July 10, 2006

Good Morning Kabul

IN KABUL, A FEATURE WINDOW and a bakery illustrate Afghanistan’s decline.

They belong to the capital’s first five-star hotel, Serena, opened by the Aga Khan to symbolise that after 30 years of war the nation was again open for business. The huge window provided a picturesque aspect onto one of the capital’s busiest streets. The Aga Khan told The Bulletin he wanted Kabulis to feel the hotel was proudly theirs, even though room prices at $US300 ($409) a night are about what most Afghans earn in a year. Then, the Ismaili imam decreed the bakery would have prices accessible to all.

Six months later the bakery has shut and the window bricked in lest those same people lob a grenade into the lobby. The economic trickledown that it was hoped the Serena’s presence would spawn for market gardeners and local suppliers hasn’t happened. Food is flown in from Dubai. Instead of munching cheap pastries, urchins outside the shuttered bakery tout bodyguard services at $US10 a day, including Kalashnikov.

Afghanistan is a mess. Almost five years after its post-9/11 liberation from the hated Taleban, there’s little tangible evidence of the $US3bn-a-year international presence to normalise the country. True, there’s a smooth new road to Kabul airport and another to the Taleban strongholds to Kabul’s south – built more for US military access than for Afghan trade. Locals quite reasonably ask, however, where are the hospitals, schools, universities and houses? Sometimes, they riot doing so.

“The people getting rich here are the consultants and security operatives,” says Saad Mohseni, a former Melbourne stockbroker who returned to his homeland in 2002 and set up, with his three Australian-raised brothers and a sister, the country’s first commercial TV and radio station.

He’s referring to the myriad foreigners on as much as $US1000 a day who shadow ministers as “advisers”. The guns they carry are overkill but probably prudent. Save the occasional murderous rampage born of frustration, Kabul is mostly peaceful. ISAF, the NATO-led international lsecurity force, expect attacks in the capital, however, in retribution for the sustained war this summer in the restive southern provinces to root out insurgents.

But the Mohseni clan isn’t doing too badly. Leaving lucrative Australian careers in law, business, media and the financial markets, they put about $A5m of their own money into their media group. Today it employs 250 people, many of whom didn’t have jobs before 9/11, in a heavily fortified studio complex in the suburbs.

Says Mohseni: “We have grown very quickly and become very popular. And importantly for this country, we are independent.” The FM station, Arman, has a spicy mix of news and music alongside Australian commercial FM lines – an instant hit after years of Taleban asceticism. It doesn’t break for prayer five times a day and even has female DJs. But Kabul’s mullahs aren’t happy, and the politicians are less pleased with Mohseni’s Tolo TV.

There are only about five million TV sets in the country, but Mohseni says about 60% of them are tuned to Tolo (Dari for “dawn”) with its mix of chat, entertainment and, another first, penetrating current affairs that the government is doing its best to silence. Afghanistan’s media sector is one of the few areas of the economy that’s on the up. The advertising spending runs to about $13m. The Mohsenis have captured as much as half. “In western terms, that’s nine-tenths of nothing,” says Mohseni. “But remember that didn’t exist in Taleban times.”

He expects the figure to rise to $50m-$60m by 2008 as more multinationals explore the market. Coca-Cola ihas opened a bottling plant and Pepsi is soon to follow.

But the building of a Hyatt hotel, after first sods were turned in 2004 by President Harmid Karzai and then-US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, has so far come to nothing. There’s more than enough rooms at the empty Serena.