It's chaos - foreign armies, fierce warlords and deep tribal enmities. We've come to report on a road project worth $100 million. If completed, it will signal a great victory for this war-torn country. But failure could leave the project in the hands of the Taliban or the warlords, turning a prize asset into a highway to hell.
DAY 1 KABUL:
We're heading up to Bagram now, to Bagram airfield, which is the main American base here, in Kabul. It's about an hour's drive north. We'll be embedding with US forces, who'll show us a heavily guarded highway now under construction. Running for 100km, it could be a strategic, economic and security lifeline for this war-torn country.
DAY 3 SALERNO BASE, PAKTYA PROVINCE:
It's a slow process - the military moves at its own speed, but we've made it to this big base at Salerno, in the south-east of the country where we are put behind these massive barriers, designed to minimise the impact of incoming rockets. And, here, we sit. Day three, still waiting, and as the American soldier put it so aptly,it's "hurry, hurry, wait".
DAY 4 EN ROUTE TO GARDEZ:
But, next morning, the waiting is over. We get the call. 6 o'clock in the morning, and we are going to Gardez. The road starts in Gardez, winds through the Hindu Kush mountains to Khost in the next province. It will link the neglected south-east and its people, the Zadran tribe, to Kabul in one direction and Pakistan in the other.
It's a big base, a key staging area for US operations right throughout this insurgency-ridden part the country. The Americans are friendly, quick to make us feel at home.
DAY 5 FORWARD OPERATING BASE, GARDEZ:
Next morning, it's an early start and our patrol gets ready to leave. Before we depart, we're given a rare glimpse inside the operations room - nerve centre of the vast US military operation in the province. In this age of high-tech war, real-time video from unmanned drones beams back here 24 hours a day. And there's just been a 'contact' - military jargon for an attack.
CAPTAIN: Received some small arms fire right up here.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: Who did?
CAPTAIN: Yeah, Roger.
This is the American commander, Lieutenant Colonel Rob Campbell.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: Now, in this operations centre here when contact gets called up like that we can do a number of things. I can call troops in contact, get some air force aircraft on top of it, attack aviation on top of it, send a QRF out - a 'Quick Reaction Force' - to help bail them out, lots of different things. But we make a quick assessment of what we've got going on and then we make those calls, whether we bring in those assets.
Let me talk to you about what we're gonna do this morning - we'll leave outta here, we're gonna ride down - ride 'Utah' - ride Utah is the KG pass, the Khost-Gardez Road. It starts here in Gardez and goes all the way down into Khost, which is right down in here - really encompasses the whole thing. Now, you see the map - it's darker here, those are your mountainous areas. Very, very difficult terrain - easier for the enemy to operate in - very dangerous to my forces 'cause you don't get a lot of stand-off as far as weapons systems and your visual, and what the enemy might be doing.
So you own this road and you own the passage into the gateway into Khost. That's what's significant about the KG pass. So what I do as a commander is I get out on that road as much as I can to see the progress of it - is it getting paved? And to visit with my commanders and get a really true on-the-ground asessment of what's happening, OK. Now, that's just meeting with my people. What I also try to do is I try and meet with the locals as I go down through there.
Gotta put my stuff on - unfortunately I can't go out the gate unless I got all my gear on, so it's part of my little ritual to get ready. Right now, my men are outside with my tact, which is my mobile command post. This is good gear, it works. Gone a long way with it.
Colonel Campbell's men are almost ready to roll.
SOLDIER: We have five targets planned for the 105s. Anybody got any questions?
SOLDIER 2: Oh hell, no.
SOLDIER: If this ain't paradise, I wanna know where the f--k paradise is.
SOLDIER 3: Everyone knows what truck they're on, right now? Everybody's good on a truck.
We hunker inside these new armoured vehicles - worth US$1 million apiece - to drive to the construction site. It takes about an hour. Wary of attacks, the soldiers scour the ridgelines.
SOLDIER 4: You've got a security team, man?
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: Oh yeah, we've had attacks from those hills over there. When we go up over the pass we've had attacks on the mountain range to the far side they have operated from as well.
The project is a massive multinational exercise, funded by the US. The asphalt is shipped in from South Korea, there are guards from South Africa and Romania - Gurkhas too - and much to the anger of some Pakistan-friendly locals, one of the main contractors is an Indian company.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: Mostly Indians, but there is a lot of subcontracting below that level to employ a lot of locals here that live in the area.
When completed, the road will shorten the route used to bring supplies in for the nearly 100,000 international forces here.
An American officer made the point to me yesterday that that strip is the 21st century engineering project. He said to me, "Walk a few metres off the road," he said, "you're back in biblical times."
Next we thump along, up the mountain towards the famous Satikandaw Pass, the start of the most treacherous part of the road building. In 1987 the Soviet Union threw its military might into a battle here. The Mujaheddin, with American arms and money, held the pass for almost a decade before Moscow snatched control - for just 12 days. The rugged terrain also poses problems for Colonel Campbell.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: Last year this was a troublespot for us because you can see if you're here, but you're not - down there around the corner, the enemy has got you - you can't see what he's doing. He can set up ambushes and do things. So the unit before me built that base dicey. And frankly it was built where an old Mujaheddin strong point was when they fought the Soviets. You'll see some of the caves or what not that the Mujaheddin used to hide some of their equipment when they fought against the Soviet Union.
Up here the road is being pushed around hairpin bends and literally around the locals. And notwithstanding the trucks and their precious timber cargo - a money-maker for the locals, a cause of anxiety for the Americans, who wonder what's buried under the load.
Afghanistan's history is writ large here. Aside from the failed Soviet occupation, the province and the road are contested by two warlords, each with their private militia - Jalallulidin Haqqani, a key Taliban leader, who directs ferocious attacks against the international forces, and this man, Pacha Khan Zadran, filmed by 'Dateline' in 2003. Pacha Khan has a shady past - switching allegiances, double-crossing at will - but for now says he supports President Hamid Karzai.
REPORTER: That's an interesting dynamic, isn't it that for Pacha Khan's side of the Zadran, the road means business. For Haqqani, it's about diminishing his sense of his control of the district, the region. So it's not surprising they have fallen out.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: It's a government success. it's an ANAF success. It opens those lines of communication and lines of commerce.
On this visit, we find Pacha Khan in hospital following a hernia operation. The two warlords may have fought the Russians together but now are bitter rivals.
PACHA KHAN ZADRAN (TRANSLATION): Three attempts have been made on my life.
REPORTER: Does he expect that Haqqani will try to kill him again?
PACHA KHAN ZADRAN (TRANSLATION): They'll try again and again. For ever.
Like the rest who perpetrated electoral fraud on a grand scale, this gnarled warlord brushes aside the torrent of criticism over the recent elections.
PACHA KHAN ZADRAN (TRANSLATION): There was no fraud but there was interference. Small discrepancies can't be called fraud. Karzai was the winner. He got the votes.
So what price democracy in Afghanistan? He tells me he organised Paktya province to vote for Hamid Karzai.
PACHA KHAN ZADRAN (TRANSLATION): People came from 10 districts at my request. They all sat with Karzai and all voted for him. That was my promise to him.
Nevertheless, he says he's been denied his warlord's right to a ministry. But what he really wants is the security contract for the KG Road so he can return to his old revenue-raiser of extorting tolls at gunpoint the length of the highway. He complains too that his province and people are neglected by Karzai and Kabul.
PACHA KHAN ZADRAN (TRANSLATION): We say he shouldn't have forgotten us. He shouldn't forget us. Paktya is like his right arm. It's a border province known as "Greater Paktya". It's on the border, you know. It supports him. It benefits both the government and him.
This is Gerda Serai. The new road cuts straight through the village. But first this retaining wall has been built to stop it falling into the river. The bazaar has to be moved out of the way, which requires delicate diplomacy by the American colonel if he is to deny the Taliban a propaganda point.
GERDA SERAI RESIDENT: People know that the wall is part of the new bazaar building.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: Is the enemy bothering you here?
GERA SERAI RESIDENT: 125 men were busy working here, 80 were building the wall. There was no disturbance from anyone. If we notice such people in the area and we can't deal with them, we notify the authorities.
This may be true, but truth is relative and here, Taliban threats are real. The new road will provide a classic counter-insurgency mix of jobs and economic activity. But the Colonel is under no illusion that the Taliban have eyes everywhere.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: Uh huh - probably sitting here right now, watching us. But He can't do anything, we're too powerful of a force. They can sit and watch us all day long but really, what they can do to influence us is very minimal, I think.
REPORTER: And what about suicide bombers?
LT COLONEL ROBCAMPBELL: They're here, you bet, they are. The problem with suicide bombers in this area right here is that they will turn the populace against them. If He's gonna blow himself up in a bazaar where the people are, then the people will turn against him. so it's a difficult position for the Taliban.
The locals talk to the Americans, but they talk to the Taliban too. Three local elders who the Americans suspect are two-timing are kept under constant US surveillance. It's tricky, but I was told one of them might simply disappear from the village - the Americans are thinking of arresting him. We couldn't film him but I managed these photos.
DAY 6 COMBAT OUTPOST WILDERNESS:
As the soldiers get ready for another dayon the road, Campbell is inside meeting with one of the three suspected tribal elders, Mullah Haji Sangeen. But the lanky American is deferential to the Mullah.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: We did some briefings with my men to make sure they better understand Ramadan period, to make sure that they understand what your people are going through - and the army and the police too - during Ramadan.
MULLAH HAJI SANGEEN: It's effective and good for the army. It makes people very happy.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: I hope that we do respect it, but please say something, please speak up if you see something that doesn't look right with my coalition forces out there, OK?
MULLAH HAJI SANGEEN: No, no, if there is fresh news, God willing we will let you know.
Then a remarkable exchange - the Colonel makes a plea from the heart to save the lives of his men and the locals.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: I wanna be focused on the people. I don't wanna be focused on the enemy. I don't want to be up on top of mountain tops, I wanna be in the villages - where it counts, where it matters most, with your people. You know, the enemy comes here in the summer and they go away in the winter when the weather comes in, but the government stays - we stay, you stay, we're all here together the whole time. I know that you cannot physically stop the enemy from coming in to this area, I realise that. but what I want to do is that I want to create a place where the enemy are not welcome.
MULLAH HAJI SANGEEN: This is true.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: I realise that puts you in a very difficult position but I ask for your help trying to help us find out where the enemy are. I ask for your help in talking to your people to ensure they don't support the enemy when they come down to get supplies, before they go back up to the mountains. Then every year, when the enemy comes back they are gonna find a place that they are less and less welcome.
Will Haji Sangeen help to chase down the Taliban? It demands a response, but the wily elder ignores it. Instead, he makes an ill-disguised bid to get an American-supplied hydro-electric plant for his own village.
MULLAH HAJI SANGEEN: In Suri Kheyl, where my house is. It's far away, isn't it? It's fallen behind the rest of the area. They're building dams in the area to provide electricity.
Yes. The Colonel knows the game that's being played and, for now, his priority is the road. In a flash, we see the very different perspectives on rebuilding this country.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBALL: I wanna be smart about development. I don'twant a whole bunch of projects down here and not be able to manage them and make sure they are done properly. If we build too many we lose our ability to make sure they are built properly and they function properly and they are really, truly delivered to the people.
Some of the Colonel's advisers believe the Mullah and half of Afghanistan wants to gouge the international community for whatever he can get, and that despite his seeming affinity with the Colonel, he and his countrymen are biding their time to see who'll be the victor in this long-running war.
Outside, Campbell confides that he joined the army to kill people, not to sit in meetings with the likes of Haji Sangeen.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: I joined to close with and destroy the enemy. I'm an infantry officer, that's what I do. That's the basic bare bones, nuts and bolts of why a soldier comes into the army - because he's trained to close with and destroy the enemy and kill them. That's the war that we want, OK? But it ain't the war that we have. What we have here in Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency and a counterinsurgency is not fought by going out and killing people all the time, doing nothing but killing people. A counterinsurgency is fought and won by focusing on the people.
Focus, yes - and at times it's through the sights of a weapon.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: I think in my six months here, my forces have killed somewhere in the range of maybe 150 and 200 fighters.
Bouncing on down the road, it strikes me there is a distinct gap between the rhetoric I'd just heard and the reality of this war. Even the Americans concede it is going badly for them. Critics say the last eight years have been wasted. Today the road is peaceful enough. But 24 hours later a bomb kills a truck driver, a police station comes under attack, the mass movement of Taliban fighters is reported and their commanders are on the move in Gerda Serai, issuing orders not to cooperate with the Americans. Soon we come to a halt. The men who are paid to secure the highway are sorting out a problem.
LT COLONEL ROB CAMPBELL: Its an argument among the security forces, but they're solving it through peace. You don't hear any gunfire, that's a good thing.
DAY 7 FORWARD OPERATING BASE, GARDEZ:
Back at the base in Gardez, this scene caps off an almost surreal assignment - from bearded mullahs in the peaks of the Satikandaw Pass to this.
CHAPLAIN: Blessed be the Lord, his kindness did wonders for me in this time of distress. When I was frightened, I said I perished before your eyes.
It would be easy to pen a cliche that America's prayers aren't being answered in Afghanistan. But the reality is these soldiers are fighting and dying in ever increasing numbers in a war that has lost direction.
As the Apache attack helicopters fly off on yet another mission, we're going back to Kabul. While the international community questions its commitment to this war, the Taliban grows stronger in these mountains and presses its advantage. Meanwhile, the locals sit on the fence. There is no love for the Taliban, but they don't feel loved enough by the Americans either. Will Washington send more troops and resources? Will it be enough to properly protect them and their battered country? When the equation is put like that, the Taliban is winning.
Reporter
PAUL McGEOUGH
Camera
DAVID BRILL
Editor
WAYNE LOVE
Producer
GEOFF PARISH
Translations/Subtitling
NASIBA AKRAM
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN