Last of the river bridges reopens at Kara-Buura

KYZYL-ADYR — Trucks loaded with sugar beet rolled across a new concrete bridge over the Kara-Buura River yesterday, the last of 23 road bridges rebuilt in the Talas and Kara-Buura valleys under a program funded by the US Department of Defense.

The bridges had been damaged during the fighting of 1992 or neglected since the 1980s, and some carried traffic only on one lane with weight limits that kept farm trucks off them. The program was coordinated by Major William Evans, a US Army Reserve civil affairs officer attached to the territorial Department of Public Works since last year. Local contractors did the work, and many of the laborers were former soldiers of the Provisional Government's militias.

"These bridges were built by the men who fought over them," Major Evans said at the opening. "That was the idea from the start." Taalai Esenaliev, a former militiaman who worked on four of the bridges, said the work had given him a trade. "In 1992 I learned how to blow up a bridge," he said. "Now I know how to build one."

Governor Nurlanbek Ermatov, who cut the ribbon, said the territory would be responsible for maintaining the bridges. Officials of the Department of Public Works said the program had reopened the main farm routes to the export zone and the railway ahead of the harvest.