Military

DATE=10-28-03

TYPE=FOCUS

NUMBER=8-278

TITLE= STRUGGLING AFGHANISTAN - PART 1

BYLINE= ED WARNER

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=

INTRO: With the departure of the Taleban, Afghanistan is transformed. Freedom is on display in all kinds of ways. Yet there is an underlying fear it may not last because of the continuing warfare, factional conflicts and the uncertain behavior of foreign powers. In the first of a three-part series, V-O-A's Ed Warner, who visited Kabul three years ago under Taleban rule, reports on the city today.

TEXT: Kites banned by the Taleban are now floating over rooftops in Kabul, a conspicuous sign of the return of freedom to harshly suppressed Afghans.

And there are many other signs: women can show their faces and men can shave their beards without fear of lashing or imprisonment by the patrolling vice-virtue squad. Music can be heard around the city, movies viewed. Newspapers are abundant. There is a perpetual traffic jam on once deserted streets. And no more public executions or mutilations.

There is a palpable sense of relief that can be seen on countless faces. Opportunities beckon and Afghans are flocking home from abroad to seize them. Many foreigners are contributing to the new mood and the new economy of unfettered enterprise. Afghanistan is once again moving.

Still a cloud of uncertainty remains. How long can the good times last considering a fractious government whose writ does not extend much beyond Kabul and continued attacks from Taleban remnants and others who enjoy sanctuary across the border in Pakistan?

If the foreign forces, above all Americans, decide to leave, many Afghans say the feuding local commanders or warlords will once again start fighting and in the ensuing chaos, the Taleban or something much like them will return to power by promising security.

Horess Shansab is an Afghan-American film-maker in Kabul who is preparing a fictional movie of a family living through Taleban times. I am an optimist, he says, and so his film will have a happy ending with the departure of the Taleban.

He speaks for many Afghans about the future:

///SHANSAB ACT///

It looks to me promising, problematic, and full of challenge. It is not an easy place to categorize and say it's one way or the other. There is still some instability in the south, and everyone is aware of that and worried. We are hoping that the world will remain engaged in Afghanistan, and there will be increased help and assistance because without that kind of assistance, I do not see a very rosy picture. ///END ACT///

Afghans must put down the gun and take up the shovel, says Safir Latifi, a Kabul businessman who has opened up an Internet café aside his guesthouse and plans others around the country.

///LATIFI ACT///

Within the time of six months we will cover all major provinces of Afghanistan and we will be connecting them to the Internet. The Internet is bringing unity to this country, making people talk to each other and stay connected to each other, which is one of the ways we can encourage the refugees to come back to the country. ///END ACT///

Nothing is more important, says Mr. Latifi, than to revive the country with projects that can be seen and admired and that will provide jobs - roads, bridges, schools and housing. He thinks that is the best way of countering the armed rebellion that feeds on weakness and despair.

But Mr. Latifi, among many others, says reconstruction is going much too slowly. Above all, the crucial road linking Kabul to Kandahar in the unstable south is only now nearing completion and its surface is temporary and not expected to last.

Mr. Latifi says this is all too typical of the reconstruction effort:

///LATIFI ACT///

Unfortunately, the world community and especially the United Nations have not been very helpful. The United Nations is a big bureaucracy in Afghanistan. This is a U-N-sponsored government. Afghanistan is a test field for the future of the United Nations. So it has to be very successful in Afghanistan. ///END ACT///

Extremism is gone, say Afghans, to be replaced by bureaucracy. The Taleban wasted no time punishing people who ignored, say, the nightly 10 o'clock curfew. Their successors can take hours to process by hand the simplest forms.

///OPT///

That is no recipe for progress, contends Mr. Latifi:

///LATIFI ACT///

In Afghanistan we have to have rapid changes. We have to have decision making on a daily basis. We have to take a decision, execute a plan and then go and start it. We cannot wait for a project to be decided for one month, to be decided for three months, to be sent for approval to New York and then be started after two years. After two years, the need for that project will not be there. ///END ACT/// ///END OPT///

But if officialdom is plodding, private help is on the move, says George Nez, an American city planner who has worked in 19 developing countries. He marvels at the number of people in non-governmental organizations who have come to help Afghanistan rebuild.

///NEZ ACT///

There are over 200 N-G-O's from all quarters of the world who are really stitching together Afghanistan. The N-G-O's are like a big pyramid of smaller and larger units that contract with each other. The bigger ones contract with the smaller ones. That number astounded me when I got there. There are so many that are actually rebuilding in patches. ///END ACT///

Mr. Nez says the N-G-O's are reinforcing the ill-equipped Afghan government ministries whose budgets do not compare with the funds coming from abroad.

His own specialty is roofing, the casualty of war, earthquakes and old age. He worked for three months this past summer in Wardak province, where there are frequent armed clashes.

People close to him say he was undeterred, just the kind of committed, skilled foreigner Afghanistan needs. He made tools of the weaponry shells littering the area, and he says his Afghan hosts looked out for him.

///NEZ ACT///

They took such care of me. I was practically locked in every night. They had a Kalashnikov in every corner. They had dogs that kept me awake barking all night. Too much protection, and a lot of hospitality. Those people are so appreciative of somebody helping them. ///END ACT///

///OPT///

George Nez looks forward to seeing roofing on the large area of Kabul that was destroyed by the warlords' fighting in the 1990's. He says the work force is in place - Afghans who have returned from abroad and cannot afford Kabul's sky-rocketing housing prices. So they settle for the remains of houses:

///NEZ ACT///

They are swarming into the slums, into the devastated war-torn parts of Kabul, for instance. They are just putting some canvas on the broken walls, even several stories up on those devastated buildings. They are building shops on the first floors, and if there is an earthquake - too bad. That is where they are absorbing the population right now. Whoever can afford to start rebuilding is doing it. ///END ACT/// ///END OPT///

Much, much more remains to be done in Kabul and elsewhere. There is no city water or sewage system. People must often walk a considerable distance to fill their buckets from wells perilously close to sewage dumps. In the case of Afghans living in the huts that barely emerge from the barren mountainsides, the trip is steep and tiring.

More progress could be made, says Mr. Nez, if half the work force were not idle. The Taleban are gone, but women are treated much the same, especially in the countryside.

///OPT///

///NEZ ACT///

Women are not educated, not working in the economy, not running the schools, not running the hospitals, not running the stores, the banks -- nothing. It is a country without female brains or skills. This will come, though. The school we are building is essentially for girls and many of the other N-G-O's are heading the same way - trying to educate the women. ///END ACT///

But as Jila Samee points out, the men will have to be educated first. Director of media relations at the Foreign Affairs ministry, she says the men must learn that bringing women into the work force is not just good for women but for Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries. ///END OPT///

For Focus, this is Ed Warner