"Globalization" of Poverty Hits Afghanistan

A first look at Kabul, as you drive around the city, gives a positive impression of Afghanistan "reconstruction" and the hope of a better tomorrow. You will come across many new beautiful, luxurious buildings and the happy mobs around them. But, if you look behind these walls, you will discover a bitter truth: a city that is "home" to tens of thousands of widows and orphans living in destitution wanting only something to eat, a loaf of bread, a city where over 60% are jobless. In the "darkest capital city of the world", every facility are available for a handful of warlords, drug-lords, NGOs, foreigners and high government officials but the gross majority are living bellow the poverty line which cannot be hidden by these splendid halls and Limousines surfing the dusty streets.

President Hamid Karzai confessed in a meeting of village elders in Kabul: "The luxurious houses and buildings either belong to government staff or members of parliament...there is deceit, misuse and playing with this land" (Reuters, Nov.13, 2007)