On the question of development, I can do no better than recall the story of the clever court jester who when asked to make a drawn line bigger without touching it, quite simply drew a much smaller line along side. Well, Afghanistan is that small line compared to India, and we can be proud of the fact that we are a developed nation. If there were a rating bar of 1 to 10 for development and if India was somewhere in the middle, say 4 or 5, Afghanistan would be struggling hard to achieve unity.
The Foreign Office types regard Kabul has one of the worst postings, ranking alongside countries like Bolivia and Sudan. Ravaged by more than two decades of successive wars in which there were no winners, only losers: the Soviet Union, the Mujaheddeen and the Taliban. But the worst affected have been the ordinary Afghan people. Driven from their homeland in search of peace and tranquility, millions of Afghans found refuge in Pakistan and Iran and many have since dispersed around the globe. Almost anyone you talk to in urban Kabul has spent years in refugee camps with Peshawar in Pakistan playing host to the majority. Apparently these were well organized colonies under the aegis of UNCHR with good education and health facilities.
With the normalization of situation in the country more and more people from these camps are returning to their home land. It is not unusual to see atrociously painted Pakistani trucks carrying household goods and people into the city; the sight of children peering out into a country they have never known makes a poignant picture. There are agencies in the government to encourage and facilitate resettlement but with millions still to return the task is huge.
(credit:propakistani.pk)
Kabul is a deceptively busy place. Its traffic sometimes rivals that of Bangkok and it probably has the highest concentration of Land Cruisers in the world. Yes, Toyota rules the roads here. While the newer and bigger vehicles belong to the many hundreds of NGOs and UN organizations, the city’s fleet of taxi cars are also all Toyota, albeit of a previous generation and battered and bruised like much of the country. Full of potholes and other hurdles, the city’s roads are nothing to write home about except for small stretches relaid by the Americans. And one of the biggest problems that confronts any user of the road is dust. There are mounds of them here that get disturbed every time a vehicle passes and since that is pretty frequent there is almost always a haze is in the air the likes of which I’ve only seen in pictures of the Paris – Dakar motor rally.
With far more serious problems plaguing the country, y. in pictures of the Paris – Dakar always a haze. vehicle passes UN organisations,uiserse task is y; the sight of ch I don’t think any one is worried about the huge amounts of particulate matter suspended in the air that in any other city would be galvanizing the pollution control boards to urgent action.
That brings us to one of the main odd jobs available to the urban unemployed – car washing. There is always a group of youth elbowing out another to get the first right to touch your car any place you park. Apparently there is quite a bit of money to be made – of the order of Afs.200 or so per person, good by any standards. But to me this business of car washing in Kabul seems to be a pointless activity, for no sooner than you take it out on the road, the car needs another wash.
If the large rural tracts of the country are propped up economically by Poppy – now under the focus of government de-cultivation programmes – , urban areas like Kabul and Jalalabad seem to depend entirely on NGOs for employment opportunities. And considering that there are well over 2000 such organizations registered with the government with hundreds of others waiting in line, jobs are not too difficult to come by for some one with good basic education. Then there is the hydra-headed monster of U.N. with its multiple divisions.
Apart from the rickety taxis, the general public can move from place to place in buses, many of them TATA and ISUZU vehicles donated by the respective governments. In fact most everything in Afghanistan is foreign, with domestic production virtually non-existent on the industrial front. There are also several minibuses from WW2 Germany still sporting German names with delightfully mis-spelt messages in English: “enjey the love” says one. It is perhaps relevant at this point to add that much of the central government’s budget itself is funded from abroad with various governments and U.N. agencies pitching in.
Security is a serious issue and evidence of that is everywhere. The U.S. armed forces are generally out of sight in Kabul city but they are within a stone’s throw as it were in their base at Bagram in the outskirts. But one can see ISAF ( International Security Assistance Forces) everywhere with knots of Italian, German, Australian, French and other soldiers making their presence felt. The Wazir Akbar Khan area is one of the most heavily guarded residential localities in the city and it is full of guest houses. The guest houses being large houses with compound walls are able to offer better security than hotels and perhaps this is the reason for their proliferation here in preference to hotels.
The one I am staying in, Ajmal Wali Guest House with a tag line “feel it home” (I don’t think the “it” here stands for Information Technology !) below the name of its owner-manager Khalid seems to be quite a popular place among Indians. For one, @ $35 a day, its tariff is less than the amount charged by most others. Breakfast and dinner are included as is laundry service; some of these items could be extra in other guest houses. And the guards outside the house wear an arm band that says U.N.; it probably means that they are trained, qualified and approved by U.N. Car bomb resisting concrete blocks are common in this area and one of the biggest contractors in the security business is USPI (United States Protection and Investigation agency).
Though initially I wasn’t terribly excited about Ajmal Wali – the common toilets were a put off – I have grown to like the place. There are a couple of permanent fixtures here – a civil engineer from India and a software engineer from Pakistan, the greatest of friends – who take upon themselves the task of acclimatizing you to life in Kabul (actually the Indian does it more than the Pakistani; the latter, just 23 is a shy,guile-less type generally treated like a younger brother by the former. The staff are friendly and food is okay. There is bread with an assortment of jams, butter, cheese, honey and eggs to order for breakfast. Green tea, Lipton Tea and Nescafe are always available. Soup, fried rice, a meat dish and vegetable curry make up the dinner along with salad. The ubiquitous Afghani Nan is present for every meal every where. Any where on the road, you can see people carrying loads of them from local bakeries. I had no problems with this Nan in the early days but after becoming aware of the dust factor as they are carried on the roads, I am not so enthusiastic any more. – to be continued (D.V)
13 May 2005 Judah