Qualla: Kabul-Kandahar Highway https://qualla.com/kabul-kandahar-highway en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/t/m/w/y/kabul-kandahar-highway-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Kabul-Kandahar Highway https://qualla.com/kabul-kandahar-highway Kabul-Kandahar Highway: Introduction https://qualla.com/kabul-kandahar-highway/ Photo credit Dudley Miles, CC BY-SA 3.0. Every nation has a road that tells its story. For Afghanistan, that road is the Kabul-Kandahar Highway, NH0101 -- roughly 480 kilometers of asphalt connecting the capital to the country's second city through some of the most contested terrain on earth. American engineers paved it in the 1960s as Cold War diplomacy. Soviet convoys rolled down it in the 1980s as occupation. By the 1990s it had crumbled to rubble. In 2003 the Americans rebuilt it for $190 million. And through every era, the people who depend on it most -- the bus drivers, truckers, and travelers who have no other viable route between Afghanistan's population centers -- have paid the highest price for its existence.

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Image: Dudley Miles | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/m/w/y/kabul-kandahar-highway-wp/tmwy-kabul-kandahar-highway-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kabul-Kandahar Highway: A Highway Born of Rivalry https://qualla.com/kabul-kandahar-highway/ Photo credit ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan, CC BY 2.0. The Kabul-Kandahar Highway was designed and asphalted in the 1960s by Afghan and American engineers working under the U.S. International Cooperation Administration, during a period when both Washington and Moscow were competing for influence in Afghanistan through infrastructure ...

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Image: ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan | CC BY 2.0

]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/m/w/y/kabul-kandahar-highway-wp/tmwy-kabul-kandahar-highway-a-highway-born-of-rivalry.mp3 0:06 2 full Kabul-Kandahar Highway: Reconstruction Under Fire https://qualla.com/kabul-kandahar-highway/ Photo credit ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan, CC BY 2.0. In September 2002, under the new government of Hamid Karzai, the United States funded the highway's reconstruction at a cost of approximately $190 million, with Japan funding additional sections. The Louis Berger Group, a New Jersey-based firm, won the contract and completed the ...

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Image: ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan | CC BY 2.0

]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/m/w/y/kabul-kandahar-highway-wp/tmwy-kabul-kandahar-highway-reconstruction-under-fire.mp3 0:06 3 full Kabul-Kandahar Highway: Five Provinces, One Lifeline https://qualla.com/kabul-kandahar-highway/ Photo credit ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan, CC BY 2.0. The highway starts from Dashte Barchi in western Kabul and traverses five provinces: Kabul, Maidan Wardak, Ghazni, Zabul, and Kandahar. Major intersections branch off to provincial capitals -- Puli Alam in Logar, Gardez in Paktia -- making NH0101 the trunk from which much of sout...

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Image: ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan | CC BY 2.0

]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/m/w/y/kabul-kandahar-highway-wp/tmwy-kabul-kandahar-highway-five-provinces-one-lifeline.mp3 0:06 4 full Kabul-Kandahar Highway: The Price of Speed https://qualla.com/kabul-kandahar-highway/ Photo credit ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan, CC BY 2.0. The highway's death toll comes not only from conflict. Head-on collisions between overloaded buses and fuel tankers have produced some of Afghanistan's worst traffic disasters. On May 8, 2016, two buses traveling from Kabul to Kandahar collided with a fuel tanker in Ghazni Provin...

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Image: ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan | CC BY 2.0

]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/m/w/y/kabul-kandahar-highway-wp/tmwy-kabul-kandahar-highway-the-price-of-speed.mp3 0:06 5 full Kabul-Kandahar Highway: Rebuilding Again https://qualla.com/kabul-kandahar-highway/ Photo credit ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan, CC BY 2.0. In 2022, the current government began converting sections of the highway into a modern divided road to reduce the head-on collisions that have become endemic. Construction of temporary toll plazas started in Kabul Province, with another planned for Kandahar. By 2025, work had beg...

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Image: ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan | CC BY 2.0

]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/m/w/y/kabul-kandahar-highway-wp/tmwy-kabul-kandahar-highway-rebuilding-again.mp3 0:06 6 full