- a long-range modernizat
- seeds and fertilizer
- 22 agricultur
--the clearing of cluster bombs, dropped by the millions by the Soviets.
Last year, 84,900 mines and 2.5 million unexploded bombs and ordinance were cleared.
-Internati
cares for about 250 people a day — providing new limbs, wheelchair
"Patients sit on benches in the buildings, trying on new limbs or resting from physical therapy. One man wraps both hands around the stump where his leg used to be, crutches by his side. He lost both legs to a mine when he was 12.
Others practice walking with their new prosthetic
“I lost my leg a long time ago,” said Khan, whose legs blew up 10 years ago while he was working on his farm.
-repatriat
5.6 million people ( of 6 million) returned from Soviet war , offered money for new start. In 2010 the United States has spent $43.5 million to help refugees who have returned to Afghanista
"If we accept the premise that education is the key to achieving positive, long lasting change in Afghanistan, then it is impossible to overstate how encouraging it is that this year[2009] nearly eight and a half million children will attend school in Afghanistan, with girls accounting for nearly 40% of enrollment."
"During the 1970s, the women enjoyed a level of professional freedom and autonomy that was relatively liberal for a conservative Muslim society. " a significant percentage of the women in Kabul worked for a living-tens of thousands of them serving in medicine, law, journalism, engineering.
Taliban ended that.
..every woman was forbidden to go outside their homes, unless with a male relative, clad in a dark burka.
Women who were ill could only be treated by female doctors, women doctors were confined to their homes, denied permission to go out, severing half the pop access to health care.
100,000 school girls and 8000 university students were forced to leave school.
8000 teachers lost their jobs
Today, a record 2.5 million girls are enrolled in grades first through 12th, according to UNICEF, the United Nations' children's fund. That's up from 839,000 in 2002.
Some credit the increase in enrollment not just with the removal of the Taliban but a change in attitudes among Afghans.
"When I travel to the villages, even the Kuchi people (Afghan nomads) who never sent their girls to school, they ask me to build a school for their girls," says Omar.
Economic recovery
pre-Saur Revolution GDP 3.7 billion 1977
2.7 in 2000
4 billion 1n 2004
5 in 2005
10.6 in 2008 (http://devdata.worldbank.org/AAG/afg_aag.pdf)
==
CNN reports on Afghanistan's local media
Masood Farivar, manager of Salam Watandar (Hello, Countryman), Internews Network’s Afghan radio program production house, appeared on CNN International to speak about the progress and quality of the country’s young independent media.
"There is reason for optimism in the media. It is the media that have made important democratic concepts like human rights [and] rule of law part of the national vocabulary," Farivar told CNN’s Max Foster, on Connect The World.
Farivar, who spent years as a journalist in the United States, returned to Afghanistan to help rebuild his country after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. "I always wanted to go back to Afghanistan and wanted to give something back to the country, and journalism was something I knew. When I went back I found very young, enthusiastic journalists dedicated to the profession.
"At Salam Watandar, we practice what I call journalism of hope. We talk about the news agenda every day, and we ask 'Are there stories that would give people hope amidst all this war and fighting and hopelessness?' and we try to focus on some of those stories. That is not to say that we mask over the realities of war. The realities of war are tough, but there also some positive developments happening and it’s important that those stories are aired. I feel that we as journalists have a moral responsibility to air those stories, to give people hope."
Through live satellite broadcast from Kabul, Salam Watandar reaches 37 radio stations in 26 provinces of Afghanistan.
==
infrastructure, improvements economy
2005 $28 million dollar pedestrian and vehicle bridge
KABUL, Afghanistan — About 150,000 people subscribe to cell phone service each month in Afghanistan and there's "no end in sight" to the growth, the country's communications minister said Tuesday.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20479899/
==
"Agriculture is very, very important. Agriculture there is very different from the U.S. In the U.S., agricultural production is about one percent of the economy," he says. "In Afghanistan, it's about one-third. In the U.S., agricultural production employs about two percent of the population. In Afghanistan, it's about 80 percent."
"The Afghan government has put significant focus on rebuilding Afghanistan's agriculture, which has during the war been totally destroyed. From 1978 until 2001, every year 3 percent of agricultural production has gone down," says Rahimi. "And because of the drought, half of livestock has perished. So now we are rebuilding. We have some success in both rebuilding Afghanistan's agriculture and rebuilding livestock back."
To continue that success, Rahimi has a long-range modernization plan for his department.
He is relying on a team of young Afghan agricultural officials he has hired. As efforts to redevelop the country continue, many of Afghanistan's best and brightest are recruited by high-paying international organizations. But Rahimi says he manages to hold on to his people with more than good salaries.
"Also providing them incentives, training. Capacity, building all these people, providing them opportunities. Also job satisfaction," he says. "So I'm using not only the salary as one factor, but also at the same time creating an environment where people feel they are part of a transformation, the overall ownership of the ministry. That is where all of us work as a very strong team."
Transforming Afghanistan's agriculture is also complicated work, which Rahimi acknowledges will require the help of the international community. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced a $38 million grant to assist his ministry with organization and training. But Rahimi says his team will take the lead in this cooperative venture.
"Follow our footsteps, because we know Afghanistan best," he says. "And provide us technical assistance that you are good at."
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/places/Traditional-Afghan-Farming-Gets-Modern-Twist-113024574.html
agriculture 12% usable in best of times. Soviet deforestation and increased desertification and neglect had a devastating toll.
-redistribution of seeds and fertilizer, de mining programs, reconstruction of canals reconstruction of prewar 22 agricultural research stations
Fruits and nuts prewar was 50%
native seed varieties wiped out and brought in from abroad
-the clearing of cluster bombs, dropped by the millions by the Soviets.
Afghanistan has cleared two-thirds of the country of deadly mines over the past two decades, and had hoped to get rid of the rest by 2013. But experts fear Afghanistan can no longer meet its goals because of an increase in fighting and a drop in international funding.
The mines in Afghanistan are a legacy from decades of Soviet occupation and subsequent civil wars. Tens of thousands of mines and unexploded bombs still pepper the rugged country. Last year, 84,900 mines and 2.5 million unexploded bombs and ordinance were cleared.
He and others also bring up the problem of not enough funding. The economic turndown means less money for all charities. There are also concerns that the renewed fighting will draw attention and funds away from mine clearing.
The United Nations says it needs $500 million over the next five years to reach its goal and has received 70 percent of the $108 million it needs this year.
“In 2001 and 2002 we were thinking that everything is over, but now again it’s happening again,” said Najmuddin, 43, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross orthopedic center in Kabul, who goes by one name only. Najmuddin himself lost both his legs to a mine 18 years ago. Today, he walks with a small limp on two prosthetic replacements.
The center, located near Kabul University, cares for about 250 people a day — providing new limbs, wheelchairs and physical therapy for the disabled. There are an estimated 50,000 amputees in Afghanistan, mostly mine victims.
Patients sit on benches in the buildings, trying on new limbs or resting from physical therapy. One man wraps both hands around the stump where his leg used to be, crutches by his side. He lost both legs to a mine when he was 12.
Others practice walking with their new prosthetics by placing them on footprints painted on the floor. Some are trying them on for the first time. Others, such as 78-year-old Nawab Khan, are getting replacements.
“I lost my leg a long time ago,” said Khan, whose legs blew up 10 years ago while he was working on his farm. “But I feel sorry for these young people that they also have to go through this.”
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/06/ap_afghanistan_mine_clearing_062709/
2002
repatriation and rehab
5 million people ( of 6 mill) returned, offered money
" More than five million refugees have returned home to Afghanistan since 2002, but over 2.6 million registered Afghan refugees remain in neighboring countries like Pakistan and Iran. The United States has provided generous levels of assistance to those refugees returning to Afghanistan, and to those remaining in Pakistan and elsewhere. In the last year, the United States, including the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development, has provided nearly $155 million to Afghans displaced by conflict or natural disasters. Of that amount, the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration provided $75 million this year to Afghan refugees in the region, both those who have returned home, and those still in countries of refuge. "
In 2010, the United States has spent $43.5 million to help refugees who have returned to Afghanistan make a fresh start.
http://kabul.usembassy.gov/remarks_1210.html
=
Soviet depopulation whole clans and tribes fled to pak. soviet scorched earth
rebuild 140,000 homes and 8,000 wells UNHCR
(http://www.unhcr.org/46f7dba92.html afghans rebuild homes with pride)
Some 3,000 Afghan refugees to leave Islamabad slum for new home
News Stories, 8 December 2009
© UNHCR/A.Shahzad
One of the Afghan refugees talks to visitors by his tent at the new site in Islamabad.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, December 8 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has begun helping some 3,000 Afghan refugees move from a slum in the Pakistani capital to an undeveloped plot of land in a green belt on the edge of the city.
The relocation operation began last Saturday, when an initial group of 240 Afghan refugees were moved from their mud brick homes in southern Islamabad to a 472,000-square-feet plot of land about 10 minutes drive away.
The move, which is due to be completed by the end of this week, came after Islamabad's Capital Development Authority (CDA) –responsible for city planning, maintenance and expansion –agreed to move the Afghan refugees from their slum, which is slated for redevelopment as a residential area in a growing city.
UNHCR will initially provide winter tents and has been helping to instal basic services, including water and sanitation. The CDA will level the ground at the new site so that the Afghans can build houses with shelter materials provided by UNHCR. The refugees will not have title to their homes.
The CDA initially served an eviction notice on the Afghans, but agreed to find them land elsewhere after discussions with UNHCR. "The decision to provide an alternative location to the Afghan refugees shows that Pakistan . . . cares about them," said Mengesha Kebede, UNHCR's representative in Pakistan, who praised the host country for its generosity over the years to millions of refugees.
Many of the beneficiaries of the scheme are daily wage labourers, such as 29-year-old Gul Khan. Like others interviewed, he welcomed the move, noting that the refugees were worried when they originally received orders to vacate their mud houses in the slum, where he had lived since the age of 10.
"But the new decision to offer us a piece of land where we are being helped to build a new shelter is a welcome step," said Khan, who works in an Islamabad fruit market. "It is very difficult to sustain a living these days," he noted.
Ghulam Nabi and his large family also moved to the new site over the weekend. "Our place [in the slum] was very crowded; imagine 15 family members living in a single tent," he said, referring to the makeshift shelter of plastic sheets and old cloths that he moved out of. "It was terrible," he said.
Pakistan is home to some 1.7 million registered Afghans and slightly more than half of them live outside refugee camps, mostly in urban centres.
By Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Pakistan
===
Education
"no sector suffered as much from the deprivations of the communists and the Taliban as education"
After Saur revolution Teachers and students were subject to interrogation, torture, and imprisonment, many left. the one third population that left the country of war, were deprived of education.
205 5 million children attended school medical school in kabul from the united arab emirates
a university in kabul funded by US
some progress in health
Afghanistan: Two new hospitals under construction in Paktya province
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/KHII-86P59H?OpenDocument
New Hospital Opens in Herat
Kabul, Afghanistan, 8 April 2006 – President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, French First Lady Mme. Bernadette Chirac and His Highness the Aga Khan, Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), today inaugurated the French Medical Institute for Children (FMIC), an international-class, paediatric hospital founded by the French charitable organisations La Chaîne de l’Espoir and Enfants Afghans.
-2005 5.3 million children got polio and vitamin A shots Half the children immunized for whooping cough and measles
-5 million medicated for intestinal worms by 2005 couple hundred health care centers renovated or built
9000 healthcare workers trained.
-35,000 women employed by gov
=
1985 commission on human rights (p183), Soviets deliberately bombed villages, massacred civilians, executed captured fighters, gov, jailed 50,000 political opponents ,torture routine and mines disguised at toys laid around the country (Ewans 2002, 227
The communist Saur Revolution of April 1978
-subjected thousands of innocents to torture, executions without trial
thousands disappeared of the Pul-e-Charkhi prison
Fear of gov kept most families from inquiring about their fate
a vast network of secret police and informers kept tabs on citizens. Children grilled by teachers about parent's opinions
Leaving the country was a criminal act. punished by murder
The battle tactics approached genocide. 7 million displaced. hundreds of thousands killed
