When it comes to our forces and other military forces being in Afghanistan, you will be sure to get mixed feelings from Afghans regarding having us stay or leave. I doubt any poll could be done to give a truly accurate result of this view, but I have found that the more educated and urban the Afghan is, the more likely they fear the lack of the international forces. They frankly do not trust their own government or security forces.
I can tell you about one thing the Afghans all want and that is electricity.
Despite massive amounts of money allocated to providing power to the people in the cities (I am not even counting the rural areas here) many people only get an hour or two of power per day.
I subscribe to The Afghan Recovery Report which is produced by the Institute For War And Peace Reporting. They train local journalists who write the reports that give a very different view of news from Afghanistan from what we usually hear from the US media.
The report I just received is something I feel is an accurate view of the majority of Afghans.
For example, today in Mazar-e Sharif, a city that is relatively stable and peaceful is still suffering in many ways due to only getting a couple of hours of electricity a day.
Imagine not have a refrigerator, and knowing that the markets do not have power to keep food from spoiling....not having the ability to just turn on the lights as you cook dinner, or read a book....not being able to run a fan to help in the very hot summer? (it gets very hot in Afghanistan, I have been there when it was over 90 degrees. Air conditioners are rare, but fans are a must.)
“You see, I can’t bear this hot weather even though I’m an adult. How can children bear it?” Fereidun said, fanning himself as he sat under a tree in front of his house. “I use this fan on my children all night. Sometimes I even pass out. If there was electricity, I wouldn’t have these problems, as I own [an electric] fan and a refrigerator.”
A lack of power also stops much business and factories. If they use diesel fuel and run generators the cost of production is too high to find buyers. (Not to mention the horrible pollution that they have in cities due to these generators.) Imagine trying to run a factory with only one or two hours of electricity per day! (And not knowing when it will turn on or off.)
“I had to close my factory because of the power shortage, as using [diesel-powered] generators would have increased my prices so much that people wouldn’t have been able to afford my goods,” he said.
Khwaja Amir said he had been forced to lay off his workforce of around 100 people.
“This government doesn’t want to address unemployment… it doesn’t support domestic industries, yet it leaves the doors wide open to foreign-made products,” he said.
The lack of government support for locally made products is also a huge problem that deserves it own diary if I can get to it.
Some factories (such as ice sellers) are able to raise prices enough and keep business, but it is hardly helpful to have a necessity double in price in a city where people are lucky to make $5 per day! The lack of available power is a huge problem and one that Afghans likely complain about the most, and makes them wonder where the hell all the aid money went to fix this stuff and if their officials are getting rich while they suffer.
In 2008, with 23 million US dollars in World Bank funding, Afghanistan’s energy and water ministry contracted two companies, one Afghan and the other Indian, to completely replace the network in Mazar-e Sharif.
The work has yet to be completed.
Not having power also causes health issues, especially if people eat leftovers that are not kept cool. Children suffer the most it seems.
Paediatric specialist Dr Ahmad Forough said more and more children were being admitted to the Mazar-e Sharif hospital where he works, mainly for dehydration, diarrhoea, and food poisoning.
The article explains that bureaucracy and local officials as well as the companies contracted to do the work have not done it well enough. They likely can produce the power needed, but the local grid is 27 years old and not adequate to supply enough megawatts to the people.
In Kabul the IWPR reports that the new computerized system designed to asses the power use of homes and businesses is a joke.
“Come and look at my bills – I’ve been charged 1.5 dollars for one period and 150 dollars for another,” Mir Hussein said laughing.
As someone who gets monthly expense reports from the NGO I volunteer with (Afghans4Tomorrow) I can attest that this new system is messing up our budget at times. The rates seem all over the map and have gone up considerably since they privatized and computerized the power company.
People there think someone is inflating the prices to skim off some cash, and blame their own government the most. The company insists the power usage is correct and claim people had manipulated the old analog meters to make the price lower.
Kabul resident Nematullah spent three or four days trying to find out why he was paying so much, and eventually got officials to admit they had charged him for almost twice as much power as he had used.
“They apologised to me, saying they’d made a mistake entering the amount,” he said. “If you catch them out, they say it was a mistake, and if you don’t, they, they embezzle your money.”
This change in system has also cost jobs there, as the old way the employee went to the home to measure the power use when the residents were there and give them a bill to pay at a bank. I guess there are no more meter readers in Kabul.
Overall only 36% of Afghans nationwide have any access to power. The idea that major cities still lack the grid needed to provide consistent power is a major failure of the internal community that is obviously not overseeing the aid money sent to do this for many years now.
Even in Kabul the power goes out for short periods usually several times a week at least (more in summer) and you need to turn on a generator. Thankfully Afghans4Tomorrow has a better generator these days than the one pictured above, but these things are filthy for the air, and in Kabul, it is hard to breath as it is.
So, if you want to know what most Afghans want today, it is electricity and a more honest system.
P.S. You may notice I am using my photos that are hosted on the DailyKos Photo Coop. I hope you will join us and upload your pictures if you some that you use in your diaries and would be happy to share with others to use too.