Afghans housing crisis complicates revival efforts

By Emma Graham-Harrison
DEHSABZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - As night falls, Afghans at the desperate end of Kabul's housing crisis swarm up the steep hillsides that cradle the capital, taking advantage of the cover of darkness to throw up illegal mud and stone homes.
A city built for a few hundred thousand people now houses a population estimated at over four million, many crammed into tents or shanty homes, complicating efforts to revive a conflict-riven country and help returned refugees rebuild their lives.
The worries about bombs and kidnappings that plague foreigners in Kabul can seem almost irrelevant to many struggling to get by in one of the world's poorest countries.
Less than half the city's residents have running water, regular power or access to any kind of sewage system.
The sprawling, unplanned, low rise construction also means most face long commutes over gridlocked, muddy roads, using a transport network that all but collapses if there is heavy rain.
"There is a lot of need for shelter. Beside the influx of Afghans who have been living across the border, rising insecurity in the country as a whole is pushing people toward the urban areas," said Lex Kassenberg, Country Director for aid group CARE.
Many problems have their roots in overcrowding, as refugees returning after decades of civil war, or seeking an escape from poverty and violence in rural Afghanistan cram into the capital.
"When I first came here it was so hard to find a house. It took eight months," said cleaner Fereshte Shamseddin, who returned after years as a refugee in Iran and Pakistan and now spends nearly half her salary on $100 rent each month.
The city is already fraying at the seams. It could be home to as many as 8 million people by 2025, says Mahmoud Saikal, an Afghan architect and diplomat working on an ambitious solution to the capital's problems, an entirely new city.
"Kabul is now at the limits of its capacity. Water shortages, environmental degradation, traffic, all originating from high population growth, have started undermining life," he told reporters recently.
"Thousands of people are living in tents on the city outskirts, and 60 to 70 percent of built areas are illegal."
INVEST IN OLD KABUL?
Saikal hopes Dehsabz, or "green village," a sleepy cluster of villages some 20 kilometers north of the city, can be transformed into the high tech answer to these problems. He aims to unveil the masterplan for a new Kabul by the end of the summer.
It will be based in an area that is now a dusty rural plain, rattled by the roar of passing Black Hawk helicopters and littered with graveyards, bleak reminders of cycles of war that have splintered and then reunited Afghanistan over three decades.
That violence, and rising corruption, makes pouring billions into a new city seem risky at best. Continued...
Source: Reuters