Is Afghanistan changing?

Asia File

Indeed, she is one. We won't be surprised if Lima now finds herself at the crest of a hype that may take her around the world as an Afghan success story and eventually, who knows, even into the White House for a meeting with re-electionist George Bush.

There are other visible signs of change in the war-ravaged country that emerged from Taliban's conservative stranglehold in December 2001. Yes, cinemas have reopened, television is back on air, music and dancing are no longer banned, more and more girls are attending school, foreign restaurants have opened with expatriate waitresses serving customers, and in the capital city of Kabul women are seen walking around without their mandatory head-to-toe veils or working in offices as clerks and secretaries.

Yet, not too long ago, just 30 miles south of Kabul, suspected Islamic extremists burned down a girls' school. In the western province of Herat, men are not allowed to teach women or girls in private schools.

In many parts of the country, women are still not free to even leave the walls of their family compounds. Armed factions still use rape and other sexual violence as methods to prevent women from getting involved in public life.

So, which Afghanistan is changing? Ask anybody who has anything to do with rebuilding the country and the answer would be the same: Kabul. That's where one sees policemen at work, US and international soldiers on patrol and guarding buildings, armoured cars, mounted with machine guns, moving around, aid workers flying in and out, donors meeting President Hamid Karzai, and foreigners unwinding at bars in hotels or closed compounds.

That's where a modern hospital, rebuilt with Italian and UN support, was opened a few weeks ago and the first Afghan military officers "" 31 men "" graduated from a special training course to form the nucleus of a future Afghan army.

But outside Kabul, it's chaos, chaos, and chaos. The International Security Assistance Force, to which 31 nations have contributed some 5,000 soldiers, doesn't operate beyond the city limits. Robberies are on the increase and frequent terrorist attacks are scaring the aid community. The UN has suspended road travel for its workers in a southern region after some of them had been tied up and beaten.

Warlords are still in command in five key regions of the country and the government is in no position to reign in their private armies. After lying low in the immediate wake of the US-led war, elements of the Taliban are active again and regrouping in the inner provinces.

The situation is so grave that Lakhdar Brahimi, the top UN envoy to Afghanistan, has felt obliged to issue an open call for an immediate expansion of the international security force beyond Kabul.

Of course, the international community is trying to get some development going. An Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) has been set up with donor contributions to finance projects like road and drainage repairs, rehabilitation of the telecommunications systems, water supply and poverty reduction through micro lending.

But the fact of the matter is that most of ARTF's resources go to pay the salaries of civil servants and policemen. Development comes in pitiful driblets. There's no money even to clear the abandoned pieces of ordnance that continue to explode all over the country or the 10 million or so land mines that still litter the land, bringing sudden death.

One understands Brahimi's concern. Afghanistan is scheduled to hold a general election in June next year to replace the transitional government of Hamid Karzai. A constitution is now in the making, but what kind of a democratic election can one expect in a country where death and destruction are a way of life?

If this ends in disaster, as many observers feel is likely, Karzai and his government can't be blamed. Afghanistan was given its freedom, then abandoned by its liberators. The Marshall-like plan that President Bush had promised in April last year has remained what it was meant to be, a plan. The donors are unwilling to contribute even to a token expansion of the international security assistance force.

In the development vacuum that this inaction has created, old problems, frustrations, dissatisfactions and power plays are bound to reappear, and it is only natural that the Taliban would seek to take advantage of the situation. Little is being done to confront the post-war chaos, not even militarily.

Nobody even knows if Osama bin Laden is dead or alive. What kind of an anti-terrorist victory is this?