Shoddy Reconstruction Angers Afghans

[The Straight Story]

Shoddy Reconstruction Angers Afghans
By Fariba Nawa, New America Media (06-06-06)

KABUL, Afghanistan—I am writing this in my apartment in one of the “posh” new buildings constructed in 2004 near downtown Kabul. The shiny structure is five stories tall with tinted windows. My roommate and I pay $300 a month in rent, the going price in such buildings. Few locals can afford such relative luxury—a civil servant's salary is just $50 a month. And this is no Trump Towers.

Foreign dignitaries and television cameras see only the shiny windows and new-looking construction. Inside, our bathroom drains emit the stench of sewage because of faulty plumbing. The pipes in the walls leak constantly, and the lightest touch sends disintegrated wallboard cascading to the floor. There's no insulation in the walls, and the gaps in our misshapen door and window frames allow icy winds to blow directly into the apartment. As temperatures drop below zero in the winter, we get 15 hours of power for the week.

Very little in Afghanistan could be considered well-made. Soviet-era construction is notoriously flimsy. But for sheer lack of durability, you need look no further than some of the reconstruction projects undertaken in just the last few years.

For example, a U.S.-funded highway in the northern provinces of Afghanistan is disintegrating even before it has been completed. By the time construction materials were purchased, project money had trickled through so many agencies and contractors that all those contractors could afford were second-rate goods. The resulting paved road is little improvement over the dirt one it replaced.

The $15 million for the project originally came from USAID, which gave it to the United Nations Office of Project Services, which in turn hired the Louis Berger Group as a consultant. The UN also contracted with the Turkish firm Limak to build the road itself, and Limak hired an Afghan-American company, ARC Construction Co.

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