Afghan Central Bank Tries to Rebuild
By Ted Anthony
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, January 10, 2002; 6:37 AM
KABUL, Afghanistan –– They showed up on the morning the Taliban quit Kabul – the central bank's president, his cashier and a few armed men. They loaded up more than $7 million in dollars, Afghanis and Pakistani rupees. Then, like other Taliban, they were gone.
Eight weeks later, the country's central financial institution, the Pashtu-named Da Afghanistan Bank, is a mess. Money is scarce, fixtures bare, walls crumbling and staircases chipped. There are no tellers, which at least means there are few withdrawals.
And on the second floor of the cavernous institution, its new president, using his new computer, is trying to put things back together.
"They did very bad things," said Said Ullah Hashimi, who spent five years as ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani's finance adviser before being appointed head of the bank when the Taliban left in mid-November.
It was on Nov. 13 that the bank's Taliban president, Mullah Mohammed Ahmedi, showed up with his cashier and an assistant, Hashimi said, telling a story that bank employees told him when he arrived.
With no checks, no paperwork, they simply went into the vaults and emerged with piles of cash – $5.3 million, 18 billion Afghanis ($600,000) and 72 million Pakistani rupees ($1.2 million) – enough cash to fill a wheelbarrow.
And that was only from the main branch in Kabul. With domestic communications still spotty, no one knows yet how much is gone from Da Afghanistan Bank branches around the country.
"It was looting. There's no other word for it," Hashimi said. "They used the cover of Islam, but they were not Islam. In the end, they were crooks."
The banking system in Afghanistan was hardly in good shape when Rabbani's government withdrew in 1996. But when Hashimi returned to Kabul and was appointed by Rabbani nine days later, he found a building that had been dragged into the past.
For one, there were no active interest-bearing accounts; the Taliban considered those un-Islamic. Women employees had been fired long ago. Dust from snuff, also a Taliban staple, was everywhere, he said.
Da Afghanistan Bank has money, Hashimi says, "but not enough." Customs and public utilities – water, electric, even some telephone – are providing limited liquid assets. Funds in overseas banks, frozen from Taliban access, are being released this week, which bank officials say will help some.
But restoring Afghans' confidence in banking may take a while.
"The bank system needs a very strong administration and security. People haven't trusted the bank in a decade," said Ahmed Zia Rafat, shopping for a wood stove in Kabul on Thursday morning. "When the bank is accessible in all provinces, and people can see its inner workings, then they will trust it again."
Despite the country's bleak financial situation, though, its currency, the Afghani, has proved reasonably hardy.
It had been about 73,000 to the dollar in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, and strengthened during the last week of Taliban rule in November. When the Taliban left Kabul and the northern alliance rolled into town, it surged to 23,000 in a week. In recent weeks, it has hovered at about 30,000 to the dollar.
But can Afghanistan's central bank – and, by extension, the nation's financial sector – ever get back on its feet?
"Ever is a long time," said Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at Hoenig & Co. of Rye Brook, N.Y., and an analyst of the global financial market.
It will, however, take a while, he said. "Enlightened self-interest will lead us to infuse enough capital into Afghanistan to make it a thriving economy, and private investment will follow," Barbera said.
For Hashimi, that can't happen soon enough.
He is asking people to reinvest in Afghanistan, though he knows investors will be skittish. Some have already called, he says, and asked about building factories. He points out that the Bonn agreement creating Afghanistan's interim government says the banking system must be reconstructed.
"The Taliban didn't allow foreigners to come into their bank," Hashimi said, breaking into a grin. "We have no problem with that."
Now, Hashimi has five phones and a fax on his desk. He is talking about rebuilding the sprawling anteroom that holds what his assistant says is Afghanistan's biggest carpet.
Most importantly, he says ordinary citizens of Kabul are starting to ask about putting their money back in a system they retreated from long ago.
"Our whole banking system is destroyed. We'll take what help we can," he said. "And if someone helps us, we'll never forget them."
washingtonpost.com |
