March 2, 2007
The unimaginable has already happened. The only place somewhat protected from the brute forces of westernization in Central Asia, a region from where Islam’s most important scholars once emerged, is now sizzling with pork chops. After the Soviet occupation and destruction of the fabled cities of Samarqand and Bukhara, it was Afghanistan which stood as a reminder of that centuries-old landscape of clear blue skies filled with the sound of the Azaan and the solitary toil of the lonely scholar who carefully preserved the wisdom and guidance of the Book and the message of the Prophet (SAW). Not any more.
Thanks to the arrival of thousands of NATO soldiers and some 500 NGOs, Kabul has changed so drastically in the last three years that even its own residents cannot keep track of all the changes. Yet it is neither the fully stocked Irish pub serving whiskey and cold beer in the heart of the city nor the new German restaurant (the Deutsche Hoff) selling a dinner of pork chops, sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes for around $20 that is the measure of destructive change this ancient land has witnessed in such a short time; it is the irreversible destruction of the sanctity of the place nurtured over a millennium that is the true horror.
Kabul has become a haven for narco-traders, adventurers of all shades and hues, NGO workers, and other Westerners associated with the Karzai regime established through brute force and kept alive through the continuous use of force. The rapid transformation of Afghanistan through the so-called liberation and modernization plan involves huge investments in pseudo-projects in which foreign money trickles down in ever decreasing measures to the ordinary citizens while the obscene and sickening spectacle of a maddening consumption boom spreads over centuries-old social and economic structures and values, leaving behind moral decay worse than the destitution created through the thirty years of war and civil strife. All of this is “protected” by over 20,000 foreign troops.
Afghanistan is an experiment unlike any other so far attempted by the Western world. Until the cataclysmic events of 2001 and 2002 it was a land divided against itself, where the artificial stability brought by the Taliban had merely provided a breathing space for the next round of internal fighting. But that next round never came. Instead, the unspeakable happened through the arrival of the U.S.-anointed and DynCorp-protected Hamid Karzai who wrote a blank cheque to his masters to transform the land of his forefathers which he had forsaken for the glitter and glory of DynCorp’s world.
Having secured Kabul and a few other main cities, Karzai’s masters went begging around the world and brought in a blinding array of players into this ancient land which in turn supplies them nothing but narcotics. Hundreds of NGOs were invited to jump start the process of modernization and they all came full blast in their glory, bringing in their white Land Rovers, Nissan Pathfinders, and Toyota Land Cruisers, choking traffic circles protected by armed soldiers.
Along with a rush of acronyms (UN, UNESCO, UNDP, UNHCR, FAO, UNICEF, UNICA, UNAMA, UNOPS, UNEP, MSF, ACF, MAP, MACA, IRC, WFP, IOM, IMC) came a construction boom, orchestrating the feel-good environment, but actually perpetuating unspeakable poverty amidst the rise of a new mafia which lives a lavish life in the newly constructed offices and homes, in pomp and comfort many could not even dream of enjoying in the West. The NGO workers, driven around in their chauffeur-driven Land Cruisers, shop at the newly emerged foreigners-only Supreme Market in Kabul, making Afghans outsiders in their own country, creating an apartheid-like situation where only the white-skin can enter certain restaurants, markets, even parks.
In the darkened, smoke-filled “Elbow Room”, architects of the new Afghanistan sip cocktails, and strange men and women from far away lands sit in the Gator club and restaurant which offers a range of caviar and Cuban cigars. Those tired of office work sit at the Flower Street café, sipping imported cappuccino. If this is not good enough there is the place offering “Thai massage” at $25 an hour for those who have come all the way from New York to provide expertise in the making of a new Afghanistan.
At the heart of this nauseating experiment in absurdity is money, greed, fears of unimaginable proportions, and, of course, an agenda of change no one owns and no one calls their own; it has been written between the lines of that made-in-America Afghan Constitution which everyone has now forgotten. The artificial economy created through this experiment can pay $250,000 per year to foreign employees; some UN agencies are paying $15,000 a month for their Kabul offices; shopping malls are being erected with glass flown in from the U.S., the mobile-phone business is in boom, huge Toyota Land Cruisers, the chosen vehicle of the donor community, jostle for space on narrow pot-holed streets, and the five-star luxury hotel, the Kabul Serena, is rising as if by its own in the center of town courtesy of the Agha Khan Development Network.
A hotel mafia has come into existence in a country where nothing is secure. The Chicago-based Hyatt Hotel chain is building a $40 million Hyatt Regency. If this does not make sense, one only has to realize that, situated opposite the buildings of the US Embassy, this 200-room hotel is actually financed by a $40 million loan from the U.S. Government. So much for business risk! Its construction was inaugurated on April 17, 2004 by none other than a hard hat-donning Hamid Karzai and the U.S. proconsul in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who announced that "the Hyatt will become a focal point for international and Afghan business leaders”.
More intriguing is the $30 million face-lift of the old Intercontinental Hotel, but then, everything is possible in a land where money is flowing like water from undisclosed sources. One needs only to know that the Intercontinental is now under the management of a Dubai-based company, and the goal of the sheikhs is to revitalize a culture of hotels and swimming pools so that the glorious days of the 1970s can come back, when bikini-clad Afghan women frequented the pool at Afghanistan’s first luxury hotel, where an outdoor bar served local red wine. One can stay at the super-deluxe Khyber Suite of the hotel for $470 a night—while an average resident of Kabul earns $1.5 a day, that is, when he can haul something for someone on his bare back and walk a distance without proper shoes!
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