Afghans say they’re losing hope after 8 years of war

KABUL (AP) — The man on the motorcycle was going the wrong way down a one-way street, gesturing indignantly for the phalanx of traffic-clogged cars in front of him to move.

“Brother, why are you angry with us?” said a passenger leaning out of one of the vehicles blocking his path. “It’s you who are going the wrong way!”

“I’m not angry at you, I’m angry at Afghanistan,” the man cried back, waving his arm dismissively as he negotiated his bike onto a crowded sidewalk and drove off in a trail of exhaust fumes. “These are sad days.”

In Kabul, even a traffic jam can provoke a comment on this Islamic nation’s dismal state, which most people here believe is at its bleakest since the U.S. invaded to topple the Taliban in 2001. It’s a striking sentiment when you consider it comes after eight years of international intervention, $60 billion in foreign aid and the lives of thousands of foreign troops and Afghan civilians.

The Obama administration is hoping to reverse that trend as an additional 30,000 American and 7,000 NATO troops pour into the conflict in coming months. But “the more soldiers they send here, the worse it gets,” said 19-year-old carpet seller Hamid Hashimi.

In the year after the Taliban fell, international forces numbered a modest 12,000 or so. Today, that figure has swollen to well over 100,000 and will approach 140,000 with the latest troop commitments. There are also 100,000 Defense Department contractors supporting the military effort, according to U.S. lawmakers.

The insurgency has mushroomed in equal measure.

The war — once mostly limited to the Pakistan border — has spread to nearly every corner of the country. It has also penetrated the frontier-like capital, where car bombings or other spectacular attacks such as the October storming of a guest house filled with U.N. staff make news every couple of weeks.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

When the Taliban were overthrown in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, aid groups, analysts and Afghans themselves all believed the nation was finally emerging from a quarter-century of war.

In retrospect, there wasn’t much of a break.

“In those days people had hope, but unfortunately, everything has turned upside down since then,” said Hanif Hangam, who stars in an Afghan comedy TV show called “Alarm Bell.” “People expected things to go forward, but we’ve just been sliding back.”

The irony is that so much has changed in Kabul.

A vast sea of blown-out buildings in the west of the city has been completely rebuilt. Multi- story shopping malls encased in glass symbolize a newfound prosperity, towering above streets lined with travel agencies, Internet cafes, and even Afghan Fried Chicken, a local fast-food chain.

At night, rainbow-colored flashing palm trees climb the walls of splashy new wedding halls. Newly connected electricity lines light up mountainsides ringing the capital, whose population has tripled in the last eight years to 4.5 million as millions of refugees returned.

Residents also are embracing freedoms anew: a majority of women have shed the once- ubiquitous blue burqas mandated by the Taliban in favor of flashy headscarves that shine in the night. And from one state TV channel in 2001, there are now more than 20 private stations with 3-D graphics and talk shows that rival any abroad.

“People can finally can talk openly about what’s gone wrong,” Hangam said of the media boom. “They can criticize the government and warlords, point out corruption. But unfortunately, nobody is listening. We never see anything change.”

Indeed, the news today is the same as it was eight years previous; there is just more of it: Car bombs and rockets rock Kabul. Civilians die accidentally in U.S. airstrikes. Afghan security forces are in dire need of training. The opium trade is booming.

And just like 2001, President Hamid Karzai is derided as the “mayor of Kabul” by critics who say his authority doesn’t extend much farther than the city limits.

“It’s a disaster,” said Ramazan Bashardost, a lawmaker who came in a distant third in the country’s botched August election, which was marred by fraud so widespread a third of Karzai’s ballots were thrown out. “The situation is getting worse every day for ordinary Afghans.”