An Afghani local works on the solar-powered streetlights built on the main road. Photo: Anup Kaphle

Anup Kaphle is embedded with British and Canadian forces in Afghanistan. He is reporting for Atlantic magazine, and is chronicling his experience on the “Dispatches from Afghanistan” blog. He describes local reconstruction efforts.

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Afghanistan’s fate would sound much like one of Aesop’s fables to someone who has been aloof from the horrors the country has been through in the last three decades. The country has been a playground for wars and left in a rubble every time it tries to pick up the shards from a gruesome conflict.

But as the United States prepares to ramp up its fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda, its neighbor to the north is utilizing their chance to stop kicking the doors and start focusing on rebuilding and challenging the local Afghans to rebuild their country, one community at a time.

A few of the most vibrant examples of Canada’s six stated priorities - mentoring security forces, basic services, humanitarian services, democratic development, political reconciliation and border security - can be witnessed in a small town of Dey-E-Bagh in Dand district, a few miles south of Kandahar.

Residents of this little town now have a few solar-paneled streetlights, new roads, small concrete buildings and a revamped irrigation system for their crops - all made possible by the Canadian dollars, technical assistance and major security enforcement. The plan is to provide as much of such assistance to the local communities so that they can rebuild themselves under the security of Canadian forces. That is hoped to push back the influx of Taliban into these towns from where they launch frequent attacks on NATO forces.

But the questions that quickly comes to mind are - What will the villagers do once the Canadians leave Afghanistan? How soon until the Taliban comes back into these villages, destroys the streetlights and irrigation system and executes the villagers for siding with their enemies? Whether these questions have been taken into consideration, no one knows. For now, it might be worth to notice the smiles on the faces of Deh-E-Bagh residents, happy about the new resources underway and menace from the Taliban far away.

The Canadians have plans to expand these kind of programs into broader communities in Kandahar province. And they have the support of the big guy in the province, Tooryalai Wesa, Kandahar’s governor since last December, and a man who himself spent over a decade in Canada.

At least in one town, it is encouraging to witness that the soldiers are no longer considering kicking doors and pointing guns at the local Afghans. However, given Taliban’s fanaticism for terror and the Canadian forces’ uncertainty to long-term commitment, Deh-E-Bagh could very likely end up being a new chapter in Aesop’s fables.

- Anup Kaphle

Tajik people have weathered harsh winters and shortages in electricity.

The International Crisis Group recently stated that Tajikistan, a small country bordering Afghanistan, is “on the road to failure.”

For the second winter in a row, the country is facing energy infrastructure problems. Hundreds of Tajiks died in the cold or went hungry last winter, due to electricity shortages and crop devastation. This year, the U.S. has pledged $5 million in emergency aid to help needy Tajiks.

Ilan Greenberg of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting ventures to the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, and writes in the “Untold Stories” blog about the country’s crippling problems.

Dushanbe

On the Turkish Airlines flight into Dushanbe, the young American woman sitting next to me was enthusiastic about her next three days of personal freedom in Tajikistan. She is a political officer at the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan. “I’m looking forward to being able to walk around on streets,” she told me in a slight southern twang. “It will feel good to be in a normal city.”

Dushanbe comes off well when compared to, say, Kabul. But the Tajik capital fares less well in comparison to most other places. Running water and electricity are pretty constant in the tree-lined city center. But basic, working infrastructure degrades the farther it is from government ministries and the presidential residence dominating Dushanbe’s low rise urban nucleus. Drive just a few minutes and street lights stop working, apartment block windows flicker by minuscule candle light, and only the piercing of flashlights break the blackness in alleyways and courtyards.

The situation is even more dire outside Dushanbe’s city limits. Tajikistan’s borders are heavily patrolled by soldiers and guards (with significant assistance from American drug enforcement officials) trying to interdict the huge poppy smuggling coming out of neighboring Afghanistan in the south (or profit from it, in which case presumably without assistance from American drug enforcement officials) and with the smuggling of about everything else from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to the north and east.

The countryside is wracked by devastating problems – from catastrophic water and energy shortages to rampant child labor practices in the cotton fields to jobless villages where Tajik men returning from Russia face unending unemployment. Last winter was catastrophic for farmers – a devastating cold front moved into the country and stayed for months, knocking out the winter crop. People froze and went hungry. This winter was warmer, but farmers continue to buckle under the hardships of lack of accessible water, lack of electricity, and the widespread and enforced requirement to grow unprofitable and unsustainable cotton.

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user Brian Harrington Spier under a Creative Commons license.