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DEADLY BUSINESS IN AFGHANISTAN
By M H AHSAN
Mohammed Naseem plays with his rambunctious two-year-old daughter in his newly built home before jumping into his car for a drive to work in what is arguably one of Asia's most dangerous cities. With a pistol tucked under his seat, he talks about a fellow businessman who has come to him for advice.
"He keeps having these phone calls in the middle of the night," explains Naseem, one of a few dozen remaining Afghan-Americans living in Kandahar. "The speaker says he is Taliban and that he wants two Toyota pickups for the jihad to fight NATO.
"I know some people who have already surrendered to such extortion, but I just told him to be strong and not give in to their demands," Naseem says. "If you give them an inch and they will take a mile."
As an Afghan-American in southern Afghanistan, Naseem is one of dozens of men raised and schooled in the United States who thought they were returning to a peaceful Afghanistan after the US military announced that it had defeated the Taliban after the invasion of 2001. Instead, these entrepreneurs now find themselves trying to make a difference in the middle of a war zone. They say they are harassed and intimidated by both resurgent Taliban and a government that does not care if they stay or return to the US.
"In 2002 and 2003, a lot of Afghans had great hopes and that actually gave some of us living abroad a sense that they could come back and try to apply the things we learned in the West in our home towns," says Naseem, who still has no plans to leave.
While those heady days are over, a core of Afghan-Americans still struggles to make an economic and moral difference in the embattled south. In just four years, Naseem now owns the largest advertising company in southern Afghanistan. He has introduced billboards across the southern Pashtun belt in a country that once learned of products and ideas mostly through word of mouth.
Along with a booming Internet cafe that serves Kandahar's young, curious and ambitious, Naseem's greatest passion is his newspaper, The Red Mountain Weekly. The color newspaper has filled a void and spread its wings across southern Afghanistan. Starting two years ago with 500 copies and six pages, it is up to a 7,000 weekly circulation and 12 pages.
The paper's offices overlook the biggest traffic circle in Kandahar, the scene of suicide bombings and police beatings, depending on the hour of the day.
"Would you like to see a cop taking a bribe?" he asks, grabbing a camera. Below, an Afghan policeman has stopped a motorist and the inevitable is about to transpire.
Naseem has the courage and tenacity to keep printing his newspaper in a dog-eat-dog city that does not reward enterprise or responsible journalism. Kandahar's mayor recently grabbed one of a Red Mountain photographer's cameras and hurled it on to the pavement after a series of stories exposing government corruption and police brutality.
"We go after pretty much anyone making tyranny or trouble," says Naseem.
In Kandahar, that can come in the form of a government official or a suicide bomber.
Red Mountain reporters race by motorbike to the scenes of suicide bombings. Last week, the first major attack in weeks involved a double bombing, the second designed to target the police who arrived at the scene for the first. Later in the day, a government convoy of the minister for information was hit.
"We spend time at the scene and then we go to the family and community leaders," says Naseem, formerly of Seattle and Philadelphia. "Inevitably, we find that men killed in suicide attacks are the primary breadwinners for their family."
And then there are the stories to be done on the Taliban's rampant school burnings.
"I think that, ethically, as a business person, you are obliged to give something back to the community," says Naseem, who hopes to reach the break-even point with his newspaper this year.
As for using too much wood to print his newspaper, Naseem is attacking that problem as well. With a group of local businessmen he has helped start a "Green Kandahar" tree-planting scheme that has 1,500 new seedlings in place across the city and a water truck to keep them growing in desert climes.
Most of the Afghan-Americans in the southern war zone are not nearly as bullish about their future as Naseem, who picked up a sixth sense for business while running a fried-chicken and cheese-steak restaurant in Philadelphia.
Launching a new business in Afghanistan is made more difficult by a government that appears to care little if investors sink or swim.
"Businessmen must survive on their own," says Wahid Faqiri, an Afghan-American who returned to his country after several years of work as a journalist in Washington, DC. "In fact, government officials often exist just to extort bribes and shut down new establishments that don't pay them."
As he talked over a meal with a reporter, the restaurant owner produced a note written by an Afghan government official informing him that his prices were "too high" and that he should report immediately "to discuss the issue".
Nevertheless, if you are an Afghan-American and a Pashtun of a certain age, Kandahar, founded in the 4th century BC by Alexander the Great, still holds a special attraction.
Many young Afghans ended up in the US or Europe during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. Naseem, 32, was smuggled out as a child and linked up with an adoptive family, but has now returned to his real Afghan family, including an aging father.
His friend and next-door neighbor, Iqbal Durani, 37, fought from the age of 14 until 17 as a mujahideen soldier against the Soviet occupation. He finally left in 1988 and took up life in New York City, where he "worked in a kosher Jewish pizzeria, drove a Trans Am, chased American women and listened to rock 'n' roll - mostly Jimmy Hendrix".
In 2002, Durani returned and found a young wife, as did his neighbor and close friend, Naseem. As a construction contractor, Durani is building his own pizzeria and has plans to make "the best pizza in Kandahar" and run a cable-television installation business on the side.
"I had my fun in the United States, but I came to Afghanistan to settle down," he says. "You'll never get me to leave - I love it here."
Most of the Afghan-American businessmen who have stayed on amid the growing strife in southern Afghanistan say family matters anchor them.
"My instinct tells me to go, but my heart tells me to stay," says Afghan-American Abdullah Kamran, 50, whose friends Naseem and Durani describe him as a "born pessimist".
Kamran, who with his brother ran a major leather-coat business out of the Pakistani city of Karachi for nearly a decade, is building a "wedding hall". He also hopes to marry off his 20-year-old daughter in the process.
Also a major construction contractor, Kamran is appalled at the lack of basic services and the breakdown in security. "With 34 countries here to help, it is hard to know whom to blame," he says. "In 2001 and 2002, it wasn't nearly as risky as it is now. The whole world said Afghanistan would be a better place, but look what happened.
"Now you have the Iranians pushing back 30,000 [Afghan] refugees and we can't even find them decent homes to live in - much less the decent security they have in Iran," Kamran says. "If you gave me $1,200 a person, I can put a roof over every head, but that is not how the money is being spent here."
Most southern Afghan businessmen (most also ethnic Pashtuns) complain that Western development assistance, much of it spent on enhanced security for projects and Westerners, has been focused on northern Afghanistan at the expense of impoverished southerners. The US Agency for International Development has $180 million allocated to refurbish and improve the Kajaki Dam in neighboring Helmand province.
American experts trying to bolster the dam's capacity complain that ongoing battles between NATO and the Taliban inhibit their efforts to roll in giant transformers. Without a regular electrical supply, businessmen in Kandahar say that small and large industries will not take root or survive.
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