An "America in Asia"

I haven't finished reading this yet, but it's really interesting. This whole bit of history is new to me, so I can't really comment on how accurate it is. But the claim is that the Helmend Province area in which the Allied forces are currently engaged in a large battle is not, as you might expect, an ancient terrain or wasteland.

It's actually the intersection of an extremely wealthy fashion-center and remnants of a massive development effort to create an "America in Asia" back in the late 1940s, complete with the heavily planned city of Lashkar Gah. Really fascinating stuff.