Developing Kabul

When the Taliban were removed from power in 2001, some 600,000 people lived. Ten years on, the city accommodates between four and five million, and development is moving at quite a pace; particularly in the western district of Karte Seh, which looks like one giant building site.

The area used to be home to Kabul's middle classes, but their bungalows were left empty when they escaped the city and its troubles in search of a life in exile. Rural Afghanis fleeing toward the capital later settled in the district, erecting simple mud-brick buildings in which to live.

They are now mixed in with ritzy villas, television stations, government ministries and offices of NGOs. The combination provides for a cross-section of society, in which ethnicities mix and the rich live alongside the poor. While there is only one tarmaced road in the district, women in burqas are more an exception than the rule.

Money still does the real talking

Every trader at the local bazaar has his own story; Haji Murad Ali's is one of harassment. He owns a confectionary business, which has been operating from the same location for 10 years, and says he was targeted by the Taliban on 32 occasions.

"If you were wearing new clothes, the Taliban would come along and say you looked like a rich commander, and then they'd start to hit you with cables," he said. "And they enjoyed it."

He says it was only ever about money, and in that respect, little has changed. Two weeks ago, he was robbed, and when the police came, he says they didn't want to help him, they just wanted his money.

"If you argue with the police, they arrest you. So I keep my mouth shut or else I will end up in prison, in a dark hole."

An eye on politicians

Sonia, a young Russian, and her husband Sanjar live in Karte Seh. They met in Poland, when he was studying there. Their home is within striking distance of the parliament, which has opened their eyes to some uncomfortable realities.

"Our neighbor is a member of parliament and although he comes from the country, he got very rich in a short space of time," Sanjar said. "You wonder how he got all that money as a civil servant."

The word on the street is that laundered money from the oil or drugs trade is driving the construction boom in the capital. And it makes Sanjar furious.

"I used to think that voting was a civic duty, something I had to do, but now I think we're dealing with a mafia, not a government."

As far as he is concerned, parliament is filled with people who contributed to the destruction of the district during the civil war, and to the deaths of 60,000 people.

"They shot at us with their machine guns, and now they are in parliament," Sanjar said, adding that he can't understand how diplomats from the West can praise such people as symbols of a new democracy. He would like to see them stand trial.

A new era of education

One street further on, young women donning doctoral caps smile up from posters advertising private universities. The state-run universities can't cope with the numbers of high-school graduates looking to be taken in, so dozens of private institutes have moved onto the scene to offer them an academic home.

One of the institutes, Ibn Sina, which is named after the Islamic scholar, was co-founded by PhD graduate Ali Amiri. He attributes the explosive interest in higher education to a lifting of restrictions on what members of the Hazara - a minority group which makes up some 20 percent of the population of Afghanistan - can study.

"They weren't allowed to become officers in the army, or to study law or politics," Amiri said. "But now the ban has been lifted, they are making up for it."

A place for women

Of the 300 students at the institute, many are women. Their heads covered with colorful scarves, they sit in the front rows of the classroom while their male counterparts occupy the seats at the back. One student says she has no interest in becoming a member of parliament.

"That would just spell trouble," she said. "I'm studying law because I want to do something for maltreated women."

Another explains that Kabul offers Afghani women access to a way of life they cannot expect in other parts of the country.

"Only here can a woman wear a headscarf as she pleases," she said. "In rural areas women are not allowed outside alone and they can't study, or if they do, they have to wear a burqa."

What's more, she says Afghani women in the countryside are often treated like child-bearing machines for men. "Some women give birth to 18 children."

Reporter: Martin Gerner / tkw
Editor: Rob Mudge