Kabul Today
by Warren Coats
Issue 140 - September 30, 2009

Guns and traffic are the two most conspicuous features of Kabul, along with the utter poverty and collapsed structures everywhere. I just came back from a little walk up and down my street and a few side streets. They are all enclosed at either end with barricades and armed guards. My street, on which sits the IMF guesthouse, has six barricades spaced out from one end to the other, two with zig zig concrete approaches, a dozen armed pillboxes and about 50 or 60 armed guards.

Behind the sand bags and high concrete walls are houses like mine, the Canadian Embassy, the British Embassy, the World Bank and a few others. You can’t see any of them from the street. The side streets are even more cluttered with barriers. The guards find my strolls amusing, I think, as they wave me on through their respective checkpoints with a smile. The weather out today is wonderful. The nearby Himalayan Mountains—the other most conspicuous feature of Kabul—were shining beautifully in the sun.

Guns—AK 47s mainly—are everywhere, inside the central bank and out. You just get used to it. Driving between the IMF guesthouse and the central bank we always pass a number of pickup trucks with three or four guys in the back with machine guns. Some are police. Some are dressed in black with black masks covering their entire faces (not just their mouths cowboy style). It can be kind of spooky. The masked ones are not as usual.

As usual, there are several Canadians staying in our guesthouse. These guys are preparing for a major irrigation/farming project near Kandahar that involves repairing a dam and levies, introducing more efficient irrigation techniques and equipment, training maintenance people, working with farmers to introduce new crops (poppies don’t need much water so this opens up broader options), adjustments in processing plants, establishing markets for the new crops and transportation to get them there, and political negotiations with the surrounding village chiefs to obtain their buy in and cooperation (some of the land along the waterway is owned by Taliban).

My Canadian friends commented how shockingly large a share of the project’s costs went for security (one of their cars had already been hit by gun fire). I replied that five years from now a congressional (Parliamentary) inquiry would notice and refer to the large and wasteful payments to securities contractors who made big profits (if they survived). Did someone think we could have a war cheaply? A private American security company has gotten into trouble here recently. I hope this does not give outsourcing a bad name because it is generally a very good and efficient thing to do.

Traffic has gone from bad to worse. The economy is growing rapidly (around 10 percent per year for the last seven years) and people keep buying more cars. But as security has deteriorated, more and more roads are closed to regular traffic or more checkpoints erected, so more cars are trying to travel fewer roads. Those still moving their commerce by donkey cart and wheel borrow have an advantage. The IMF has three heavy armored cars with three very skilled drivers. In my seven and a half years of coming here never once have they hit or even grazed anything (or anyone). Thus I guess I can still believe in miracles.

Warren Coats is an international financial consultant.

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