KANDAHAR - 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.
Philip Smucker is a commentator
and journalist based in South Asia and the Middle
East. He is the author of Al-Qaeda's Great
Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's
Trail (2004).
(Copyright 2007 Asia
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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. 
