Afghanistan under occupation: An assessment

Meanwhile, just across the city, one could be forgiven for mistaking the ramshackle district of Daimazang as belonging to another world entirely. The Washington Post explained that much of this area’s residents are refugees from Pakistan and Iran who returned home after the US-led invasion, hoping for work. Instead, many families live in 10-foot-square partitioned spaces in bombed-out former office buildings, without electricity and even firewood.

One of the residents interviewed by the newspaper, Hazrat Gul, makes US$4 a day breaking stones for construction in the mountains that surround Kabul. “We just have a blanket. During the night, we get under the blanket and we try to sleep,” he said.

Allahnazzar Salam asked, “What is there for us here? There are hundreds of thousands like us, perhaps millions. There is no work. We are squatting in the corner of a bombed building for shelter, there is no clean water and children die from disease here every month. Many friends who were with me in Pakistan after the Taliban took power have gone back to find work as labourers. Abroad they can work and send money back to their families to help them survive.”

On December 15, Kabul authorities started destroying what it called “unlawful shops and stands” in the Pul-e-Bagh Umoomi and Pul-e-Mahmood Khan areas of the city. Confrontations between stallholders and the police followed the demolitions. The livelihood of the small shopkeepers was destroyed to clear the route to the Serena Hotel, which is regularly passed by visiting foreign dignitaries.

The homeless people of Daimazang have also been informed by officials in the past year that they must leave their present shelters because the government intends to rebuild the old offices, which belonged to the Ministry of Energy.

Indicative of the current state of Afghanistan is the fact that at the beginning of 2007, even the capital city still does not have a steady supply of electricity or clean water. Government officials say things will not noticeably improve until at least 2008, when new power lines are to be completed.

Over the past two years, the relative supply of electricity for homes in Kabul has decreased because, despite the rehabilitation of several power plants, the infrastructure cannot keep up with the influx of new residents.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/afgh-f15.shtml

The “reconstruction” of Afghanistan

The largely ruined or neglected state of much of Afghanistan’s basic infrastructure enabled US construction companies, following the invasion of 2001, to use the billions of dollars of international “development aid” as a huge slush fund.

More than 90 percent of the Karzai regime’s budget is funded by foreign aid. A New York Times article on November 7, 2005, noted that many Afghans, including government ministers, see the US-led US$1.3 billion reconstruction project as wasteful and slow-moving, benefiting foreigners far more than themselves. It also noted a July report by the Government Accountability Office sharply criticising American reconstruction effort and the department leading it, the US Agency for International Development.

Those directly involved in administering the aid programmes offer a variety of self-serving, albeit often revealing, excuses as to why potentially large sums of money and the efforts of several major contractors have made no discernable impact on the project to rebuild hospitals, school and roads.

The United Nation’s former senior envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, who presided over much of the aid programme, told the BBC, “The way we are doing it is really lousy. We are too late, too bureaucratic, and frankly we spend too much money on ourselves rather than developing the skills of Afghans.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/afgh-f16.shtml