"Afghanistan opens its first major railroad service" by Kay Johnson Associated Press / December 22, 2011
Operators ran the first train down Afghanistan’s first major railroad yesterday, clearing the way for a long-awaited service from the northern border that should speed up the US military’s crucial supply flow and become a hub for future trade....
How convenient since Pakistan has shut down their supply routes after NATO bombed their border outposts.
--NOMORE--"
The new rail line is the first stage of an ambitious plan to link landlocked Afghanistan to its neighbors' extensive railways for the first time, eventually opening up new trade routes for goods traveling between Europe and Asia.
Afghanistan has never had a functional rail network, though many projects have been begun and later abandoned, victims of maneuvers of the 19th century Great Game rivalry between Russia and Britain, and then political bickering in the early 20th century. Soviet occupiers abandoned a few rail projects in the 1980s, and later years of bitter civil war made such construction impossible.
That's why the Empire is there now.
So the line from the border town of Hairatan to Mazar-i-Sharif marks a milestone in a violence-wracked country eager for good news on the horizon. It also could be a key route for the U.S. troop withdrawal beginning next year and, eventually, a gateway for Afghan exports that would travel its neighbors, said Fred Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington
"It's actually a big deal. It's very significant both practically and symbolically," Starr said.
In the short term, service will help release a bottleneck at Hairatan dry port that is now holding up goods—including fuel and other supplies for American troops—while they are loaded off of trains and onto trucks for a hazardous journey over Afghanistan's northern mountain roads.
"This port of Hairatan is where the bulk of commercial cargo is coming from into the country, so it is very important," said Juan Miranda, head of Central and West Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank, which funded the $165 million project....
A U.S. military spokesman says the new railway will be key to supplying American troops—and possibly also withdrawing non-lethal cargo during the American troop pullout set to begin next year.
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Another kind of railroad.
"US soldiers charged in comrade’s death; Eight accused of hazing after private kills self" by Kirk Semple New York Times / December 22, 2011
Eight American soldiers were charged with manslaughter and an array of other crimes in connection with the death of Pvt. Danny Chen, a fellow soldier from New York whose body was found in October lying in a guard tower in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. Army said Wednesday.
Chen, 19, who was born and raised in Lower Manhattan, died of “an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound’’ at a combat outpost in Kandahar province, the Army said....
Officials revealed that Chen had been subjected to physical abuse and ethnic slurs....
In the AmeriKan army of liberation?
In Afghanistan yesterday, a roadside bomb blast killed five Polish soldiers....
--NOMORE--"
