Khalid Khan stares through the dusty window pane, down across the rooftops of the capital, and wonders if they really know where he lives.

Once on the front lines of the international effort to rebuild Afghanistan, the black-bearded contractor now sits idle _ cross-legged and quiet on the floor of the small hilltop home he shares with another family after he had to sell his own.

"They called again this morning," he says of the kidnappers who once held him hostage at the bottom of a well, repeatedly threatening to execute him. "They said, 'We're watching you. Do you know what we can do to you?'"

Khan was contracted to build one of the final links of a $2.5 billion highway that circles this mountainous country, linking a massive road network to Kabul like arteries around a heart. It is one of the most important reconstruction projects launched here since the U.S. invaded to oust the Taliban in 2001.

The soft-spoken 30-year-old had hoped to make a tidy profit. But after more than a year of work and two months of captivity, he is deep in debt, traumatized, and lucky to be alive.

And the road is still not done.

Khan's story underscores the tremendous obstacles the international community faces rebuilding in an active war zone, revealing how even the best-intentioned development plans can be sidelined without security. Khan's ordeal also shows how risky it is for Afghans willing to take part in that effort, and how little help there is for them when things go wrong.

"Multiply him by 1,000, and you'll understand why the entire reconstruction effort in Afghanistan is getting so bogged down," says Craig Steffensen, Afghanistan director of the Asian Development Bank, which is funding the final stretch of the so-called Ring Road.

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Building a highway to connect Afghanistan's major cities has been a dream of developers for decades, one born half a century ago when this Islamic nation was ruled by a king.

The Ring Road fell into disrepair through repeated wars, and the northern sections were never built. After 2001, rebuilding it became a centerpiece of the international development operation.

The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates two-thirds of Afghanistan's people live within its path. The government believes it will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, boost trade, and pave the way for schools, hospitals and cheaper goods to serve isolated villages. Once complete, the asphalt will become a 21st century Silk Road, joining markets in Afghanistan to Central Asia, China and the Persian Gulf.

Today, nearly 90 percent of the 2,227-kilometer (1,384-mile) highway is done.