Afghanistan straddles stability and chaos

KABUL -- This is Afghanistan today: Luxury Hummers among horse carts. Great hospitality amid the ruins of civil war. And dust. Everything is the color of dust -- the people, the houses, even the trees.

Four years after the United States launched the war to topple the Taliban regime that harbored Osama bin Laden, the country hangs between stability and chaos, progress and stagnation, intermittent war and sputtering peace. Even signs of optimism are not always what they seem.

At first blush, the Chinese restaurants that have sprung up around the capital give the city a new cosmopolitan feel. But a second look reveals that most double as brothels.

The glittering mansions rising around the city appear to be signs of impressive economic progress. But many are the homes of traffickers of opium -- Afghanistan's largest industry -- who have amassed fortunes and whose power rivals that of the fledgling central government in some areas.

Politicians impress outsiders with speeches blasting corruption, drug smuggling, and terrorism. But US diplomats here say it is difficult to tell who is benefiting from those evils, who is battling them, and who is playing both sides.

Four years and $61.4 billion in US spending later, Afghanistan is a work in progress, where 18,000 US troops still engage in deadly battles with insurgents and where reconstruction efforts have crawled forward far more slowly than initially planned.

''There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and interest in getting things done quickly," said Alonzo Fulgham, a Dorchester native who heads the USAID mission here. ''We have to be very careful that we manage expectations in this country."

Thousands of Afghans and 199 US soldiers have died since Oct. 7, 2001. American deaths continue to rise as troops fight their bloodiest year since the invasion in rebellious, remote provinces in the south and east.

But Afghans who work with the new government or with foreign organizations bear the brunt of a resurgent Taliban, which has been mounting an increasing number of attacks and reclaiming territory in its former strongholds. This year alone, more than 1,200 have died -- including those stabbed along highways outside of town or blown up in high-profile suicide bombings.

Yet in Kabul, an army of well-paid, well-equipped foreigners from aid groups, the United Nations, and a host of donor governments has brought security, schools, free speech, and two widely celebrated national elections. They have built a highway to the southern city of Kandahar, no small feat given the number of violent attacks against the road builders.

From behind their walled compounds, American diplomats and some of their NATO partners weigh in on every aspect of governance, from what kind of uniform the new border police should wear to the legal details of a massive new antinarcotics law.

But many problems here are beyond their reach, at least for now. Afghanistan, where several provinces have existed outside the control of the central government since the 1980s, still struggles with one of the highest levels of malnutrition in the world, a life expectancy of just 45 years, and a government ranked the third most corrupt out of 30 developing countries surveyed by Freedom House, a Washington-based research group.

The influx of foreigners has also brought inflation. Since 2001, the price of basic goods has soared, according to Kabul shopkeepers. A kilo of sugar rose from about 52 cents to 76. A long, flat loaf of traditional bread, a staple food here, rose from about 8 cents to 12.

''Life hasn't changed," said a 9-year-old street boy called Cho Cha who doesn't go to school because he has to wash cars to support his family. ''I can earn more money now than I did under the Taliban, but things are more expensive."

Those who have financially prospered in the new Afghanistan are not hard to spot.

The fields of the lucky few landowners who have received irrigation assistance have blossomed into squares of emerald green on a horizon of parched earth. The Land Rovers of foreigners and Afghans with UN jobs or US defense contracts dominate the traffic jams that choke the city.

Commercial buildings, some financed by drug barons and others by businessmen recently returned from exile, feature never-before-seen wonders: Afghanistan's first escalator and modern shopping mall, complete with a metal detector at the door; a coffee shop that would not look out of place in Paris; and showrooms full of flat-screen televisions, Beverly Hills Polo Club watches, and Turkish suits that almost no one here can afford.

But for most residents, Kabul is still a city of antique rugs, open sewers, and mud houses built into the hillsides. For those residents, the face of progress is far more subtle.

Often, it is just enjoying entertainment outlawed by the strict religious rule of the Taliban.

Boys fly battered kites from rooftops, a national pastime that had been banned. A chess club has opened, where bearded men in camouflage fatigues ponder military strategy on a black-and-white board rather than on a battlefield.

''Voice of Sharia," the only TV channel under the Taliban, has been replaced by a handful of stations that show Indian musicals and international news. The main Kabul cinema has reopened, advertising an action movie with a bikini-clad heroine, her bottom half covered with a piece of white construction paper.

Girls in white head scarves and black gowns fill the afternoon streets on their way to school, which they were barred from attending under the Taliban. But the streets are also filled with children begging and selling chewing gum, too poor to take advantage of the new schools.

Warlords who once destroyed the city fighting one another in ethnic turf wars now duke it out at the ballot box. Larger-than-life billboards left over from the recent parliamentary election show female candidates, now free to participate in politics. They gaze down on burka-clad women begging for money and work below.

A short distance outside the capital, the signs of progress fade. The road east winds past a vast no man's land dotted by adobe villages that have seen little change in the past four years.

Farther still, past Jalalabad, the road comes to a place where decades have left little mark: Dilapidated Russian tanks wait on the horizon; an ancient fort stands in ruin.

There are no schools here. The only hint of the central government's influence is anger voiced by local farmers over an effort to eradicate the growing of opium poppies, the main ingredient in heroin.

President Hamid Karzai, who has headed Afghanistan's government since the US invasion and who won election last year, has responded to discontent and threats to his authority by treading carefully. Rather than confront the problems head-on, Karzai tries to slowly co-opt those causing them, with mixed results.

When the Taliban reemerged, complete with a media spokesman and deadly, Iraq-style attacks on mosques and police, Karzai set up an Independent National Commission for Peace and coaxed insurgents into the central government's fold. Warlords whose militias threaten Karzai's authority have been appointed governors, ministers, or personal advisers to the president.

When farmers rioted against a US-backed poppy eradication team in the south, Karzai told the team to withdraw.

Privately, members of Karzai's government describe a gradual, 10-year plan to curb the narcotics industry, proceeding slowly as other industries are built up to minimize the shock to the economy, and perhaps to the traffickers themselves. But US officials and their European partners want more aggressive action.

''We don't have 10 years," said one Western official in Kabul who is involved in the anti-narcotics effort, reflecting worries that the drug trade could destroy the chances of building a credible government if left unchecked.

Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com.