To many young Afghanis who lead Westernized lives, the Taliban era had its advantages.
KABUL — They drink alcohol, play snooker and wouldn’t be caught dead in a turban. Most of them have cars, girlfriends and make 20 times the salary of a government employee. Yet Kabul’s relatively gilded youth, which has reaped the benefits of Afghanistan’s new order, is deeply disillusioned with the democratic process.
“Western-style democracy has not really worked here,” said Noor, a 25-year-old finance manager. “It has made things worse over the past seven years, and it contradicts what most Afghans want.”
Noor works for an international organization, where he commands a hefty $2,500 monthly paycheck. In the evenings, he studies business at the prestigious American University of Afghanistan (AUAF). He is late in completing his university degree because he was unable to attend classes during the Taliban years — he was too busy running a shop and trying to support his family.
“My life is better now,” he concedes. “But we expected more.”
When the U.S. authorities talk about the battle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan, they normally focus on the more remote provinces, where the insurgency is growing and the local population is virtually indistinguishable from the Taliban.
But, if Noor and his friends are any indication, that war also is being lost among those who would seem most likely to support the new regime — the young, well-educated men and women who staff the hundreds of new businesses, embassies and aid agencies in the capital.
Asad (not his real name), 26, is a doctor by training. In Afghanistan, only top-echelon students are accepted into medical school; but after completing the grueling seven-year course of study, they often find that the jobs available are not to their liking.
Of Asad’s graduating class of more than 300, he estimates that fewer than 40 percent are actually practicing medicine. The rest are eagerly sought after for high-profile positions in media, government and commerce.
“To be honest, I know that I am benefiting from the presence of the international community,” said Asad, a project manager for a British organization with a salary of almost $2,000 per month. “My physical life is better. I have good clothes, a car, I can travel abroad. But as for my inner life, I think it was better under the Taliban.”
For the 20-somethings, Afghanistan’s seven-year-old flirtation with democracy is just the latest in a long line of disastrous social experiments.
They were born when the Soviet Union was waging war against the mujaheddin and trying to erase the specter of radical Islamism on its southern border. They attended school during the brutal civil war, when rival warlords were tearing apart the Afghan capital and Kabulis began every morning with a desperate series of telephone calls, trying to ascertain who had been killed in overnight shelling.
Some, like Asad, began university under the Taliban, when their sisters and female classmates were forced to stay at home.
“It was just us boys,” said Aziz, another medical school graduate. “It was actually kind of fun.”
Other young people chafed under the dour restrictions imposed by the fundamentalists — no music, no movies, no contact with the opposite sex.
But for many, it was a period of calm.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/afghanistan/090309/afghanistans-generation-nowhere
