Businesses see opportunity in new Afghanistan

Where others see desperate refugees and bombed-out roads and bridges, Islamudin Khorami sees factory jobs blossoming from Afghanistan's postwar ruins.

When peace comes, the New York importer plans to hire up to 500 workers to knit gloves and sweaters in his home city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Khorami, who fled the misery of Afghanistan 18 years ago, says 62 of his family members in Pakistan will return to the city and help run things.

As Afghanistan edges toward what the world hopes will be its first major break from conflict in two decades, a hardy breed of business people see opportunity in one of the poorest nations on earth.

They envision farms in the mountainous north sending raisins, almonds and pistachios to the Middle East; rugged sheep herders shearing wool for sale abroad; weavers making carpets prized across the globe for all-wool designs and bright natural colors.

The prospect of peace also is triggering hope for a multibillion dollar project to build an 890-mile pipeline that would carry natural gas across Afghanistan, linking central Asia to Pakistan. Foreign telecom companies could play a role in plugging the gaping hole in Afghanistan's phone service, an industry analyst says.

Afghanistan won't be a big factor in the global economy soon -- even if the world brings stability to the lawless land and unites enemy factions in a central government, itself a tall order.

The landlocked nation is desperately poor, with people lucky enough to have a job scraping by on an average $4 a month.

Education is limited. Natural resources are scarce. A three-year drought, famine, a ban on opium production, a choking of trade via Pakistan and massive population displacement have exacted a toll.

Yet economic revival is a key to U.S. hopes for creating lasting stability in Afghanistan and thwarting another terrorist-friendly regime from rising to power.

Before the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, exports were limited mostly to raisins, nuts, wool and carpets.

For most Afghans, the economic future will rely on the same low-tech products, but experts say more of them will be exported as trade routes reopen with major partners such as Pakistan.

That could help further wean farmers off growing opium, which was the most profitable crop produced in the nation's flat south and east before the Taliban tried to ban poppy cultivation.

After fleeing in 1983, Khorami says he did what he could to help the people he left behind.

He opened Afghan Blue Sky, a one-man business in Long Island City, N.Y., importing woolen hats and jewelry hand-made by Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Khorami has turned the venture into a $150,000 a year operation, selling the goods at American malls. He sends $900 a month to his extended family in Pakistan.

Prospects in Afghanistan aren't just for small players. A main attraction for global companies is the nation's location between central Asia and the growing economies of south Asia.

Unocal, the big California-based energy company, was the lead investor in the 1990s in a $2-billion pipeline that would carry natural gas across Afghanistan, connecting Turkmenistan in the northwest to Pakistan in the south.

The deal fell apart in 1998, after Unocal pulled out a day after the United States bombed bases of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network in southern Afghanistan in retaliation for the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa.

But other major energy companies could see big opportunities in a deal crucial to restarting Afghanistan's economy, said Rob Sobhani, president of Washington-based Caspian Energy Consulting and a former consultant in Central Asia for Amoco, now part of British Petroleum.

He estimated a future Afghan government could bring in $100-million in revenue from the pipeline -- a fortune for a country with no effective infrastructure that has been ravaged by 22 years of war.

Telecommunications also has potential -- but huge risk. A report last week by Pyramid Research, a telecommunications consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., estimates just 45,000 to 48,000 phone lines were in the nation of 25-million before the United States began its bombing campaign.

Now, about one-third of Kabul's 30,000 land lines are down, estimates Joseph Braude, a Pyramid senior analyst.

"This is not where our bread will be buttered for the next 10 years," Braude said. "But there's no question that will be an interesting business opportunity probably a few months down the line."

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