Chrenkoff

"Wearing a black lambskin hat and traditional striped silk coat over his shoulders, Mr. Karzai took his oath before the aging former king, Zaher Shah. The president himself then swore in his two vice presidents, Ahmed Zia Massoud and Mohammed Karim Khalili, who represent the two largest ethnic minorities, the Tajiks and the Shia Hazaras, after Karzai's own ethnic group, the Pashtuns."

"There are a total of 249 posts in the new parliament. The provinces which have fewer than half a million population will be given nine posts. The provinces which have between half a million and one million people will get 15 posts. Those with between one and two million people will have 19 posts. The provinces with two to three million people will have 23 posts and those with more than three million will get 29 parliamentary posts."

"The Afghan government has launched a new US $312 million project financed by international donors to centralise and equip the country's fragile district administrations...

"The project, entitled the Afghanistan Stabilisation Programme (ASP), is expected to strengthen the authority of the central government beyond the capital Kabul.

" 'Maintaining proper administration and proper buildings and complexes in districts will bridge the gap between Kabul and local administrations,' deputy Interior Minister Helaluddin Hellal [said]... after launching the main phase of ASP...

"There are 364 districts in Afghanistan's 34 provinces and due to years of devastating conflict the local administrations do not have buildings and other necessary public utilities, Hellal said."

"Three years after the fall of the hardline Taliban regime, residents of Afghanistan's capital are celebrating the Eid al-Fitr festival in upbeat mood...

"Wearing a newly tailored traditional Afghan shalwar-kameez trouser suit, electronic engineer Qadratullah said the country was 'reborn' when the Taliban were toppled in Kabul in November 2001 by a US-led military campaign.

" 'I am feeling quite good about what we have in this year's Eid. Compared to the past under the Taliban I feel that we have risen to heaven from the depths of hell,' added the 32-year-old as he marked the end of Ramadan.

"Under six years of Islamic fundamentalist rule, Qadratullah was lashed for failing to grow a beard and his wife was beaten for not wearing the all-enveloping burqa."

"Sitting around a table with their burqas (top to bottom covering veil) on chairs, Arefa Zareh, a school teacher and her fellow women were preparing to broadcast the first trial programme of Quyash (the Sun), a newly established local women's radio station in the northern city of Maimana.

"Radio Quyash is now one of the four local women's radio stations and one of over 30 independent radio stations in the country. It counts as the only independent media outlet in troubled Maimana, the provincial capital of Faryab.

"The new station is expected to tackle the issues of poverty, illiteracy, forced marriages and the rule of the gun, which are among the major concerns of the local community in Faryab province."

"It is late autumn, but still mild enough for Akbar Nusrati to enjoy lunch in the garden of his newly reconstructed house. Until last month, this small patch of earth with its two apple trees was where Akbar, his wife and their three children ate, slept and washed - their only shelter a makeshift tent. With the frigid winter only weeks away, Akbar is grateful to be back in the home he and his family fled during Afghanistan's civil war 13 years ago.

"Following the fall of the Taliban in 2001, hundreds of other families from the village of Qarabagh, 50 km north of the capital Kabul, have also taken the decision to return after years living as refugees in Iran and Pakistan. For most, what they found when they arrived was rubble...

"The help, which is provided by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has enabled more than 5,000 families in Qarabagh to repair or completely rebuild their homes. In the Shomali Plain, some 14,000 families have received UNHCR assistance and more than 300 water points have been established.

"The UNHCR investment in Qarabagh is a fraction of its nation-wide programme to assist the more than 3 million Afghans who have returned since 2002."

"Barely three years ago, at a time when women in Afghanistan were not permitted even to leave their homes, the idea of a woman performing on stage - and in mixed company! - seemed inconceivable. Any woman who did so risked life and limb.

"All the more astonishing, then, that a theater festival opening in Kabul will include a play written by a woman (a teenage schoolgirl, to be precise), with real actresses, about the brutal suppression of women under the country's now-ousted Taliban government.

" 'To those people who want to keep us away from the stage, I say: You have no right to interfere,' says 16-year-old playwright/director Naseeba Ghulam Mohammed, whose 'Toward Brightness' is among the plays women will perform during the eight-day national festival. 'In Afghanistan today, men and women are equal'."

"Two years ago, Marina Gulbahari was a street urchin begging for scraps from the tables of Kabul restaurants. If she was lucky, she might get a few crumpled notes or kebab leftovers wrapped in nan. If she was unlucky, the black-turbaned Taliban police would beat her. That was before she became the biggest name in Afghan cinema.

"Now, after a stunning performance in last year's critically acclaimed film Osama, Marina, aged 14, has become the face of Afghanistan's resurgent film industry at foreign film festivals, hailed as a precociously talented actress with an exciting future whose natural ability is drawn from her traumatic upbringing amid war and turmoil.

"Her emergence is the most extraordinary story of Kabul's film-making renaissance. From being persecuted by the Taliban, who burnt all the film stock they could, directors are again making movies. A new generation desperately short of cash and equipment but not of enthusiasm is buzzing with projects and ideas, determined to create a uniquely Afghan creative film genre."

"Since April 2002, the World Bank has committed US$317 million in grants and an additional US$441 million in no-interest loans, known as 'credits' for development projects in Afghanistan... In addition, the Bank is administering six grants, totally US$27.6 million from the Japan Social Development Fund and a US$1.5 million grant for training teachers from the World Bank Post Conflict Fund."

"More than 22,000 ancient cultural treasures from Afghanistan, feared lost or destroyed after decades of war and Taliban rule, have been taken out of dusty crates and safes in Kabul and inventoried for safekeeping, said a U.S. archeologist...

"The objects, including 2,500 years' worth of gold and silver coins and ancient sculptures, represent a 'Silk Road' of goods once traded from China, India, Egypt, Greece, Rome and ancient Afghanistan.

" 'By the end of the Taliban's reign, most of us thought there was nothing left, just destruction and despair,' said National Geographic fellow and archeologist Fred Hiebert, who led an inventory project of the items.

"Many of the treasures were once on display in the Kabul Museum, which was shelled several times and lost its roof and door. Inventory cards were lost by fire and neglect, making it difficult to track down any of the items.

" 'This project has been an enormous boost for Afghanistan - finding the treasures intact and then working with the outstanding team to inventory each one of them, preserving our heritage for our children,' said Afghanistan's minister of information and culture, Sayed Makhdoom Raheen, in a statement released by National Geographic."

"French archeologists searching for the colossal Sleeping Buddha in Bamiyan province have uncovered what could be the long-missing statue's foot, raising hopes of a major new discovery from Afghanistan's ancient Buddhist past.

"Ever since the fundamentalist Taliban destroyed Bamiyan's 1,500-year-old Standing Buddhas in 2001 because they were 'un-Islamic,' attention has been focused on the hunt for the much larger Sleeping Buddha, described in the travel diary of the seventh-century Chinese monk Xuan Zang and depicted in cave paintings at the historic site in the Hindu Kush mountains west of Kabul."

"Through 25 years of war and drought, the hardy roses of Afghanistan never stopped growing. They climbed through the gardens of government buildings, the plush Kabuli villas of Arab fighters, and kept sprouting in the shattered remains of bombed homes long after their owners fled.

"But with Taliban rulers busy fighting for most of the late 1990s, gardens fell into neglect and disrepair.

"In the waves of joy that flowed from the collapse of the hardline regime in late 2001, Afghans rediscovered their gardens and a revival of roses swept the capital."

"At a resort that became a battlefield, Afghans teed off... in their country's first open golf tournament in more than 30 years.

"As is still the way in Afghanistan, the first shot of the day at the Kabul Golf Club went to the local militia commander, applauded by his men with shouldered Kalashnikovs.

"But organisers say they hope their tournament, contested by 40 local caddies in a picturesque valley just outside the capital, will help bring a new era in which the only risks are from golf balls, not bullets, flying down the fairways.

"The club describes itself as the best and only course in Afghanistan and promises 'golf with an attitude'. Hazards are unorthodox, from the bombed out club house below the dramatic first tee on a ledge high up the valley, to the odd spent shell or scurrying lizard...

"A lack of water means there is not a patch of grass to be seen and the greens are actually 'browns' made from oiled sand, yet the course has become popular with a few dozen hardy souls among Kabul's 2,000-strong foreign community."

"On a reporting trip to Afghanistan in December 2001, six weeks after the Taliban was routed, I met Jawad Sepehri Joya at a Red Cross rehabilitation facility in Kabul. Although he was just 16 and confined to a wheelchair because of polio, Jawad was not a patient. Instead, he was working at his part-time job programming computers for the Red Cross. And in near flawless English, this young man - who had never attended any school, who had been illiterate until 1998 and who had never left Kabul - earnestly confided that he wanted to go to college in America."

"Privatization of State Owned Enterprises will soon begin and construction of three industrial parks is near completion. Other accomplishments include:

- Issuance of more than 6,000 Business Licenses and 13,000 Tax Identification Numbers in Afghanistan
- Relicensing of three State Owned Banks, licensing of three local banks, and the licensing of four Foreign Banks
- 80% of connected banks currently submitting daily reports
- International Fund Transfer payments total 4,012 transfers for the year...

"Customs revenue generation figures indicate another significant improvement in Afghanistan's overall customs operations. Since March 2004, the beginning of the Afghan fiscal year, $76.4 [million] was generated in customs revenue - at a rate significantly higher than last fiscal year. Customs operations in Afghanistan are the largest contributor to the country's total domestic revenue Border operations are improving and progress continues with the commencement of Customs Mobile Units, which generate additional revenue."

"The first [Employment Services Centre] was established in the capital earlier this year. Nearly 1,000 job seekers and 300-350 vacancies have been referred to the centre in the first three months of establishment. 'Out of these we have confirmed about 10 to 15 percent placement which is not so bad in the beginning,' the [ILO]'s chief adviser noted.

"The other eight centers will be established in the next 12 months in major cities of the country. ESCs are also expected to create a database on training providers for those out of work."

"Although there is a road running from Kabul in the east of the country to the main southern city of Kandahar, before the bridge was built most of Afghanistan's trade centered on the western city of Herat.

"That meant goods had to travel almost a full circle around the eastern edge of Afghanistan and back up to its western border in Herat before crossing to Iran for transport to the Gulf, or, be hauled south through Pakistan to Karachi.

"If plans to build a multi-billion dollar ring-road come to fruition, that could change.

"A further 200 kilometers of roads connecting the border town of Zaranj to the town of Delaram in western Afghanistan's Farah province is being constructed with Indian government help to create a ring road circling the country."

"ADB is contributing a grant of $1.2 million toward the $2.06 million total cost of the technical assistance (TA) and will administer a grant of $760,000 equivalent provided by the Government of Canada. The Government of Afghanistan will finance the remaining $100,000 equivalent.

"The TA and proposed project aim to improve water resource management at all levels in Afghanistan, from farm level to basin management. It will also rehabilitate, modernize and develop new irrigation and water resource infrastructure, lay the foundations of improved agricultural productivity, and ensure the integrity of watershed resources."

"After a three-decade absence, the annual Carpet Festival, celebrating what’s believed to be a 2,500-year tradition,has shown its colours again in the northern province of Jowzjan.

"The festival, which was last held in 1974, returned to Jowzjan on November 22. It used to be held each autumn in either Jowzjan's Aqchah district or Andkhoi in neighbouring Faryab province, but was suspended during the years of fighting.

"Despite a driving rainstorm, more than 10,000 people came, including United States Ambassador Zalmai Khalilzad and Afghan commerce minister Mustafa Kazemi."

"Hessamuddin Hamrah, president of the Afghan Tourism Organization, is confident that foreign visitors will come back. But since the fall of the Taliban, his agency has hosted only 35 tour groups, comprising 247 individuals from around the globe, mostly from Western Europe and Japan. 'We hope a lot of tourists will come,' he said, 'because it's really important to us for economic revival.'

"Admittedly, Afghanistan's reputation as a haven for terrorists - and as one of the most heavily mined places on the planet - has been a poor advertisement for tourism. 'The news they hear from Afghanistan is bad,' Mr. Hamrah said. 'But the security in Afghanistan now is not bad. ... We send groups out, they go there and come back very happy.'

"Lonely Planet, the bible of budget travelers, published a section on Afghanistan in the latest edition of its Central Asia guidebook - previous editions said simply: 'Don't Go!' Other guidebooks plan to include information and advice about the country."

"Local group members have enlisted area schools and colleges to help Jalalabad schools, where teachers sometimes have no textbooks and base their lessons on decades-old notes... Rotary clubs in San Diego provided books and computers for Jalalabad's university, and an elementary school in the city has become a sister school to Doyle Elementary in La Jolla."

"When the United States began bombing Afghanistan in late 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, a father named Ayub Azizi cheered the invasion. His wife secretly taught their four daughters during the Taliban's oppressive reign, a time when girls were denied an education. But the end of restrictions didn't solve another problem: how to rebuild schools that had fallen into disrepair, if they existed in places at all, after a generation of warfare that started with the Soviet invasion in 1973 [sic].

"Five young Americans, all in their early to mid-30s, responded by creating a non-profit organization, Solace International, that raises money to build schools for girls in Afghanistan. They found that their lack of bureaucracy helped them to be faster and more flexible in getting projects done.

"The group, which originated among a group of friends in Anchorage, Alaska, and uses Seattle as one of its bases, has completed six schools in less than two years at a cost of $25,000 to $30,000 each."

"My brother, Ed, is a career Army Offices. He has been deployed to Afghanistan and is now working for Central Command. He has spent quite a bit of time traveling around the country but in his 'spare' time, he is working with orphans. There are 768 boys in Tahai-Maskan, a home for boys aged 8 to 18. There are 177 girls and 380 boys in Allaudi, a boys and girls home for boys up to 13 and girls up to 16. The kids are very poor, but their prospects are getting better every day. Ed's section is running the program. He is the Officer in Charge and the soldiers who are working at the orphanages are all volunteers. They are assigned to CFC-A, Combined Forces Command Afghanistan, based in Kabul."

"While students were anxiously awaiting the end of the 2003-04 school year, two Bellevue girls were busy campaigning for donations to provide the one thing students in Afghanistan were in desperate need of - school supplies... In April, Meghan Frank, 13, and Mallory Ubbelohde, 13, from Logan Fontenelle Middle School, decided to prevent their classmates? school supplies from going to waste by coordinating a donation drive in their school, as well as other schools in the area."

"While the personnel at the field hospital help Afghan nationals who have been injured, they have offered a helping hand in other ways as well. One of the doctors at the hospital is working with local officials to help them improve their local healthcare system. Hospital personnel also work with patients as they come in to teach them better health habits.

"They've also helped children at school. 'One of the things that I like is adopting a village,' Koertner said. 'As far as schools go, the only requirement is they have their own pen and paper.' Hospital personnel help gather necessary school supplies, and also give donations of clothing to local children."

"Now, the CMOC is helping the people understand how to use tools in place throughout the country for those kinds of requests. The Afghan government is made up of ministries and departments that handle everything from road construction and repair to medical facilities and schools. 'While most CMOCs and (Provincial Reconstruction Teams) are still handling the requests themselves, the people of Khwost are learning to rely on their own government,' [Horn] said. The process was slow to start, but now it has taken hold and the people seem very happy with the help and support they are receiving from the CMOC team."

"With a final score of 3-1, the Parwan youth soccer team recently defeated its coalition visitor, Team Eagle, at Parwan's home field in Charikar village. After 60 minutes of 'futbol,' the crowd of nearly 1,000 cheered and rushed onto the field to congratulate the home team on a solid victory.

"But a victory wasn't the only thing solidified with the match-up between the coalition team and its central-Afghanistan hosts. The match reinforced the coalition's good intentions and the progress that allowed personnel to spend a peaceful morning playing soccer in the local community.

" 'It was beautiful. In the future, I hope this can happen again,' said Wahid Qanit, a youth soccer coach and interpreter for base operations on Bagram Air Base. And with all that is planned for the future, it should happen again. 'I wanted to use soccer as a medium to reach out to the local community,' said 1st Lt. Joshua Walters, 2nd Battalion, 265th Air Defense Artillery Regiment and base operations intelligence officer. Walters also is a full-time high school soccer coach in his hometown of Tallahassee, Fla. 'The idea is to use soccer to reach out to the youth,' he said. 'They are the ones who will be making decisions about the future of Afghanistan pretty soon'."

"Afghan National Army soldiers with the 3rd Brigade from Pol-e-Charkhi are learning to appreciate what it means to do a little extra for their fellow citizens... One way they are doing this is at the Kabul Children's Hospital. The ANA's 3rd Brigade is sponsoring the hospital through many projects intended to get the hospital in better shape and enabling it to provide enhanced support for local children."

"The US-led military in Afghanistan... said it had been contacted by Taliban members willing to lay down their weapons following an arms-for-amnesty offer by the US envoy to Afghanistan. US military commanders operating in south and south-eastern Afghanistan have been contacted by Taliban declaring their desire to 'join the peaceful political process,' US-led military spokesman Major Mark McCann, told a news briefing in Kabul... He also said there had been 'contacts with senior (provincial) government officials and military representatives here in Kabul'."

"The commander, who was one of the most powerful warlords in Kabul, with more than 2,000 troops at his disposal, now leans more towards economic development than battling rival militias. 'I am thinking of creating a paper factory in Kabul, we need a lot of paper for school text books and it will be good business,' said Toofan.

"He had been studying business when he left university to fight to remove the Soviets more than 20 years ago. He was also involved in the civil war during the 1990s and at one time controlled much of the suburbs south of the capital. The 50-year-old also played a role in ousting the Taliban as one of the leading Northern Alliance commanders...

" 'All of my soldiers have been disarmed, so now I have no armed men except my bodyguards,' he said, adding that now he needed professionals to help him set up a factory. 'Not all of the commanders are bad guys, we are very elegant and will prove our talent in the rehabilitation of Afghanistan as well'."

"Eight-year-old Mohammed Imran thinks Jaweed, the local shopkeeper in this eastern Afghan village is 'cool' because his shop is full of sweets. 'Uncle shopkeeper is a cool man -- he has got lots of candies,' Mohammed told AFP as he hung around outside the store. But it wasn't long ago that local children were scared of Jaweed and people insulted the 28-year-old for being a gun-toting militiaman -- one of around 60,000 fighters loyal to local warlords and commanders across Afghanistan.

"Jaweed is one of almost 25,000 fighters who have laid down their weapons as part of a UN-backed Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program which was launched in Afghanistan last May and is almost at the halfway point. After more than two decades of war, the country is awash with weapons and privately disarmament staffs think there may be as many as five guns per militiaman, most of whom owe allegiance to local commanders.

"But while only 25,000 guns have been collected, officials from the program hope that if they can break the link between local commanders and their poorly paid fighters and offer people an alternative livelihood, many like Jaweed would jump at the chance. 'I'm happy with my new life -- very, very happy,' he said at his booth-like shop in Khushgunbad village some 15 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province.

"The ex-fighters are given the choice of working in agriculture, training for the police force, national army or de-mining, or setting up a small business like the shopkeeper, who said was sick of toting a gun for a living. 'I was tired of weapons, I wanted something different so I decided to become a shopkeeper,' said the ethnic Pashtun, who has fought to feed his family for more than a decade."

"In northern Afghanistan, the national highway police are now manning security checkpoints once operated by armed militias controlled by of local commanders. The change has come as a big relief to those who regularly travel by road here.

"For years, travellers not only had to pay out 'fees' levied by the militias, but also faced the risk of being accosted and robbed - even beaten or killed - when they drove along the major highways between northern cities. But now uniformed members of Afghanistan's central police have replaced the militia gunmen, whom drivers referred to as 'highway bandits'.

"Sarajuddin, driving a Toyota Corolla, said he has travelled the main road from Mazar-e-Sharif to Sheberghan for the last 13 years. He said motorists were regularly charged illegal 'road taxes' during the day - and ambushed and robbed by night - at checkpoints run by gunmen. 'Those who controlled the checkpoints taxed passengers and drivers under pretexts such as "chai puli" [tea money], "jeb kharchi" [pocket money] and lunch costs, and if someone didn't pay, he would be beaten and robbed,' said Sarajuddin.

" 'We didn't mind paying those taxes, but the most frightening thing was that the armed men who controlled the checkpoints by day became looters at night... and they would even kill someone if they didn't like him. For all those reasons, I haven't driven at night for the last few years.'

"For Sarajuddin, the deployment of national police meant that 'last week I travelled safely with four passengers during the night'."

"Kirk Kobak took his turn as a volunteer assistant soccer coach at Prairie and Fort Vancouver high schools 12 years ago, but his biggest coaching job ever was in Afghanistan.

"Army Sgt. 1st Class Kobak and three other U.S. soldiers worked for eight months this year training dozens of Afghan soldiers to be army recruiters. They set up a recruiting system that has built the three-year-old U.S.-backed Afghan National Army from 7,000 soldiers in March to 17,000 now. Afghanistan's goal is 70,000 troops by 2007.

"Kobak said his four-man team worked 61/2 days a week training 263 recruiters and assigning them to 19 National Army Volunteer Centers across the nation. The goal is 35 recruiting stations, one in each Afghan province.

" 'It was the greatest experience in my 21 years in the Army,' said Kobak, 39, who returned from his volunteer tour in Afghanistan to his Vancouver apartment just before Thanksgiving. 'If I had it to do over again, I'd volunteer again,' he said. That's despite sandstorms, 120-degree heat, and rocket-propelled grenades frequently flying over the compound where he worked and exploding nearby. 'It was like walking into a pizza oven,' said Kobak, who now works as an Army recruiter in Portland."