Kabul’s disaffected seek more change
>By Rachel Morarjee
>Published: June 8 2006 19:04 | Last updated: June 8 2006 20:32
>
>
The line of Afghan men squatting on their haunches snakes around the block outside Iran’s embassy in Kabul. Most are hoping for visas to seek a better life across the border.
“We came back when the Taliban fled. We thought things would be good but there was nothing here for us. No work, no opportunities, so we are going back,†says Fazel Ahmad Azimi, who has sent his family ahead of him to Tehran.
He cannot afford to support 12 people on the $60 a month he earns at the education ministry and says he understands why more than 1,000 demonstrators rampaged through the capital last week in the worst street violence since the fall of the Taliban.
“Everyone was unemployed. They had no food. They were looking for an opportunity to loot,†he says.
The riots brought the unrest that has dogged southern Afghanistan to the gates of Kabul and shattered the illusion that the Taliban were the only threat facing the country. The violence was triggered when a US military truck ploughed into a busy intersection in the morning rush hour, causing a 12-car pile-up and igniting resentment about high-handed behaviour among foreign forces and the snail’s pace of reconstruction.
Five years after the fall of the Taliban and despite billions of dollars of foreign aid, there has been little tangible change in the lives of millions of Afghans.
With the onset of summer, the air in Kabul is fetid with the stench of sewage, some neighbourhoods get power every third day if they have access to electricity or running water at all, and there are not enough jobs.
“The accident was a spark but the reason is dissatisfaction with the government of president Hamid Karzai. Unemployment is a screaming problem in Afghanistan,†says Qaseem Akhgar, a Kabul-based analyst and human rights activist.
In the south of the country the Taliban resurgence and growing incidence of suicide bombings is also being fed by public alienation from a government that has at best failed to deliver security or growth and is at worst criminal. Insurgents can pay young men with few other options to join their cause. Many Afghans in the south are as frightened of the police as they are of the insurgents.
 > |
| Read Rachel’s online journal from Kandahar >Click here |
| > |
The government, however, seems increasingly distant from the concerns of its people. Mr Karzai and his advisers are walled off in the heavily fortified presidential palace and many seem untouched by the realities confronting their compatriots.Jawed Ludin, Mr Karzai’s chief of staff, tells the Financial Times that it would be hard to find as many as four people in Kabul who would say their lives had been better four years ago. “People are eternally grateful for what they have got now,†he maintains.
Talking to people on the street paints a different picture. Fuelling public anger is a growing gap between them and the new elite – those enriched by the narcotics trade or the jobs on the foreign aid bandwagon that are available to the few educated Afghans. “Education is key to the future of this country but compare a miserable Afghan teacher, who earns $55 or $60 a month, with an international worker who earns $20,000 a month and has a nice house to live in and a nice car to drive,†says Mr Akhgar, referring to the top pay for imported consultants.
The influx of companies and aid agencies has driven up rental prices and created foreign enclaves in the city. “There is an extra-territoriality like Shanghai in the 1930s with the British and French concessions. Foreign embassies and companies wall off streets at will and Afghans have to move around them,†says Hamidullah Tarzi, an analyst who has advised successive Afghan governments since the communist period.
Much of last week’s violence was directed at foreigners. Rioters burnt down the offices of Care International and attacked other aid agencies as well as guesthouses used by the United Nations and a well-known Chinese brothel in an outpouring of rage. Calm was restored when the national army came on to the streets in the evening but, during the day, many low-paid police had shed their uniform and joined the demonstrators.
Western governments have been mesmerised by Afghanistan passing the democratic milestones of presidential and legislative elections but less attention was paid to building the institutions needed to support them. The Afghan army is widely seen as a success but police reform has lagged behind, with many paid poorly if at all. Their commanders are often relics from the civil war, with records of human rights abuses and ties to the rampant drugs trade.
The suddenness and the violence of the demonstrations, which left at least 14 people dead, more than 100 injured and millions of dollars of damage, took most by surprise. “It was a wake-up call but everyone is already trying to play it down and pretend it wasn’t a crisis. It underlined how badly things have gone and how we are nowhere near where we need to be,†says a western diplomat.
It was not supposed to be like this. US troops were welcomed in northern Afghanistan and memories of the Taliban and the civil war that followed are fresh enough to underpin goodwill for a foreign presence from a sizeable chunk of the population. But that is ebbing. Mr Tarzi says the riots “will have far-flung repercussions because now people can see that in the face of all these foreign forces they can do something with a few sticks and stonesâ€.
With Iran, Pakistan and China on Afghanistan’s border, the west cannot afford to turn its back. Nato is doubling its troops in the south to 6,000 and has pledged to change the aggressive way soldiers drive around. These moves will not suffice. “The reason anti-western feeling is rising is that we are seen as backing a government that is not just inept but predatory. Afghans are asking what democracy has brought them,†says a senior western official.
Unless more is done to tackle corruption and find new channels to funnel aid money into the economy, more men like Mr Azimi will leave and those who remain will seize opportunities for unrest.
After reading the article please share your thoughts in the comment section below.