Pictures of Kabul

I will be writing shortly on the meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan President Hamid Karzai at USIP this week. In the mean time, I came across a slideshow on BBC on the state of physical rebuilding in Afghanistan's capital.

After:
Click here for the slideshow

Of course this got me thinking- if this is an after then we need a before.

Before:
Click here for the gallery


So I did a bit of digging and found the above gallery from 2002 on the website of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an anti-fundamentalist, anti-war political organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The first thing one notices on comparing these two galleries is the sudden preponderance of glass and steel buildings. This begs the question of what is being "rebuilt"? These buildings really do look like examples of an economy focused on the money of Afghans employed by the international community. Afterall Afghanistan is one of the most impoverished nations in the world. The citizens are far more likely to patronize one of those Naan sellers than a place that looks like the guitar shop.

But these days Kabul is both, and a bit more for that matter. One of the things that struck me when I first looked at Kabul in Google Maps was that it really seemed to be three cities- there was the old Kabul: tightly clustered clay brick homes that ring the city.


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Then there is the Soviet style Kabul: A sea of regimented apartments that would look just as out of place in Moscow or Sofia.


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And last but not least, the shiniest of them all: The American style Kabul.



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In this case- these aren't brand new buildings (built in the 60's and early 70's) but are homes to many of the international community living in the city.

The buildings of Kabul are a metaphor for the country as a whole. Beyond the glitz of the steel and metal buildings Afghanistan remains deeply troubled place with a whole lot of history.