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SPOTLIGHT: AFGHANISTAN
In this section:
3.7 Million Refugees Return to Afghanistan
Afghan Women Visit Clinics
USAID Helping Farmers
Thirst for Education Has Quadrupled School Enrollments
Economic Revival Boosts Banks, Factories, Farms, and Markets
Photo: Kabul Construction Boom
3.7 Million Refugees Return to Afghanistan
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Some of the 3.7 million refugees—returning to Afghanistan voluntarily from Pakistan and Iran since the fall of the Taliban in 2001—ride trucks heading back to their hometowns and villages. They have just visited a U.N. center in Kabul to receive vaccinations, advice on avoiding landmines, and about $13 for each family member.
Syed Jan Sabawoon, USAID
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KABUL, Afghanistan—Trucks laden with refugees from Pakistan and Iran bring hundreds of Afghan families back to their homeland each day. Month by month they flow back home, joining the biggest voluntary repatriation of refugees in modern world history, according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.
Already 3.7 million Afghans have returned from refugee camps since the Taliban's repressive rule ended November 2001. More than 120,000 returned in July 2004 alone.
Supported by USAID and other U.S. agencies, the refugees get vaccinations against infectious diseases, a lesson on the dangers of land mines, and transport back to hometowns and villages. They also get $13 dollars in cash, food for six months, and other help to restart their lives.
In the northern city Mazar-I Sharif, the principal of Nau Behar School says enrollment has increased since the Taliban were defeated: from 400 students, when only boys could go to school, to 2,500. Many of the additional students were refugees. The school, thanks to USAID, is newly painted and outfitted with new desks.
Another sign of new life in this ancient land, which once ruled most of India under the Moghul Emperor Babur in the 1500s, can be seen along the highway leading into Kabul from the northern Shomali plains. Truck after truck rolls by, laden with building stone, bricks, and gravel. A construction boom has seized Afghanistan; everywhere people are making bricks and cement blocks.
Much construction is of privately funded homes and markets. But, in a combination of education and physical reconstruction, workers finished a dormitory funded by the Agency for 1,100 girls at Kabul University. Girls who had been thrown out of their elementary and high schools by the Taliban are now returning to classes around the country.
With $8 billion pledged by the United States and other donors at the Berlin conference in May 2004, Afghans are making huge leaps forward:
- Dozens of new newspapers and radio stations are putting out news reports and information, their journalists trained by international aid and media groups.
- Afghan expatriates from the United States, Australia, Pakistan, and elsewhere are investing in construction of hotels and other enterprises.
- A new currency introduced with U.S. assistance as well as a respected finance ministry leadership created by the interim government have boosted confidence for investors.
- Agriculture is getting a big boost from U.S. and other aid programs that are dredging hundreds of miles of canals, fixing water gates and control mechanisms, digging wells, and beefing up channels that block seasonal flood waters from destroying roads.
- A new asphalt surface has been installed on more than 300 miles of the main ring road linking Kabul to Kandahar. Hundreds of miles of secondary roads are being graded, graveled, or paved, allowing villages to market their crops and cutting the cost of delivering fertilizer and other supplies.
Editorial Director Ben Barber was recently in Afghanistan, where he researched and wrote these stories.
Afghan Women Visit Clinics
CHARIKAR, Afghanistan—Women wearing blue burkas crowd the health education room at the new clinic, their children staying close and respectful as they wait for the nurse to begin the lesson.
Nafasgul, 32, (she uses one name as do many Afghans) walked the two miles from her home with her son Firdouz, 2, who has a stomachache, nausea, diarrhea, and can't sleep—typical symptoms of worms or other intestinal diseases that waste millions in Afghanistan and the rest of Asia.
"During the Taliban time, we couldn't even leave the house to do minor things for ourselves. Now we leave the house to do our things—to take the children to a doctor, go to the market, visit relatives, or take the kids to a park in the evenings and simply walk around," she said through an interpreter.
The clinic is the first of 226 being built by contractors hired by USAID, one of several aid groups renovating and building clinics and hospitals, training Afghan nurses and doctors, and providing clean, piped water systems. Aid groups also work with the Ministry of Health to train senior staff and district health officers.
"Now the donors give money directly to NGOs such as MSH [Management Sciences for Health] and CHF, which operate primary healthcare," said Peter Saleh, a Farsi-speaking U.S. healthcare advisor to the Afghan government.
"The goal is to prepare the Ministry of Health to take over delivery of healthcare."
Afghanistan has dismal vital statistics: life expectancy is 46, and child mortality is among the highest in the world.
The Taliban turned back the calendar of medical services 100 years, including barring women nurses and doctors from their jobs.
U.S. aid programs have rehabilitated 72 health clinics, birth centers, and hospitals; provided funding to UNICEF to treat 700,000 cases of malaria; vaccinated 4.26 million children against measles and polio, likely preventing some 20,000 deaths; and provided basic health services to more than 2 million people in 21 provinces.
Two women's hospitals in Kabul are also being rehabilitated.
USAID Helping Farmers
JALALABAD, Afghanistan—The chugging sound of a tractor turning the soil comes through the heat of the afternoon in a village outside Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province.
Corn grows thick and tall in the fields, along with tomatoes, potatoes, onions, wheat, rice, and other crops. Unlike much of Afghanistan, which is rock and sand, parched by drought or the arid climate, Nangarhar province is irrigated by the Kunar and Kabul rivers, which bring melted snows racing off the Hindu Kush mountains toward the Indus River in neighboring Pakistan.
Malik Mohammad Ayub, 50, a landowner in Akhund village, stands in front of a sign announcing an aid program to distribute seeds and fertilizer. He recalls, "There was a lot of fighting here—against the Russians and among the mujahideen.
"Now peace has arrived," he said.
Agriculture remains the main occupation of Afghans, and any effort to restore the economic and social life of the Afghan people must focus on farms.
The drought from 1998 to 2002—and another that parched fields this year—along with the effect of 25 years of war destroyed 50 percent of orchards, 60 percent of livestock, and 50 percent of irrigation systems.
Some 80 percent of roads were damaged, 5 million Afghans fled into exile, government was uprooted, and people turned to growing poppy for opium.
Since the fall of the Taliban, USAID and many other foreign assistance agencies have been repairing roads and canals and providing seed and advice to farmers as they replant fields and harvest their crops.
USAID has invested $153 million over three years in the Rebuilding Agricultural Markets Program (RAMP), which has, in one year, fixed 305 kilometers of canals, improved irrigation for 305,000 hectares of land, fixed 110 kilometers of farm-to-market roads, opened more than 100 market centers, treated or vaccinated 2.5 million livestock, and provided extension services to half a million farmers.
A key goal of agricultural assistance is to end the growing of poppy, which is worth an estimated $2 billion and has become the country's largest source of income. Britain has taken the lead for the coalition forces in fighting poppy, which is grown in 28 out of 32 Afghan provinces, said Sayed Ghulfran, director of the U.N.-sponsored agency Narcotic Control and Rehabilitation of Afghanistan. This year's crop is expected to yield 3,600 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's heroin. Last year, about 3,400 tons of opium was produced.
Thirst for Education Has Quadrupled School Enrollments
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Afghan schoolgirls.
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MAZAR-I SHARIF, Afghanistan—The Nau Behar School here has pitched tents in the playground and seats its students in three shifts. The school had 400 students when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, just three years ago. This August, 2,500 students—boys and girls—enrolled, according to headmaster Ghulam Yashiya.
Although the school was newly painted and rehabilitated under a USAID grant, it will need to be enlarged to accommodate the new students, many back from refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.
In another part of Mazar, which sits astride the ancient Silk Road linking China with Europe, Anif Azhari, 15, sits in his classroom at the Lycee Bakhter and opens up a book printed by USAID and distributed by UNESCO throughout the country. "We all want to go to the university and become doctors or engineers and serve our country," said Azhari, as his classmates nodded in agreement. Here too, tents have been added to accommodate the overflow of students.
Aid groups are pouring more than $100 million into new textbooks, rehabilitating or building new schools, helping more than 170,000 students catch up for the lost years when the Taliban ruled, and training more than 20,000 teachers with radio programs and seminars.
Some $9 million of U.S. aid has gone into a new dormitory for 1,100 women students at Kabul University. And at Balkh University in Mazar, the major learning institution in northern Afghanistan, where no women were allowed to study until the Taliban were ousted, 40 percent of students are women, such as engineering student Shekiba Khoram, 22.
"Some people don't want women to have the same rights as men," she said. "Rights are not given. We should get it. We should try to get our freedom, our rights."
In outlying districts of Balkh province, officials say that although they have 200 or 300 schools, only 10 or 15 percent of them have buildings. The rest meet under trees or crude shelters. Eighty percent of schools were damaged or destroyed during the Taliban rule.
Afghanistan now has 102,000 teachers but needs 30,000 more, especially in rural areas. Columbia University is helping train Afghan teachers, school principals, and education planners in the ministry.
Economic Revival Boosts Banks, Factories, Farms, and Markets
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Afghan official shows off newly minted Afghanis, the reissued Afghan currency.
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KABUL, Afghanistan—The first customers are trickling in to Afghanistan's newest private bank, Afghanistan International Bank, where officials say they hope to install the country's first ATM machine.
Already the bank is dispensing small agricultural loans for USAID and working with the international financial giant ING to begin backing up letters of credit so international trade can get started, according to John W. Haye, CEO of the new bank.
Afghanistan's economy was crippled by years of war and isolation—for many years the Taliban government was recognized by only two countries. The removal of the Taliban in 2001 and the creation of an internationally recognized government through the Loya Jirga process led foreign advisors, investors, aid agencies, and Afghan officials to begin rebuilding a modern economy on the ruins left by the wars and Taliban rule.
In late 2002, U.S. aid programs paid some $8 million to collect the old currency, which was nearly worthless, and replaced it with new bills at a ratio of 1,000 old Afghanis per each new Afghani.
In March 2003, USAID awarded international financial consulting firm BearingPoint Inc. a $39.9 million contract to help the Afghan government promote economic development. This followed a January 2003 World Bank contract to the same firm to help Afghan ministries upgrade their accounting systems.
BearingPoint will focus on
- fiscal reform—assisting the Afghan government to move toward financial independence through reforms to its tax policy, administration, and budget planning
- banking reform—helping the central bank build credibility and autonomy as it provides regulations for the reemergence of commercial banks
- trade policy—creating trade reforms and policies that promote private sector investment and export-led growth
- legal and regulatory framework—reworking the commercial legal framework necessary in a market-led economy and the regulations governing water, power, and telecommunications
- private sector development—helping the government stimulate private sector development of commercial, industrial, and financial enterprises
Kabul Construction Boom
New roads, homes, factories, and schools are being built all over Afghanistan. The foundation for infrastructure reconstruction was laid by USAID's repair of the country's most important highway running 300 miles from Kabul to Kandahar. The next major project is rebuilding the road from Kandahar to Herat. On the road north from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif, repairs are underway at the 11,000-foot high Salang Tunnel through the Hindu Kush mountains—a chokepoint linking the north and south and an eventual trade link between south and central Asia. Most of the Afghan people live within 30 miles of the Ring Road linking its four major cities. The Ministry of Reconstruction and Rural Development says that 4,000 local councils or shuras have been formed, where communities decide what they need and receive small grants of about $30,000-$60,000. Bridges, roads, culverts, schools, water projects, and training centers for weaving and tailoring are among the projects. Photo: Syed Jan Sabawoon, USAID
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