{"book":"adl0957","page":17,"text":"6\n\naccessible and less expensive routes, has been given the opportunity once more to regain this old, prominent status with the advent of the air-age. Kandahar is located on the shortest air routes between Europe and Asia, and the air is today providing the main communication lines for the modern world. Truly never before has the old saying that history repeats itself seemed closer to dramatic confirmation.\n\nAt present, Afghanistan faces great and rapid changes. The last three decades have been a period of progress and national awakening. The State, with a view to opening new avenues of wealth, prosperity and better living to the people, is working on vast plans of educational, industrial and public welfare, and agricultural development of the country. A five-year plan for the construction of better roads, better means of communication, and the development of mines, industry, education and agriculture has been formulated. To implement and finance this vast development, the State has signed agreements with foreign countries for loans and financial assistance, intent on serving national interests, and in no way endangering national independence or security. Besides, Afghanistan has had recourse to the services of many foreign experts and construction firms, and like many other under-developed countries has been welcoming specialists and consultants who are able to help advance its modernization.\n\nIt is certain that if these vast plans and projects are honestly and successfully carried out, the day is not very far off when Afghanistan will take its proper place in the comity of advanced nations.","chars":1619,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00017.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/17","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/17","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}