I found this lovely story from AP today, about the restoration of Kabul's old districts. Several charities are facilitating the restoration, which includes repairing old wood and timber houses and cleaning the narrow streets. 
Last year, the removal of layers of mud mixed with garbage from these streets resulted in them dropping down several feet - so street-level doors and other structures had to be lowered as well! The restoration is all the more welcome for local residents given that, from 1979 until 2002, the city masterplan had their old homes marked for demolition. The preservation of Kabul's history also seems poignant following so many years of war, suggesting the city is moving on from an era of day-to-day survival, to one in which the past is celebrated and a hopeful future anticipated. (Photo from AP - there is a great slideshow on their website.)
Sunday, January 20, 2008
101: restoring Kabul
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2 comments:
Very refreshing - so good to see a 'real' story from Kabul, relatively untainted by spin, journalists beholden to their military minders, or ideologues trying to prove a point. And great to see a story focussing on the social aspects of Kabul, rather than the security side of things.
War (and post-war) reporting so often tries to prove whether the conflict was right or wrong, whether we're 'winning' or 'losing'. This AP story trumps so much comparable output from the BBC, CNN and others in that it doesn't follow that line nearly as much - it's a description, not an evaluation. And if other journalists spent as much time reporting rather than peddling opinions - that's for the readers to do - we'd surely come across many more Reasons to be Hopeful!
Thanks, Diana - I agree. Not only that, but this article is accompanied by a very interesting slideshow, documenting different aspects of the restoration process (as part of AP's much larger photographic archives on Afghanistan) - rather than the poorly chosen and only indirectly related photos that you often see with news articles. It's 'good' news all round!
E
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