Business was booming, said Hassan Saidzada, the manager of a watch shop in Kabul’s glitziest shopping centre. Cabinet ministers, jihadi commanders and newly made tycoons were flocking in again, he boasted, waving a hand across a softly lit display of sparkling Swiss watches.
”We recently had the chief executive of a mobile phone company,” he said, straightening his tie. ”He bought a Breitling for $4 000.”
Business was awful, said Malik Shah, a 26-year-old labourer kicking his heels on the freezing pavement outside. He had been standing there since dawn, he said, hoping for a day’s work that might earn him $4. But so far, nothing had come up.
Another 40 men waited beside him, wrapped in woollen shawls against the penetrating chill. None had been inside the watch shop or Kabul City Centre, the plaza that boasted three floors of heated shops, a cappuccino bar and Afghanistan’s first escalator. ”They don’t allow people dressed like us,” said Shah, pointing to his ragged pants.
An angry murmur ran through the crowd. ”We’re not looking for anything free, just a chance to work,” said Shah. ”Isn’t that what we were promised?”
The reopening of the Afghan Parliament on December 19 was hailed as another step towards stability after a quarter century of chaos. But four years after the fall of the Taliban, many Afghans are growing impatient with a democracy that has produced many elections but failed to significantly improve their living standards.
And their frustrations are deepened by the emergence of a small but opulent elite of warlords, corrupt officials and drug runners.
The shortcomings of western-led reconstruction — estimated to have cost $8-billion so far — are painfully apparent as another icy winter closes in on Kabul. The city is straining under the dual pressures of a burgeoning population and a crumbling infrastructure. Thousands of refugees have returned from Pakistan and Iran but few have found work. Open sewers run through the streets. Most residents have no more than five hours’ power every second night, at most. As temperatures plunge below zero poor families huddle around wood stoves and make their way to bed by candlelight. Unsurprisingly, child mortality rates are among the world’s highest.
Ismail Khan, a former warlord and now Energy Minister, said Kabul was a victim of its own circumstances. Water levels in the nearby hydroelectric dams remained stubbornly low, he said, standing before a wall of multicoloured power charts.
Progress was being made. The city grid was being repaired and deals signed to import 600 megawatts of electricity from neighbouring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. But building a network of giant pylons to carry power over the Hindu Kush mountains was slow and expensive, he said. Kabul would not have full power before 2008.
”We would like to do everything at once but Afghanistan is a poor country and these projects take time,” he said. ”I ask people to be patient.”
The emergence of a small but lavishly wealthy upper class is straining those expectations. On the rutted streets luxury jeeps roar past donkey carts and bicycles. Diesel generators allow the rich to leapfrog the power cuts. A five-star hotel, the Serena, has just opened where the price of a room starts at $275 a night. And the City Centre, which is the latest shopping plaza, offers three floors of polished chrome and Japanese electronics in a city better know for small, grimy shops and cheap Iranian imports.
Apple iPods and giant flat-screen televisions are on sale at the Suhrab Mobile, across from the Prima Watch store. ”Our sales are split 50-50 between foreigners and Afghans,” said salesman Farooq Shah.
The most controversial pocket of new money is in Sherpur, a neighbourhood being built near the city centre. Originally a defence ministry barracks, the Sherpur plots were parcelled out to government favourites at a knockdown price two years ago.
Now rows of giant, gaudy mansions are springing up along the rutted streets. With towering staircases, chiselled balconies and green-mirrored windows, many resemble giant wedding cakes.
There is widespread cynicism about the wealth behind Sherpur. ”The owners are the ones who killed our people and drank our blood,” said Hussain, a construction worker who recently returned from exile in Iran. ”But at least it is providing us with work.”
Heroin is fuelling much of the new wealth. According to the latest report of the Untied Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, opium production and smuggling accounted for $2,7-billion, one-third of the national economy, this year. There is also a popular perception that diverted international aid has lined the pockets of the wealthy.
Basher Dost, a pulpit-bashing former minister, has gained much support — he got the second highest number of votes in the September election — by alleging that western aid has been squandered by overpaid foreign consultants and corrupt Afghan officials. Western diplomats say his claims are exaggerated but admit he has tapped into a popular concern.
”A lot of items on the reconstruction balance sheet are expensive but invisible, like elections or security,” said one official. ”And yes, there is concern about how some money has been spent.”
The only way some Afghans see reconstruction money is by begging it directly into their hands. Every day Haroun, a 12-year-old with an impish grin and impeccable manners, sells chewing gum in the traffic outside the US military compound in Kabul. So do his three brothers and sister, aged eight to 13. ”The soldiers are our friends,” he smiled, reeling off a list of names such as ”Major Jimmy” and ”Captain Kevin”.
Every evening the children pool their takings and return to their mud-walled home in a rundown neighbourhood of petty crime and open sewers. The main room is heated with a small stove that runs off dried animal turds. The only electrical appliance is a lightbulb. ”Of course I don’t want to send them to the streets, especially if they miss school,” said their mother, Gul Shah (35). ”But otherwise we will not have enough to eat.”
Kabul had improved a lot since the Taliban, she said, but only in the city centre. ”So many changes,” she mused, preparing for another cold evening. ”But none of them have reached here.” – Guardian Unlimited Â