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Afghans despair while they wait

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 24, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan - Laborer Mohammed Asif says the open sewer trickling through his Kabul slum sums up his lot.

"Life is so dirty," the father of two says.

Anger over the slow pace of reconstruction is palpable nearly five years since a U.S.-led invasion force toppled the Taliban. Signs of progress are everywhere - rising wages, girls attending school, spreading cell phone networks, a new cross-country highway. But then there's the reality of a raging insurgency, weak governance and the extreme poverty faced by millions such as Asif.

"I am lucky to work one day a week, and I don't have enough money to feed my family," he says, his green overalls covered with the dust of a day's labor, which earned him $3.40.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, visiting Afghanistan last week, said the alliance's imminent takeover of security from U.S. forces in the insurgency-wracked south must be tied to improving people's lives.

Ask an Afghan what his biggest problem is, and "he will say I want to see development, a job, a school, security, electricity," de Hoop Scheffer said Friday.

Government and U.N. officials acknowledge that key public needs haven't been met, but they say few notice the achievements.

"There is this mantra among Afghans that nothing has happened, but that is not true," said Ameerah Haq, the No. 2 U.N. official here. "To get a direct benefit that resonates takes some time."

President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff, Jawad Ludin, said two decades of Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban rule had devastated Afghanistan.

"We have achieved more in some respects and less in others," he said. "The most significant achievements have been achieving an inclusive and meaningful political process."

Such talk means little to struggling Afghans in congested Kabul, which has grown fivefold to an estimated 5-million since 2001, and to poor farmers in remote areas, where fighting between Taliban holdouts and coalition troops hinders development.

Electricity and water shortages are acute, while illicit crops like opium represent up to one-third of the country's GDP. Afghanistan relies on foreign aid, about $10.5-billion of which was pledged at February's donor conference in London.

The U.N.'s Haq said changing the lives of Afghans will take years, but things have improved.

More than 3.5-million Afghan refugees have returned from Iran and Pakistan in the world's largest repatriation. Female lawmakers sit in the new Parliament, and girls who were kept out of school by the Taliban now make up roughly half of Afghanistan's 6-million students.

Coca-Cola is opening a factory, while new mobile telephone operators serve much of Afghanistan.

But Mohammed Ali Shah is not waiting. With an Iranian visa, the 26-year-old is going to Tehran to find work.

"I returned from Iran three months ago thinking Afghanistan would be a new country, but for me it is worse than before," Shah said. "I need food for my stomach."

[Last modified July 24, 2006, 01:35:46]