Panjshir left to develop from the ground up

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Capt. Kenneth McGinnis, an Air Force engineer, meets with Afghan contractors at the site of a proposed school. McGinnis said finding places to build has become increasingly difficult because of the lack of flat land in the valley.


Panjshir left to develop from the ground up
By Michael Gisick, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, August 20, 2008

PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan — Done with their visit to one of the remote villages along the river that sprints down through this valley, four members of a U.S. military reconstruction team head back up the side of the hill.

It’s a steep enough climb to be exercise, and would seem considerably less sporting if they had to carry the heavy body armor that virtually all U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan wear any time they head out. But in the Panjshir Valley, they travel light.

While insurgent violence has spread through many parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Panjshir — once the stronghold of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance — has remained a world apart. The handful of U.S. officials here, who have funded dozens of schools, health clinics and other projects, see the area as a success story, an example of what can be accomplished when Afghans reject fighting.

But if the Panjshir is a model — and it certainly has the looks — then it is also a reflection. There is little violence, but it has many of the other problems that have plagued rebuilding efforts across Afghanistan and, in the view of many observers, left the door open for a resurgent Taliban. More troubling, perhaps, are what U.S. and local officials describe as the inept efforts of the Afghan government to address those problems, even in an area as peaceful as Panjshir.

"These government officials are doing nothing, and everyone knows it," Mohammed Said, a district manager in Khenj, an area about halfway up the valley, said last weekend as he sat in his office beneath a portrait of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president. Karzai has also complained of widespread corruption and inefficiency in the government ministries.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56855