EXPENSIVE HIGHWAY, FUNDS FUNNELED TO TALIBAN

"... the Gardez-Khost Highway... The 64-mile highway, which has yet to be completed, has cost about $121 million so far, with the final price tag expected to reach $176 million — or about $2.8 million a mile ... Security alone has cost $43.5 million so far... Despite the expense, a stretch of the highway completed just six months ago is already falling apart and remains treacherous. The unfinished portion runs through Taliban territory, raising questions about how it can be completed. Cost overruns are already more than 100 percent... the failures have financed the very insurgents that NATO and Afghan forces are struggling to defeat. Some American officials and contractors involved in the project suspect that at least some of the money... made its way to the Haqqani group, a particularly brutal offshoot of the Taliban..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/world/asia/01road.html?_r=1