, but it isn't. It is an engineering hell, much like most construction tasks in the mountains.

Heck, even California dropped its plans for a bullet train from SF to LA because it was too expensive to cross the mountain ranges that stand in the way. And California is orders of magnitude richer than Montenegro.

Mountains are best avoided when building roads. If you absolutely can't, the viability of the project needs a long, hard look.

Should have put more emphasis on the word "best"

China's development finance has had plenty of the same problems, which is why loan volume has drastically dropped since the 2016 peak [1], China adopted debt sustainability criteria similar to those used by World Bank and IMF [2] and the chairman of China Development Bank was relieved of his post and arrested for corruption [3].

[1] https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2020/12/13/scope-and-findings-chinas-...

[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3007714/ch...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-bank-idUSKBN2070PA

They also do it via loans, so instead of paying aide every year, they just hold loans over their heads to get those countries to fall in line.

Those mountains are incredible. They look like god's building contractor dumped a huge pile of rubble and dirt on a flat plain just a few years ago.

Can't believe they didn't include a map.

This article has a lot of inaccuracies and reeks of a pervasive orientalist narrative with it's primary source a non Afghan tour guide.

> muezzin's call to prayer of urban Afghanistan

There's nothing urban about a muezzin's call to prayer. Muezzin's call to prayer everywhere in the country.

> The lack of Sunni extremism, coupled with the corridor's physical isolation, means it's been impossible for Daesh and the Taliban to take a hold here, so the Wakhan has been spared the conflict that has blighted the rest of the country.

The quip on 'Sunni extremism' sounds like barely concealed racism. And this has aged very poorly or is woefully uninformed since the Taliban captured Ishkamkish recently and captured 5 more districts in Badakhshan this week!

> Muezzin's call to prayer everywhere in the country

Except in Wakhan, since (as the article notes) the Ismaelis have jamatkhanas, not mosques. No minaret, no muezzin.

> The quip on 'Sunni extremism' sounds like barely concealed racism.

Not really? The Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam as exported by the Saudis is the primary driver of violent Islamic movements including Islamic State, the Taliban, etc.

My friend this what I mean when Westerners speak about Muslims and Afghans without basic knowledge. Taliban are strict Hanafi Deobandis and are vehemently opposed to Wahhabis (and Daesh).