‘Reconstruction’ efforts in Khandahar not apparent to Afghanis
Tom Blackwell, National Post
October 27, 2008
Mohammad Naseem is the kind of guy that foreign nations trying to fathom the mysteries of Afghanistan’s Pashtun culture dream about. Born in Kandahar, the 33-year-old spent much of his youth in the United States, went to school in California and learned to speak idiomatic English. Then in 2002 — his country suddenly freed of the yoke of Taliban repression — Naseem headed back to his homeland, eager to help his people and make something of himself in what he saw as a new land of opportunity.
It worked out pretty well. The neophyte businessman’s improbable first venture was a coffee house in downtown Kandahar, the conservative heart of a society that consumes green tea by the bucket load. Tea is such a part of the culture that people will ask you if you’d like a cup the same way we ask “How’s it going?” And yet, the coffee house — also famous for its cheeseburgers — became such a success that it had to move into bigger quarters. He also started an advertising agency, Arokzia — which Naseem calls the first in Afghanistan — and a newspaper, Surgar (Red Mountain), which boasts a circulation of 10,000. Not bad in a nation with an 80% illiteracy rate. Unlike the druglords who form much of the elite in this part of the world, it would seem Naseem became a Kandahar mover and shaker by purely legitimate means. At the same time, the businessman admits he has a foot in both cultures. Still steeped in the somewhat reserved mores of the Pashtuns, he also absorbed a bit of the American can-do attitude.
Cultural go-betweens like him would seem a rare gift in a conflict that has thrown together two such different peoples. So, the Canadians who are responsible for Kandahar province and run the development-oriented Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in the city, beat a path to his door, right? Not exactly. In fact, Naseem says he has never set foot inside the PRT base, and has never been contacted by a Canadian official. (Nor, it should be pointed out, has he approached them.) The official Canadian line is that they must work through local government figures — who are appointed by the Kabul administration. It is the government the Afghan people have chosen, the Canadians say, and the foreigners have to respect that. And yet, is there not room for a little advice on the side?
As it turns out, Naseem has lots of advice to dole out. For one, he argues the PRT — under its current Canadian management or the previous American patrons — has done little tangible good for Kandaharis. Seven years after the West’s triumphant arrival here, for instance, the city’s power system is still not as reliable as it was under the Taliban. (On the other hand, Kandahar Air Field — the NATO base just down the road — has an impressive electrical system for its temporary residents.) Jobs have actually been disappearing, people are hungry. Locals saw light at the end of the tunnel when the Taliban were toppled, Naseem says. Their hopes were raised. But those hopes have been dashed so badly since, it would almost have been better to never have seen the light, he suggests. His newspaper asked readers recently what developments they would most like to see in the city. Their choices were modest: a modern sports facility to occupy the alienated youth, and a library to help spread knowledge in this education-starved corner of the earth.
Naseem is a passionate guy and perhaps prone to exaggeration. The growing contingent of dedicated Canadians here has undoubtedly done some good, funding schools, water systems, mosque repairs and even the renovation of a soccer stadium. They have an ambitious, long-term plan now to refurbish a dam that would help irrigate much of the province’s parched farmland. But Kandahar’s residents do not see much in their everyday lives that’s better today than it was three years ago, when Canada arrived, and a lot that’s worse. Perhaps it’s time for Canadians to reach out to the Naseems of the province.
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