The Kabul City government - which provides convenient services to families and businesses, then collects fees to increase budgets - is aiming to improve selected areas as well as the city's neglected corridors.
Kabul has 180 projects under development, including planting trees on the median strip, erecting monuments around traffic routes and building major roads. The total estimated cost for this ambition is about $90 million.
In the prosperous area of Sherpur, the anti- explosion walls around the mansions that were once the residences of officials have been demolished. Excavators have leveled and paved roads that have been blocked for a long time to reduce travel time.
In dasht-i-Barchi, a poor district of the city, old houses are being demolished as the city prepares to build a road connecting to a major highway. This route was first proposed by Afghanistan's first president Mohammed Daoud Khan 43 years ago.
Naimatullah Barakzai - spokesperson for the Kabul reconstruction initiative - said that all international development projects have stopped after the Taliban took power in the country of 40 million people. We dont want to wait for them to start over or rely on foreign aid. We want to solve our own problems and make the city more beautiful. We don't want people to think that Kabul is now dilapidated and we don't care about culture," he said.
Trumpzai (40 years old, a long-time cabinet official in Kabul) revealed that his office is using the power of the new administration to complete work, including seizing private property. No one is allowed to use their influence to reject us. We will pay them, but we will use our tools and we will carry out our plans," he said.
Over the past 20 years, under the election of civil governments, Kabul has gone through a period of construction boom, fueled by Western development and aid projects. High-rise apartments, supermarkets and luxury shopping malls have been opened. In some areas, the streets are paved with asphalt and sewers have been dug to drain rainwater. However, many years of conflict have led to investment in the country being blocked.
In Kabul, one of the changes is the demolition of an urban fortress once controlled by Abdurrashid Dostum, a former army general, vice president and militia leader currently living in Turkey. For many years, the fortress with anti- explosion walls, barbed wire and fireworks towers has existed on a narrow intersection of the city, causing traffic congestion. Now, those defenses have disappeared and pedestrians can move freely on the surrounding lanes.
Military structures previously built by US and NATO forces, with some steel-roofed structures covering the entire neighborhood, are more difficult to change, especially those used by the Taliban security agency.
Naimatullah Barakzai said that city officials have negotiated with people to demolish the outer retaining walls or make them out of sight, but so far they have not been completed.
Other types of public projects are highly symbolic and political symbols. Along with installing concrete median strips on busy alleys, workers in the city of Kabul are breaking monuments at notable traffic routes. Several monuments have been built to honor anti- Taliban leaders such as Ahmed Shah Massoud and Abdul Haq - both of whom died in 2001. But these monuments will be replaced with abstract objects because the strict Islamic law of the Taliban movement prohibits human-like images.
In the poorer areas of the capital Afghanistan, the heavy, less- seen work is the renovation of old roads and the construction of new roads is being rapidly implemented. In dasht-i-Barchi, the new boulevard began construction last month with heavy equipment. Residents here witnessed the old houses being destroyed and were happy to see the residential area finally connected to National Highway 1. This is the main north-south route connecting Kabul and Kandahar built by the US Progress Alliance in the 1960s.
