Chrenkoff

"The source said around 800,000 Afghan voters would be registered for the presidential election in October and for the Olasee Jirga (National Assembly) elections in April... [R]egistration would be carried out at more than 1,000 places in refugee camps."

" 'This was a ruined place, but now everything is being rebuilt,' said Azizullah, 31, a policeman who fled the fighting in 1999. He returned two years ago and has constructed a solid mud house by a stream that rushes past the Buddhas, irrigates acres of golden wheat and quenches flocks of goats festooned with bright ribbons.

" 'The militias have put down their guns and gone home to their fields,' he said. 'We have the best security in Afghanistan, and we welcome everyone who wants to visit and help. Our people want only unity and peace, and they ask only for their rightful share in national life'."

"The Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Afghanistan New Beginning Programme (ANBP) have joined forces to identify qualified military officers, who have entered the Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration programme (DDR) to fill vacant teaching posts. The DDR process helps soldiers to fit back into society through training and employment.

" 'It is good to have these officers who have witnessed war in Afghanistan,' Denise Duclaux, ANBP's public information officer told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Wednesday. 'These officers are able to teach a new generation not only basic skills necessary but also about Afghanistan’s past and how they can create a new future for themselves'."

"As millions of school children across the world return to the classroom this week, an anticipated half a million boys and girls from the southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan will also be going back to study, as the second annual phase of the country's Back to School campaign begins.

"Afghanistan has two academic years - one running from March until December in areas affected by cold winters, and the second beginning in September in areas where the summers are too hot to hold classes. Most of these 'warm weather' schools are in the south and east of Afghanistan.

"The Afghan Ministry of Education, supported by UNICEF, has been mobilizing supplies of learning and teaching materials for some 580,000 children and 5,500 teachers during the last two months in preparation for the September return."

"Sitting in the middle of the young men and women working together - a sight that would have given the Taliban apoplexy - is a balding, overweight, 42-year-old man in ill-fitting jeans and a checked shirt. He doesn’t look as if he has superstar status, but Humayoon Daneshyar's daily radio phone-in show has revolutionised Afghanistan's staid world of dismal talk-in shows about dry politics. The format has never been heard before, and has taken the battered city by storm. His show, The Youth And Their Problems, may be Western in style, but the problems are definitely Afghan. Daneshyar is called on daily to sort out matters of life and death.

"His army of fans consult him about arguments between brothers, which can be deadly when so many people are armed with Kalashnikovs. Desperate lovers driven to the brink of suicide come to him as their last resort; he has talked people out of taking their own lives. And despairing young people who survived war and the Taliban but can't cope in an Afghanistan striving for peace, seek his assistance in finding a job. Many have been bitterly disappointed by an economy that has failed to deliver the opportunities they had hoped for. All this sound advice and avuncular help has been delivered live on air, making Daneshyar a sort of good-natured Frasier Crane of Kabul."

"Her hair was blowing free behind her. Robina Muqimyar was falling way behind the pack Friday in the Olympic 100-meter sprint, but that didn't matter. She never really had a chance to win, and her gold medal was waiting for her at the starting line. There she was on the world's grandest stage, the Olympic Stadium, losing hopelessly in a race against superstars, including American Gail Devers."

"Afghanistan's economy will maintain its robust growth this year but security, better roads and lower oil prices are needed to keep a lid on inflation, the Governor of the Central Bank of Afghanistan said on Wednesday. Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady said refugees returning home to work the land and generous international largesse fuelled strong growth.

" 'This year, growth will be 16 percent, maybe a little more,' he told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an annual Islamic Development Bank meeting in Tehran. He said this was a slight cooling from 18 percent growth in 2003 and 29 percent in 2002."

"With another few years of foreign assistance he said the economy could settle into the mould of Yemen or Bangladesh. At that stage it would be running growth at three or four percent. The private sector is getting off the ground in areas such as bottling and food oils. Further advances would demand legal adjustments and better security.

"Ahady had no reliable unemployment data but said there was evidence jobs were being created at a healthy rate. Semi-skilled Pakistani labourers have been crossing the border for work. The key to any future investment was the high rate of return from Afghanistan's cheap labour, he added."

"A few, determined Afghan women are making the most of whatever economic opportunities are open to them - mostly in home-related spheres such as craft making. Fahimeh, a 23-year-old former refugee who returned from Iran, is one such entrepreneur, who has overcome numerous obstacles to establish a successful small business. The photos in this essay document a day in the life of her beauty salon named Aroos'e Golha (Bride of Flowers)."

"He was 19 when he took up the gun, firing potshots at the Soviet soldiers who came to swim near his village. Now, after 23 years of fighting, the mujahedeen commander is perched again above the dusty brown shores of Lake Qargha and plotting strategy. His new mission: building an Alpine resort.

"Scores of his former comrades in arms toil at the waterside Moon Cafe, laying stone walkways and painting the dining room in cheery pastels. Others are refurbishing several nearby guesthouses.

"By year's end, four model chalets, prefabricated in Switzerland and priced from $183,000, should be built and ready for inspection by well-heeled Kabulis looking for their own slice of Lucerne just six miles northwest of the Afghan capital.

"And that's just the beginning, if the former commander, Ezatullah Rooz, has his way. His plans call for condos on the nearby - albeit war-ravaged - golf course, a shopping center, hotels and perhaps even a short ski run, kept white with snow machines."

"The Afghan Government is piloting a scheme to teach widowed women the kind of skills necessary to work in the country's tourist industry, which is re-emerging after more than two decades of dormancy due to war and Taliban hostility, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported today.

"More than 30 women are learning skills such as cooking, literacy and home-making, to take advantage of the growing interest from tourists in the site of the Bamiyan Buddha statues and the Band-i-Amir Lake in Afghanistan's central region.

"If the pilot phase works, the scheme will be expanded to help more widowed women left financially vulnerable by the loss of their family's breadwinner, UNAMA spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said."

"Inside Afghanistan, some returnees have established factories; [one of them,] Allahbirdi employs about 90 people, themselves former refugees, in his Kabul Magu Village Carpets. But most production, as before in Pakistan and earlier in a peaceful Afghanistan, is done in homes. The skill rests with the Turkoman, Uzbek, Hazara and Tajik populations - not the Pashtuns who constitute the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan...

"The industry has also become more sophisticated since the days when the carpet business was centred in Kabul and there was little production in Pakistan. Both countries are more conscious they are part of a worldwide market."

"The future of our country depends on the level of relations with our neighbors. We are striving to revive the Great Silk Road in its new modern concept... Afghanistan wants to become a transit country between the countries of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, and is interested in putting various economic projects into practice."

"Afghanistan and Uzbekistan agreed on Sunday to push ahead with a mammoth road-building project intended to make their countries a lucrative trade link between Asia and the Persian Gulf. 'A unique opportunity has appeared for Afghanistan to serve as a transit country between South-East Asia and the Persian Gulf,' Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told journalists.

"Meeting in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, Abdullah and his Uzbek counterpart, Sadyk Safayev outlined plans for Uzbek contractors to build a road across northern Afghanistan between the towns of Andhoi and Herat. The eventual aim - agreed last summer at a summit of Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan's presidents - is to extend the road from Uzbekistan southwards through Afghanistan to Iran's Gulf Coast, possibly supplemented by a railway.

"Uzbekistan has simultaneously been pushing for construction of a rail link eastward through Kyrgyzstan and deep into China in order to create a complete oil transit route between China and the Persian Gulf."

"The Asian Development Bank has offered Pakistan $2 billion to help create 'regional connectivity' into Afghanistan and India with a road and railway network... The objective is to help create a transportation network that's connected with Afghanistan through Chaman on the western border of Pakistan, and India through its eastern parts."

"It is similar in style to traditional buildings found in Afghanistan’s second-biggest city of Kandahar, which lies in a region prone to earthquakes... The building is technically complex but uses material from the area and relies on local craftsmen...

"The architects intend to leave the building management to local experts, hoping to contribute to the transfer of Western architectural know-how to Afghanistan. 'It is important to involve locals in our project. At the moment all the effort in reconstructing Afghanistan goes into engineering work,' said [one of the architects] Graf."

"The villagers were on edge. Two hours earlier the Americans' had arrived in terrifying style... What happened next left the villagers bemused. What did they want the most, Colonel McBride demanded - a new school, a well to be dug, a doctor for the derelict clinic? 'Just tell us what you want and how we can help you,' he urged while the villagers furiously stroked their long Taliban-style beards and stared as if unable to believe their luck.

" 'Have you come to build or come to destroy?' one of them had nervously asked before the meeting. They remember Soviet soldiers whose policy was to carpet-bomb villages, not build schools for them."

"At Southern Guilford High School, Donna Horosko liked basketball and biology, had a long list of friends and entered every dance contest that came along. Twenty-five years later, she's an Army lieutenant colonel, stationed in Afghanistan and helping to rebuild that war-torn country...

"Horosko, as part of the 364th Civil Affairs Brigade out of Portland, Ore., is working with the country's new Ministry of Women's Affairs to offer educational and cultural opportunities to a long-neglected segment of the Afghan population... Since her unit arrived in Afghanistan nine months ago, Horosko has helped in strategic planning, but especially in efforts to bolster the Ministry of Women's Affairs. Army officials have given away thousands of crank-powered radios to families in rural areas, where no electricity is available. Much of the programming targets female audiences, telling women it's OK to register to vote and that they have equal rights."

"Hopkins and Rose Bolza, a midwife from an Arizona Indian reservation who was also volunteering in Afghanistan, worked together to set up a new, clean labor triage room in the main facility.

"Hopkins oversaw installation of emergency lighting in the operating room where doctors had improvised with cell phone light. The new system replaced a risky backup system. 'They were using kerosene lamps,' he said. 'In a room where they used 100 percent oxygen, you can imagine what a catastrophic situation that might cause.'

"He also enlisted the help of the Army Corps of Engineers to repair a pathological incinerator that had not worked for weeks. Uteri, placentas and other body parts sat waiting to be disposed of, Hopkins said."

"Basically, when I first met the Afghanis Nationalist people I wasn't sure what to expect, because of how the media had pictured them... Since working with them I have found they are very friendly people. When they come to work on the base it is my responsibility to make sure none of them wonder off where they were not supposed to be.

"The news media had led me to believe these people could not be trusted. But the more I was around them the more learned of their truthfulness and honesty. As time went by I became increasingly aware of their living situation. When the Taliban was in rule these people were not even allowed to write. This simple task that Americans do without fear would bring severe punishment if caught doing it. Now that the Taliban is no longer in rule, things are changing. It's amazing the little things these people are grateful for. Even a simple ball-point pen. When I passed them out to some women they would make a mark on their hand and sniff it. They were so excited about having a pen."

"Earlier this year, [Retik and Quigley] created Beyond the 11th, a nonprofit foundation to aid widows in areas touched by conflict, and they plan to mark the third anniversary of the attacks by riding their bikes from New York, where their husbands' lives ended, to Boston, where their final flights began...

"The two women plan to ride the first 220 miles of the route together, making their way through back roads of New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and into Massachusetts, where they hope to be met by another 200 riders for the final 30 miles to Boston. Each rider will represent one of the 202 New Englanders killed in the attacks...

"The ride will begin Sept. 9 at the former site of the World Trade Center and end on Sept. 11 at a new memorial in the Boston Public Garden. They are hoping to raise $100,000 for food, clothing, education and job training for Afghan widows and their children.

"With less than three weeks to go before the ride, about 75 riders have signed up to do the final leg with Retik and Quigley. The riders have pledged a total of $30,000 so far to help Afghan widows."

"JAHAN's initial goal was a program that would pair a sponsor with an Afghan child. So far, more than 80 sponsors have signed on. Meskinyar distributes the funds - $30 to $50 a month. She asks only that the family receiving the money make every effort to send the child to school. 'Education is the key,' she said.

"She scours Kabul's ethnically diverse neighborhoods, its tent cities and low-income housing, to make sure the money reaches as many children as possible. Soon, she plans to start a sewing and literacy center to help Afghan women become self-sufficient. She worries that the country will become too dependent on handouts.

"She hopes to market the products in the United States and other countries through retail outlets or the Internet. The women will earn a salary and their children will also be placed in the sponsorship program."

"Rivals in western Afghanistan agreed to a cease-fire last week after the arrival of the Afghan National Army (ANA). With 13,700 soldiers, the fledgling ANA has become a force that President Hamid Karzai has used to douse flareups between warlords who still rule a majority of the country.

"The recent fighting in Afghanistan's western province of Herat is seen by many as an effort to mar the country's first democratic presidential elections, but for Karzai it has also provided the opportunity to flex his muscle and show how far his government has come in the last three years."

"The coalition soldiers came in with overwhelming force, but they used it sparingly. Because there were shots fired, they handcuffed some 22 men in the village of fighting age and above. Then they were searched and questioned. But contrary to popular perceptions, soldiers here operate with very strict rules, and unless they find weapons or other evidence on someone, they cannot be detained, which is similar to how the police operate in the U.S. So after several hours, only two men were detained while the rest had their plastic cuffs cut free and were left to ponder the American soldiers actions, that seemed to have taken them completely by surprise."