August 18, 2002

Maureen Lines is a social worker who works with the Kalash people and is based in Peshawar. She is the author of several books, the latest being Journey to Jalalabad

“A circus without a ringmaster”. This is how a friend of mine working for the UN described Afghanistan. To put it bluntly, Afghanistan is a mess. Kabul is chaotic. It is only a few months since I was there last, but, as in the past, every time I go there it is like visiting a different city. What always remains the same is the feverish activity. No matter buildings are flattened, the Kabulis bounce back and rebuild.

Traffic wise, a few broken down taxis, old Soviet jeeps, horse carts, push-carts and cycles used to be the norm. Last winter, there were added to this a few new taxi pickups and the jeeps of the ISAF security forces. Now, with dozens of UN vehicles, those belonging to NGOs and hundreds more taxis and food trucks, everything has changed. It makes Peshawar, by comparison, seem like an organized city, and that, believe me, is saying something!

An excursion to Chicken Street, a favourite with Westerners, is now fraught with danger. If the traffic doesn’t get you, the army of blue burkas will nab you. Back in the winter, the number of beggars had increased, mostly women (no doubt widows) and children. Now they are out in droves.

“Keep your hand in your pocket,” advised an Afghan aid worker, “many of these women go home in a taxi.”

Another Afghan cynically called Kabul the new Klondike. Thanks to the UN, many things are changing in Kabul. A piece of land that could be rented for a couple of hundred dollars is now going for several thousand US dollars. Since the fall of the Taliban, there has been a race among NGOs not only for land before the market soars (day by day) but also for influence and opportunity. NGOs that were never heard of before and have had no experience of Afghanistan are pouring in, and so are the ‘consultants’. Afghan doctors and lawyers in other cities are coming to Kabul to work as drivers for the UN, thus qualifying for wages that more than double what they could earn in their profession back home.

Women are flocking here in the hope of a better chance. For some there are rich pickings, but for most it is the opposite. There are no houses for the average Afghan to rent. Those with property still standing hold on to their land, while the rich landlord is having a field day. Returning refugees are forced to live in areas where the houses have been bombed.

I drove to one of these derelict areas on the edge of Kabul. Sure enough, plastic sheeting, torn curtains at the glassless windows of bombed out buildings showed that any building, that had a roof, was being used. Children, old men sat on heaps of rubble or broken down walls. Some houses had no frontal facade at all, and yet people were inside, living with broken down furniture and sagging floors.

All the money that was promised to help the Afghans has not arrived. Some agencies are fearful of more refugees returning. Returning to what? Posh compounds and luxury vehicles have been the number one priority. According to a number of informants, the UN is doing a roaring business with other NGOs. Or should I say some NGOs are doing a roaring business with certain employees within the UN. Perhaps scam may not be the correct word, but it would seem more a question of semantics to use a less objectionable term. One official said to me that his government should demand of the UN to make the salaries of its workers at par with government workers, otherwise all the educated bright young people would want to work only for the UN.

To find any NGO or government office requires detective work of the most celebrated kind. No taxi driver knows. No NGO knows the address of another. Only the whereabouts of a few ministries are known. Even one ministry cannot tell you where another is located. Few phones are working, except for the odd mobile, and that only within the city. By and large, emails don’t work. Sometimes here in Peshawar I have received the odd email, and vice versa, friends in Kabul and Jalalabad have received an occasional one from me. A hit and miss affair at best.

In any disaster situation (and its hard to think of a greater disaster than Afghanistan), the first requisite is to open the lines of communication and that includes roads. The road from Jalalalabad to Kabul has not been touched. The only workers are the children and the old men. It is a roller coaster ride that is back breaking and damaging to all vehicles. Why has this major thoroughfare along which come the aid and the workers not been touched? To quote a friend, if the road were rebuilt, Afghans could sell their produce in markets in Jalalabad and Peshawar. The doctors then could easily travel from those cities to give weekly clinics and so on.

Many Afghans are working in Kabul and leaving their families in Peshawar. In January, there was still a trace of euphoria and certainly one of hope. The hope is still there but it is now accompanied by a deep anxiety. The country is virtually back to pre-Taliban times. No one speaks well of the Taliban, but all are fearful over the rise again of the warlords, many paid by the Americans, as in the days of the Mujahideen. No one really seems to know what the Americans are really up to. Estimates of civilian deaths from American bombing vary from six hundred to four thousand. From what I have read and heard within Afghanistan (and if you take into account Kuchi nomads who have left their winter quarters and those who have been killed by cluster bombs) four thousand innocent deaths seems to be a more realistic speculation. It may take years (if ever) for the true figure to be known.

In the south, around Kandahar and Herat, Americans are viewed with a deep hatred, according to an Italian engineer. A party of Westerners, without knowing about the wedding day killings, arrived in that area and was met with extreme hostility. According to a number of informants, Western troops, searching for Al Qaeda, break all the rules of custom and courtesy by invading houses and violating the purdah of women. Great cultural offences are being enacted daily.

Warlords have seized upon every available opportunity. Some are said to have their own jails and concubines, as well as private armies. According to one very reliable source, Hajji Qadeer was killed because of an opium deal that went wrong. Opium, according to the same informant, is smuggled out of the country within hollowed out timber. According to an aid worker belonging to a prestigious NGO, shelters have been sent in for the people of the opium areas, no matter that most of the people engaged in opium growing have their own palaces and castles. When this was explained to the project manager, he declined to believe this and said he was instructed to deliver these shelters to the people and therefore they must be delivered. I wonder what the people of Kabul living in those bombed out houses would think of this information?

Is there anything positive? Oh, yes, because food is arriving. I have seen those trucks laden with sacks of flour or wheat. Schools are operating, new fancy restaurants are opening (only the experts can afford to go) and businesses are operating. All over the city, there are water pumps constantly working. Ice cream parlours seem to be doing a roaring business. Children are laughing as they sit on the roadside. Youths are playing volley ball on the numerous open lots. To repeat myself, the Afghans are resilient and they are seizing every opportunity, but they fear and so do most aid workers, as I do, that the West will turn their back again on Afghanistan when it comes to aid, and that the instability within the country will grow. Karzai has now asked for Americans to protect him. That in itself says a lot. If only the West had listened to his plea and the plea of many others that peacekeeping forces be posted within other cities throughout Afghanistan. Instead, the warlords have been made stronger by the almighty dollar.

I had wanted to deliver two trunks of medicines to Tora Bora. But my Afghan friends said, “No, don’t go. It’s too dangerous.” I went to Kabul by the International Red Cross flight. Before you could leave for the airport, you are asked to sign a paper declaring that you do not hold that organization responsible for your safety. You are warned with a list of possible dangers including, bullets, bombs, landmines, car bombs. Quite daunting for a newcomer to Afghanistan, I thought, as a young Swiss man who had been carrying my baggage from the weighing machine, surveyed the form and his field director patted him on the shoulder.

On the road from Kabul to Jalalabad, there are now only two check posts. The young kids that used to man these tiresome places are now the police guards in the government buildings. One such young man, in a deserted open-air corridor, teased me lasciviously, threatening to keep me from returning outside, while another, in another building, was insolent and obstructive. While I was obtaining my visa in a small office manned by two uniformed officials, a middle-aged woman, dressed all in black, came in with a handful of passports. Upon seeing me, she screwed up her face and started talking to the official. All I could understand was the repetition of the word Mussalman. As she departed, the official gave me a wry smile and, as if by way of explanation, said: “She was a big commander under Najibullah.”

“Ah, so she doesn’t like Westerners?”

“Ah, yes.”

“She is a widow?”

“Yes, twenty years ago.”

There are still many scores to settle in Afghanistan.

For the first time, I took a drive around the outer limits of the city. It was only then, that I realized that Kabul is, in essence, a desert oasis ringed by stark mountains. The city is also ringed by graveyards — graveyards of military vehicles, graveyards of old aircraft, and many, many graveyards of people.

“Those Taliban graves,” my driver exclaimed, as I bade him stop. Next, he pointed to another enormous plot of stones, and flags wavering in the cool evening breeze. “Those, Mujahideen graves,” then: “Najibullah’s. His men graves.” All the thousands of other graves are presumably those of Kabuli citizens.

I returned to Peshawar by road.

As we neared Jalalabad, I saw that the Kuchi village, which had been bombed by the Americans, leaving two hundred dead, was deserted. Other Kuchi villages also appeared deserted. Now it is summer. The Kuchis have left for their summer pastures. This village was different, in that, whereas in the other villages, the houses were still standing with no broken walls, this village consisted mostly of broken mud walls, and, some distance away, a large area of ground covered in stones and drooping flags. The Kuchis had gone, but their dead lay beneath the desert sands.

Writer’s email: molines@brain.net.pk

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