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Dateline ACT

Afghanistan 03/02

Preparing to pick up (some of) the pieces in Kabul

ACT Partner NPO Warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan - Jonathan Frerichs (LWR)/ACT International,


Kabul, Afghanistan, January 30, 2002
By Jonathan Frerichs

Working street-to-street and house-to-house, Action by Churches Together (ACT) partners in the Kabul area are preparing the most basic of rehabilitation projects. Destruction, decay and disrepair define whole sections of this city of about two million people, including an estimated 500,000 here because of the recent war and an unrelenting drought.

Anyone visiting Kabul will be forgiven for asking "Where to begin?" The local ACT partners have simple answers.

One is a public works project to remove waste that has accumulated in poor neighborhoods during five years of civic neglect. Workers will be paid with food. "In many places, refuse was just dumped during the Taliban period," said Mohammad Ehsan, program manager for ACT member Norwegian Church Aid (NCA).

Another food-for-work project will help the municipality repair roads that are full of holes. Speeds above ten miles per hour are impossible for long stretches.

Both the clean-up and repair projects will hire some of Kabul’s many unemployed people. Government salaries here have not been paid for months - reportedly not since July - creating a much wider loss of income in the city. The war also shut down many non-governmental organizations, with similar effect.

Four local partners of Norwegian Church Aid are also doing nutritional surveys and feeding programs for malnourished children and nursing mothers in Kabul and two other centers.

One local ACT partner is restarting a quilt-making project. The goal is to provide income to widows and unemployed women and produce 3,500 quilts in three months.

Another group supported by ACT is supplying up to 2,000 quilts to Kabul hospitals short of bedding. Winter temperatures in the Kabul area are often below freezing.

Norwegian Church Aid has stockpiled tents, blankets and water containers to use when refugees and displaced people return home in large numbers, as is expected this spring.