Maiwandi

Re-Doing Kabul

by Ajmal Maiwandi

Historically war has influenced the design of the city. From ancient Chinese cities to the medieval city with its small narrow streets and fortifications, the city has been a catalyst onto which the imprint of the uncertain and volatile history of conflict has left its trace. The shift from war being fought in battlefields to the unfolding of conflict in the city itself, directed at the city, marks a new era of the fragmentation of nation-states toward the emergence of various new identities struggling for power. From the use of bomber planes in the Second World War to the video game technology of the Gulf War, it has become clear that the city no longer has the same relationship to warfare. The complex enigmatic world of weapons technology has overcome the simple stone, steel and concrete city and has imposed a new matrix of targeting which circumscribes the physical complexity of the city and delivers destruction with pinpoint precision. This antiseptic digital distancing is a strong contrast to the ‘blood and guts’ imagery, which shocked the American public and provoked the pacifist movements of the 1960’s. On the contrary, enlistment for the military in the United States has dramatically increased and the wars of the future promise rocketing TV ratings and vast economic opportunities in unrelated sectors of the economy.

War has also become a game of un-equals. The Nuclear arms race insured for the past fifty years that no industrialised country could risk 'going nuclear' during a war. In the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union used the world as an interactive chessboard, avoiding direct confrontation with each other. The major centres of conflict today are a legacy of this covert game. Many other third-world countries have provided the stage and actors for the battle between Capitalism and Communism. Since the fall of the Soviet block and the end of the Cold War, the West has lost interest in these distant places, but the cycles of conflict continue and without sustained aid to help develop alternative economies and education, they turn on each other, as in the case of Yugoslavia, or against the nations which once exerted control over them, as happened in Chechnya. Direct confrontation between the Superpowers of the world, as witnessed in WWII, will probably never happen again on that scale. The future will continue to see many small conflicts where the so-called archaic world will battle the architects of a new world order. In this conflict the city will become the new frontier and its diversity and intensity the new target.

One of the squares on the chessboard of Superpower foreign policy is Afghanistan and for the past ten years the conflict there has raged over the control of the capital city of Kabul.

The Doing:

Beginning with the first king of modern Afghanistan, several programs were implemented in various attempts to modernise the country. These efforts were stymied within the rural population but made considerable progress in the urban centres and particularly in Kabul. By the mid-1970’s, after several decades of forced modernisation fuelled by internationally funded projects, Kabul had become a modern oasis. During the Cold War, Afghanistan was a neutral country that became a prime focus of both the Soviets and the Americans because of its strategic location in Central Asia. Hundreds of millions of dollars were pumped into the country by the World Bank and the former Soviet Union. In this effort to modernise, the World Bank alone invested over $230 million dollars between 1956-1975. (World Bank Annual Report)

The Soviets and Americans were responsible for nearly every major infrastructure and large-scale building project in the country. The Soviets were responsible for the bread silo in Kabul, the Salang highway and tunnel linking Kabul with the northern cities, the highway between Kandahar and Herat, the Polytechnic University in Kabul; most importantly, its technical advisors helped train and equip the Afghan army. The Americans for their part were responsible for: the highway project linking Kabul to Kandahar; the Airport facilities in Kabul and Kandahar; the Helmand Valley irrigation project and electrical dam; the highway connecting Kabul to Jalalabad; the University in Kabul; the electrical dam in Soribi; the Noor Eye Hospital in Kabul; and the affiliation of Afghan Airlines with Pan American Airlines. These projects created an international atmosphere in Kabul, which became one of the only places in the world, where the West and the East mingled openly. But by 1978 the political climate in the country was shifting towards communism, and soon afterwards American aid to Kabul ended, forcing Afghanistan to depend solely on the Soviet Union.

simulation

In the drive to modernise the city, the mayor of Kabul approved a controversial plan to cut a street through the old city forming a grand strip flanked modern buildings. The destruction of the high-density low-rise old city fabric resulted in the abrupt separation of the old centre from the river and the modern city centre. Jade Maiwand was lined with new typologies of six-story modern buildings painted in bright colours and became the ‘Oxford Street’ of Kabul consisting of mixed-use programs including retail, office, and entertainment. This modern armature was consciously intended to present a new façade for the city.

ruralisation

For years there was a perception that if one could modernise Kabul, then the rest of Afghanistan would follow. Instead the extreme condition of a modernised enclave surrounded by a rural environment, void of the modern elements, emerged. As the rural populations migrated into Kabul, they brought with them the desire to reconstruct familiar village environments. This is evident in the rural typology that exists within the city limits. In a survey in 1985 it was estimated that “up to 80% of the buildings in Kabul were mud-brick constructions” (Bademli, R. 1985). The practicality of modernisation presented the villagers with evident advantages in their agricultural communities, but it was the ideologies accompanying the modernisation that were difficult to absorb. The modern developments of the city were constantly being undermined by the integration of the migrating rural population into the city, as they exported into the city their traditional modes of living. They also began squatting public land and building mud brick and straw-thatched houses, which were inexpensive and for which the materials were readily available. As open land became scarce, these settlements continued to expand up into the mountains, where by necessity mutations occurred in the typology.

sponge

Kabul does not absorb Afghanistan. The negotiation of influences entering Kabul from abroad created a precarious situation in the city. The political and cultural elite embraced these external ideas as a force for changing a traditionally archaic society, but the rural population looked upon the influences from Kabul with distrust and suspicion. Simultaneously the changes, envisioned by the political elite, were occurring slowly as Kabul became the economic centre of Afghanistan, accounting for more than “66% of the industries and 69% of the workforce” (Kazimee, B. 1977). This distancing of the urban elite from the rural villagers led to the fragmentation that occurred when different ideologies entered the country.

island

Kabul lies at the crossroads of ethnic boundaries in Afghanistan, being chosen as the capital specifically for this reason, and was at the hub of political, educational, economic, diplomatic and military activity. As the spoke in a wheel, all the roads in Afghanistan lead into Kabul and the control of the city is seen by the Afghans to signify the control of the country. But the actual control over the daily affairs of the people in the countryside often lay with tribal elders, local mullahs or provincial governors. This decentralization of power hindered the rate of exchange between the government and the provinces and reduced the effectiveness of modernization.

courtship

The international development aid that was pumped into Afghanistan by the Soviets and the Americans was aimed at wooing the strategically important country. The more the Afghan administration protected its neutrality the more development aid flowed into the country. This hyper-modernisation had several affects on the country. One major concern was that the culture of international aid dependency had transformed the Afghans into a docile population unable to generate and maintain long-term initiatives necessary for modernisation. This aid also came at a price as Afghans were expected to accept the ideologies and politics of the various donor countries, eventually leading to social and political fragmentation and the consequent Soviet invasion.

portal

One of the basic strengths of a city is its ability to contain a flourishing range of diversity and intensity. In the case of Kabul, this diversity occurred as the city became the mixing grounds for diverse cultural and social entities as well as the international presence. Kabul became a neutral zone in an ethnically diverse country and one of the only places in the world where Soviet and American nationals mixed openly during the height of the Cold War. In 1968, Kabul was a place roughly modelled on modern western cities of the time. Western trends in fashion and lifestyles found their way into the city via the countless diplomats and foreign nationals who flocked to the region for it natural unspoiled beauty, authentic customs, and cheap drugs. Expensive cars and the latest European hair styles made their way into the city, where men and women shared in all the usual entertainment and activities found in a modern city. Swimming pools, cinemas, festivals, markets and athletic fields were places where the youth mingled in a very different environment than their elders.

hybrid

In the context of a city experiencing major expansions in the twentieth century, occurring alongside the destruction of historic sites, the desire for development seems to have replaced the need for historic preservation. The urban development programs of the 1950’s and 1960’s generated buildings in larger scales and constructed from new materials. These randomly placed developments in the urban fabric became generators for a modern typology of residential buildings using concrete and steel. Simultaneously, large numbers of mud brick houses were being built sporadically in the squatter settlements and low income areas. This indigenous typology became the infill of the city, weaving like an intricate web, and surrounding the randomly placed islands of modern buildings. Adding to this mix were the Soviet military buildings and large-scale residential developments of the 1980’s that injected yet even more foreign typologies to the fabric of the city. While the self-built mud brick house comes closest to what might be called the vernacular, the houses built in concrete represented a desire to join the West in their modes of living. “In more recent times, from the fifties onwards, only a marginal production is abandoned to anarchy, while the presuppositions of the old contrast tend to stiffen into an arid alternative, into that dualism which sees the countries of the third world divided between the search for local identity and the acceptance of the new multinational style.” (N. Dupree, 1980) These developments manifest the attitude of Kabulis who no longer wanted to be condescendingly considered as peasants living in primitive environments, but rather as cosmopolitan, educated, progressive people, capable of achieving similar standards as those found in the West.

The Undoing:

With the Soviet invasion in 1979, Kabul was transformed overnight into a medieval city-state, occupied by the largest military contingent of the invading army. These events had enormous effects on the development of the city, as the Soviets pushed forward with large-scale housing projects. Prefabricated DDR style ‘Plattenbau’ block apartments were constructed near the Kabul airport to house the Soviet army. Areas surrounding military installations saw dramatic change and expansion. The city was colonised and the customs and lifestyles of the Soviets were projected onto and absorbed by the city. The major urban centres were in the hands of the Soviets while the countryside was in the hands of the resistance. The population of Kabul inflated as war ravaged the countryside, causing rural populations to flee to the capital. Squatter settlements and unregulated construction soared in the mid-1980’s, adding a strange new rural quality to the modern capital city.

The major destruction of Kabul occurred between 1992 and 1996 after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the fall of Kabul to various warring factions in 1992. Throughout the war, the urban identity of Kabul was transformed continuously from a modern capital, to the military and political headquarters of an invading army, to the besieged seat of power of a puppet regime, to the frontlines of factional conflict resulting in the destruction of two-thirds of its urban mass, to the testing fields of religious fanaticism which erased from the city the final layers of urban life, to the target of an international war on terrorism, to a secure gateway into Afghanistan for the internationally backed peace efforts, and presently, to a symbol of a new phase in international unilateralism.

siege

With the passing of different armed factions and their various ideologies, the neutral population of Kabul was forced to embrace their occupiers. This continuous shift in power cultivated a culture of complicity, which forced the inhabitants of Kabul to accept this fluctuation of alliances as a method of survival. Those who resisted either left of their own accord or were openly persecuted. This division, which sometimes took the form of ethnic persecution, saw neighbours and friends turn against one other as means of survival. The regular cycle of people leaving areas of conflict and returning once the situation has stabilised contributed to the large influx of civilians into and out of Kabul.

paradox

The diversity and intensity that made Kabul thrive in times of stability escalated the devastation of the city when the internecine civil conflict erupted after the Soviet withdrawal. Strength in peacetime degenerates into weakness and fragmentation during war. The various groups turned on one another, destroying the fabric of the city in the process. The identified areas of opposing groups became targets of looting, destruction, and displacement, similar to the situation in Beirut, where parts of the city were isolated and targeted. However, whereas in Beirut these areas were able to regenerate in smaller scale the informal facilities of civic life and continue to flourish, in Kabul this fragmentation did not lead to a decentralised system of self-sufficient enclaves. Migration of the urban population, from one section of the city to another, also exacerbated local resources.

flux

With the dissolution of government institutions that normally regulate private and public distinctions, a radical blurring of categories occurred. Internally displaced people began to occupy public land and governmental and civic buildings, transforming them into residential spaces. This confusion of fixed categories mixed with the necessity of survival opened up entirely new ways of occupying the urban environment, producing a kind of hyper-public space, which was constantly transformed. This resulted in animals grazing in parks intended for people, bathers using the dirty waters of the Kabul River to do their washing, and the spontaneous appropriation of empty or abandoned buildings.

geography

The defining natural feature of Kabul, its mountains, was utilised as an instrument in its destruction. The area of Demazang, the most devastated section of the western part of Kabul, was systematically destroyed by artillery fire from the peaks of the Asmai Mountain. The geographic lines of the city were reinforced as boundaries and became lines of division and destruction. Jade Maiwand, which was the widest and densest street in the centre of Kabul, became the frontline of two opposing factions and, as a result, was reduced to rubble. The Kabul River and the mountain pass, linking southwestern Kabul to the northeastern section of the city, also served as the front line of several flare-ups of the civil conflict. The tactics of war had absorbed and reprogrammed the urban geography as strategic points of advantage. This new reconfiguration of the city added to the confusion and disorientation of the population, who came to fear the natural characteristics that previously had given a unique identity to the city.

recycling

As the fighting intensified in the city and areas continuously changed hands, the warring ethnic factions occupied the houses of their opponents and looted their contents. This pillaging often included the stripping down of all parts of houses that could be dismantled. This urban material would be either sold on the black market, reconfigured elsewhere in the city, or, as in most cases, would be carried off to the villages and used in the construction of houses. This displacement and reassembling of parts exposes the built environment as a composition of fixed and mobile components, alternating between the skeletal infrastructure and the enclosure. Following episodes of fighting, people would return to their houses to find only the concrete, stone, or mud brick structure remaining. This phenomenon extended to public buildings as well. Within such an extreme environment, the urban population of Kabul confronted the need for survival with diligence and ingenuity. The recycling of the city was one way in which they managed. The paraphernalia of war was collected for steel and recycled in daily life or sold on the black market. The containers, which brought weapons and supplies into the city, were quickly recycled and now litter the streets of Kabul functioning as mechanic shops, retail outlets, petrol stations, or even in some cases as residences. Mud and dirt from destroyed buildings were used immediately in the construction and repairs of other structures. It was this constant small-scale informal reconstruction, displacement, and recycling that managed to keep parts of Kabul from being completely erased.

gap

The diffusion of governmental agencies, regulating bodies and cultural institutions, the corrosion of infrastructure and urban mass, the dissolving of public services and the marginalization of the workforce resulted in a stalemate - time remained unmoved, frozen, and nothing progressed. The evaporation of civic life and the disintegration of the city fabric represented the final undoing of the urban environment. This tabula rasa prepared the grounds for the ultimate imposition, the return to an archaic form of Islam as an organisational tool and civic structure for a devastated, disoriented, and exhausted society. The destructive effects of war had finally contextualized the alien modern buildings in Kabul and the only distinction between the mud brick building and the concrete building was that the former eroded and the ladder collapsed.

target

Nowhere did September 11th change events more than in Afghanistan. From the target of local factions, Kabul became an overnight international hot spot. With the start of the American bombing of Afghanistan, Kabul became the target of the same advanced weapons technologies that were used in Baghdad. The materiality of the city had been reduced again into simple tones in the abstract images of the night-time targeting system for the laser guided super missiles. The technology of the future globalized world had finally reached the walled compounds of the archaic Third World. During previous conflicts Kabul had been a safe haven for the general population fleeing the front lines north of the city, but the defences of the city were unable to deal with this new threat and a large number of people fled the city to avoid the consequences of the bombing and the return of the opposition. With the fall of Kabul, the landslide war in Afghanistan was accelerated and overnight the city was again in the hands of the same groups that were responsible for its devastation from 1992 through 1996.

The Re-Doing:

The set of events, which have spiralled since September 11th, have thrust Kabul into the international conscience and has accelerated the frenzy of efforts towards the reconstruction of Afghanistan, creating debates in the international donor agencies about the extent and scale of the regeneration. Kabul is currently an island surrounded by lawlessness and factionalism, but if the reconstruction gains momentum it will become the gateway through which development aid will be channelled into the countryside. The current political and economic instability in Afghanistan will make the reconstruction a very difficult and arduous process.

data

Due to the lack of information and statistics on the city, one of the first priorities of the reconstruction effort is to ensure functioning mechanisms to begin collecting real and current data on the city. This does not exclude the necessity of work to continue during the collection of this information, which should be done simultaneous to work during the emergency planning phase. One of the priorities will be to clarify and make a distinction in the city between which those structures that can be refurbished and renovated and those that need to be demolished and the land cleared for future projects. This will be easier done on land belonging to the government or public sector, than on land belonging to the private sector.

detachment

Kabul is a political and economic entity detached from Afghanistan. As pointed out by Robert Saliba (KWG 2002) in reflecting on the reconstruction of Beirut, the three shaping forces of reconstruction strategies in Afghanistan will be the local political vision, the international political agenda, and the international donor agencies and NGO’s. The negotiations between these forces and their ability to compliment each other, is pivotal to the reconstruction process. The international aid agencies must not make the mistake of considering a reconstructed Kabul as a reconstructed Afghanistan. Furthermore, reconstruction of Kabul should not happen at the expense of the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

reconciliation

The reconstruction effort must be used as a process of reconciliation, reunification, and reintegration of the internally displaced population as well as thousands of soldiers and mercenaries back into society. This overwhelming task is made more difficult due to the factionalization within the government and its ministries, which will hinder and most likely continue to tolerate the abuses and fragmentation. The legitimatisation, acceptance, and trust of the government by the population is crucial for the process. Another major hurdle for the reconstruction is the decentralization of the “Kabul” government, which has allowed the power over the rest of Afghanistan to remain in the hands of local warlords. These fiefdoms, operating autonomously from the authorities in Kabul, will need to be re-integrated into the overall picture if the rest of the country is to benefit from the reconstruction process

vision

The need for a vision of the city to help guide the initial emergency work and secure its overlap with the long-term reconstruction is essential. This vision for Kabul should be a collective desire provided by the Afghan people and local authorities with the help of the international community. Discrepancies between what the ‘outside’ sees or wants for the Afghans and what the Afghans want for themselves, will form the major issue around which the reconstruction must unfold. Leaving behind the either/or scenario and necessarily developing a condition that simultaneously does both, the new city will be asked to accommodate extreme difference. The radical nature of Afghanistan being both deeply rooted in ancient traditional culture yet exposed to the harsh realities of a contemporary culture of globalisation opens up a space for new hybrids to flourish. The destruction of the past 20 years offers the city a rare opportunity to re-establish itself as a technically advanced yet culturally specific environment.

publicity

One of the challenges facing the reconstruction is the desire by donors to locate their aid in specific high profile projects intended to publicise their participation. This interest manifests itself in many ways, such as the desire to build a large school in the centre of Kabul, rather than two or three smaller schools in the provinces, where there are greater and more urgent needs. The result of this will be that the most important or needed work will not happen because they do not provide sufficient publicity for the donor. The reconstruction will have to negotiate the immediate desires and needs of the inhabitants of the city with the abstract demands of donors.

preservation

The preservation of historic parts of the city could help generate and sustain communities and new development. These historic points could become part of a network in the overall regeneration of the city. An urban coherency could be achieved through specific nodal interactions that can be used as incentives to link existing historic points with new developments in the city (Dr. Stephano Bianca, KWG 2002). Through such a process, cultural identity could be more readily translated into tangible ways of approaching the environment and the creation of social spaces that have meaning and identity for the people. At the same time, donors must realize that the definition of “cultural institutions” for the people of Afghanistan might be much more western than their projections have allowed. For example, instead of the renovation of a historic building, the people of Afghanistan might define the construction of a cinema as a necessary cultural project.

property

When considering any phase of the reconstruction, the issue of land ownership will become an immediate concern. Property that is owned by an Afghan population dispersed throughout the world, currently occupied or squatted by displaced people, is just one of the many concerns. Because of the lack of information, co-ordination, and urban management in Afghanistan, the issues surrounding the ownership of land is very complex and key to the reconstruction. The distinction between private and public land is essential. Public land is relatively easy to deal with in terms of management, but the complicated issue is how to deal with private property and reinforce building and planning regulations on these properties. To complicate matters further one must consider the incredible proliferation of squatter settlements throughout the city. Considering the government’s lack of resources and the relative quality and viability of these environments, one could imagine a quick solution to solving one of the main problems of housing is to legalise all squatter settlements. While such simple decision may solve certain short-term problems, it may cause more severe problems in the long-term development of the city.

implant

The reconstruction of urban centres must be seen in the context of the need for wider development in Afghanistan. This point is emphasised by the strong interdependencies between the rural and urban communities. Unless the livelihoods of the people are taken into consideration, any effort will fall short of the intended goal of helping people stabilise their communities and will undermine short and long-term development. The emergency work should provide work for the community, but it is necessary to integrate local skills into the process. The resourcefulness of the Afghan people must be considered a crucial asset in the reconstruction and the general population must be trained and absorbed into the workforce (KWG 2002).

DIY

The tendency of the government to turn a blind eye to the growing squatter settlements across Kabul led to the ruralization of the urban centre. A quality of urban innovation emerged in the capital, as a new kind of cosmopolitan space of self-expression developed out of necessity. Ironically, this condition seems to have manifested the goals of Advocacy Planning of the 1960’s and community based projects of the 1990’s in these self-initiated environments. The dwellings are produced as direct responds to the needs of the inhabitants based on available resources. One could imagine the results should the inhabitants be given more advanced materials and equipment. The city is now capable of exerting an entirely new image as a modern capital capable of incorporating various forms of self-expression. What happens when the image of the Capital city equals the various forms of local expression? The self-built housing could play a critical role in the new vision of the city. The city should acknowledge forces such as squatters as an incredible resource within the context of the limited resources of the municipal government and the creation of a developmental framework within which these forces can aid in the reconstruction.

aid

Concerns have been raised that a large percentage of the donated money for the reconstruction is actually donated for the sole purpose of boosting the economy of the donor country via the pockets of highly paid international consultants and through binding contracts dictating, for instance in Sarajevo, that the aid money be spent on materials bought directly from international companies, which ended up being useless in the reconstruction but generated wealth for economies abroad. These exchanges sometimes take on the characteristics of investment more than donation. The need for materials and labour to come from within the borders of Afghanistan is critical to re-establishing employment and a stable economy. This necessity should suggest the palette that the reconstruction efforts should employ. While outside materials and consultants may be necessary in the immediate emergency phase, local factories, training and institutions should be set up to produce the necessary raw materials internally and to train the local population for advanced employment. But by far the greatest obstacle facing the reconstruction is the issue of governance, the necessity for a transparent process through which funds are allocated, and creation of institutions directed at curbing the current corruption, violence, and lawlessness. The reconstruction also necessitates the formation of local agencies to coordinate the emergency phase and, in the future, can from the needed institutions that maintain the long-term development of the city.

NGO

During years of conflict, the NGOs became the link between the authorities and the local population. “Despite there being more than 200 NGOs…there is very little to show for their efforts.” (Barakat, S. 1995) The current condition of surrogate government via the various NGO operations (who become responsible for the well being of the populations of Afghanistan) represents the strange synthetic nature of the crises. Without repairing this link between government and the general population, the participation of the NGOs remains necessary. The co-ordination of these transitions must be a priority. Yet the instability of means of survival fluctuates between the desire to establish a sustainable economy and government and survival depending on the handouts of foreign aid. An immediate imperative is to establish a sustainable link between government and the current population. Community forums have become factionalized and Kabul is split along ethnic divisions, thus limiting the effectiveness of the community forum in terms of scale and validity. The lack of co-ordination in the work of International Aid agencies and NGO’s undermining the relationship between the local authorities and the population. There must be mechanisms in place to control and coordinate Aid agency and NGO efforts, so that there is not a duplication of work and so that their efforts can be coordinated under the governmental structure and the local Vision for the reconstruction.

Conclusion

The uncontrolled growth and random development of Kabul, which has absorbed the forces of modernity and randomly dispersed it within its ad hoc logic of planning, presents us with an opportunity for the future regeneration of the city. The super-imposition of a regimented and controlled planning initiative, which is being endorsed in certain international agencies and by a section of the administration, will restrict the development of the city by placing upon it an artificial framework that contradicts the inherently free and natural process by which the city has developed in the past. While the ‘master-plan’ might not be a suitable way forward for Kabul, the notion of a comprehensive large-scale “vision” is an important aspect to consider for the future development of the city.

The decades of war have also, surprisingly, had a modernising affect on the Afghan population. From refugees living abroad, who regularly return, to the technologies that have swept the country, the mentality of many Afghans has changed drastically. This will be an important ingredient in the regeneration of the city as the standards and expectations will necessarily rise.

Kabul stands as an icon of a new kind of urbanism capable of incorporating extreme difference of modern and traditional. As a crossroad - being neither east nor west - the city is firmly planted in the forces of both. Its lack of independence indicates its existence as a synthetic contemporary condition, constantly involved in a dynamic east-west exchange and points to an incredible resilience in the face of direct external forces and a natural tendency towards mutations and reconfigurations of those forces and typologies to be contextualized to a local identity. The juxtaposition of the two results in a third condition which emerges as a local product. This tension generates specificity and provokes a new corrosion of the synthetic boundaries of a superficial distinction between “traditional” and “western” urban systems - creating a space for the indistinguishable hybrid to emerge, offering more radical ways of understanding the latent possibilities.

It is useless to imagine Kabul as a city on its way to becoming modern. Kabul represents an extreme case of being both old and new, both traditional and modern, while possessing a material culture that is both alive and dead, simultaneously. This condition offers radical possibilities in the discipline of urban planning which proposes new ways of incorporating the possibilities latent in such marginal urban systems where ancient tradition is alive and thriving yet starving for new ingredients. It is no longer a matter of offering/imposing a new urban ideology (modernism) onto Kabul as in the 1960’s.

One of the aims of the regeneration should be to relinquish control of the productions of a material culture while providing an infrastructure base. The merging of advanced infrastructure with ancient and contemporary techniques and forms should allow mud walls to form new intimate relationships with electronics and the practical necessities of everyday life in the creation of the new city. The forging of this vision presents the architects of the reconstruction with great possibilities and places upon their shoulders the responsibility of re-engaging an integral arena of their discourse, which has long been hijacked by the forces of global economics and international politics.

Today the city transforms daily into a desolate landscape with armed men and international experts zooming by in the ubiquitous 4 wheel-drive vehicle. For the moment, the promises of peace and stability and the reconstruction of Afghanistan seem as distant a reality as anytime during the previous decade. As in a film played in reverse, the walls of Kabul slowly dissolve and erode into the sandstorms that sometimes overtake the western part of the city. Each day sees the city grow colourless, with its people waiting for the injections of reconstruction aid and the unfolding of global events that contain the blueprints of their uncertain future.

Bibliography:

1. Dupree, L. Afghanistan, Princeton University Press, 1973

2. KWG , Kabul Working Group, London 2002

3. Atmar, H. Barakat, S. Strand, A., “From Rhetoric to Reality: The Role of Aid in the Local Peacebuilding in Afghanistan”. York University, England 1998

4. Barakat, S. Ehsan, J. Leslie, M. Strand, A., “Urban Rehabilitation in Kabul”. York University, England 1995

5. Dupree, N. “A Building Boom in the Hindu Kush”, 26 Lotus International. Italy 1980

6. Bademli, R. “Issues of Post-disaster Planning in Afghanistan”. United Nations Centre for Human Settlements. Ankara, 1985

7. Kazimee, B. Urban/Rural Dwelling Environments: Kabul, Afghanistan, MIT Cambridge 1977.