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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (46073)	5/7/2004 6:09:47 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Kabul Today...how Kabul has developed since 2001..a comparison to today and yester years.. The Afghan capital looked very chaotic even on May 3, 2004. This chaos, however, reflected a different kind, you would associate with feverish energy of building and reconstruction. No television network of the global variety has ever captured and projected the vigour you notice amongst the present-day residents of Kabul for grabbing the "economic" space and territory. The Afghan capital was never designed to accommodate more than half a million people. A decade of resistance against the communist occupation, however, brought hordes of internally displaced persons from all over the rural areas. The trend continued even after the liberation of Afghanistan in 1992. Taliban reversed the said trend with their obsession of measuring beards of the Kabul residents and baton beating the "naked" parts of its women in public. Not everyone could cross over to Pakistan or Iran to escape the frenzied "enforcement of Islam" by Taliban. Thousands of Kabul’s residents thus ended in relatively "soft" environs of Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. The fall of Taliban in November 2001 had radically altered the scene for another time. Now any Afghan with any kind of skill or enterprising idea wants to employ his or her talent in Kabul. Little wonder the population of this metropolis had already gone beyond three millions and waves of fresh arrivals remain unabated. Housing is the sector you instantly notice the impact of this wave. The land prices have hit the sky and every third or fourth spot in the sprawling avenues of Kabul is busy with frenzy construction or reconstruction of buildings. Islamabad is perhaps the most unbearable for an average middle class person, when it comes to rent a house. But a house, you might get in a comfortable sector of Pakistan’s capital with the monthly rent of say a thousand dollars, would cost you not less than three to four thousands in the Afghan capital. The cement and iron rod producers of Pakistan were the net beneficiaries of the construction boom in Kabul so far. Now is the turn of highly skilled masons and carpenters as well. They only trust their regular labour for execution. Hordes of them are also noticed while working in Kabul these days. It had been very difficult for a group of obvious looking Pakistanis to move about the streets of Kabul, when I visited it last in 1995. Although Ghazi Ziaul Haq Shaheed and his fellow "Jihadis" in our establishment had been telling us, all through 1980s, that they were cultivating the "strategic depths" in Afghanistan, this correspondent endured the frightening hostility while moving about in Kabul with a group of colleagues that year. Noticing us, the crowds of teasing boys would instantly assemble to chase us with abusive refrains against "Punjabis", chanted with rhythmic background of hand-clapped music. This correspondent never relished the privilege of visiting Kabul, when "Ummah-loving" Taliban controlled this city. But many journalists claimed that things were friendly for Pakistanis in the Afghan capital those days. After their fall in 2001, a spate of media stories made us to believe as if Pakistanis invoke instant hostility if "discovered" in Kabul. Throughout my stay in the Afghan capital since May 3, I have been deliberately using Urdu for communicating with every Afghan I met in the streets or restaurants. Despite acquiring the functioning knowledge of the Pushtu and Darri expressions of daily use, I would act deaf to them while asking for entrance to carefully guarded offices of some Afghan officials. This "suicidal" declaration of one’s nationality has never put me in trouble anywhere. It rather is becoming very difficult to "separate" the Pak and Afghan identities in the streets of Kabul. Blending of the two is all-pervasive. Ruling establishments of both the countries could just not do anything about it. They should better prepare living with it for moving on to actualise a plethora of very positive possibilities with mutual cooperation in our instant future. Kabul yester years.. But this "welcome to Kabul" was far more pleasing than the one this correspondent had been receiving after various landings to this city since early 1990s. In the memory bank of mine, all of them are associated with nerve-wrecking whistles of flying missiles and heart-sinking thuds, artillery pieces of the competing groups would generate with their ruthless battles for territory. A thick layer of the perpetual smoke always covered all the residential quarters of the Afghan capital. Driving towards downtown was a frightening experience, turning desolate with intense exposure to never-ending devastation. Posh areas with high-rise apartments would generate the feeling of a ghost town. For, hardly a resident dared coming out in the streets to elude getting into the crossfire of warring factions. Most scary was a visit in early 1995. One had accompanied a nominated ambassador to Afghanistan. Before presenting his credentials to then President of Afghanistan, Professor Rabbani, he opted to spend a night at Pak embassy. It was a huge compound, covering around 22 acres. During the heydays of the "great game", diplomats of the British Empire had been operating from this awe-generating compound. In 1995, the place was handed over to Pakistan, as per the understanding reached during discussing the nitty-gritty of dividing the British assets to sovereign states of India and Pakistan. It surely was a very bad time for savouring the delayed transfer. As if the forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Masood were not enough for devastating Kabul with perpetual firing at each other’s strongholds with very deadly weapons, the Shia residents of the Afghan capital also decided to carve and secure an exclusive territory for them in the same year of 1995. All of them, known as Hazaras coming from Central Afghanistan, comprised a huge army of daily wage earners with taxing labour at bread making ovens etc. The elitist Kabulis would not sell or rent properties to them. In desperation, "Hazaras" began digging the shantytowns amongst hills surrounding Kabul. From the vintage points of these hills, they were pounding the enemy factions with heavy artillery, when we reached the Pak embassy in early 1995. The stray pieces of the competing guns often landed in the vast compound of our embassy, sandwiched in fashionable "quarters" of the elitist residents. All of us spent the whole night awaked in fear. Those also were the days, when Taliban were virtually knocking at the doors of Kabul as well. jang.com.pk