Afghan Town Languishes as No Aid Comes

The entrance to this village is through a crumbling, 200-year-old garden of cypress, fig and orange trees set against the backdrop of the Hindu Kush mountains. It was a favorite of the British soldiers who tried to conquer Afghanistan in the 19th century, and these days, families picnic among its melon fields.

The garden is the brightest spot amid the poverty and danger that marks Gandomak, 30 miles west of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. Home to about 800 families, Gandomak is in the one-third of Afghanistan -- in the south and east -- where the United Nations refuses to send aid workers because Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents target them.

“We haven’t seen any help,” said Sayed Nabi, 37, a father of three. “People give my children and me food to eat; otherwise, we may as well lie on the ground and die.”

There is no school, clinic or even roads. During summer, the 875 boys and 425 girls learn under the shade of the trees, and in the winter they take a long holiday.

In 1997, a Danish charity built a well, and last year another organization distributed some chickens and planted some trees.

The village doctor has one kind of medicine to dispense regardless of the patient’s ailment. Lala Sherzad, one of the biggest landowners in the district, said he and several others asked the province to build a clinic, but the application will take a year to be processed.

“If anyone becomes ill, we have to hire a private car at a cost of 2,500 rupees to drive to Jalalabad for the nearest clinic,” he said. The cost is equivalent to about $45, or a month’s pay for many. While afghanis are the official national currency, Pakistani rupees are commonly used in the border regions of eastern Afghanistan.

The villagers and the provincial administration insist there are no Taliban or Al Qaeda insurgents crossing the border from Pakistan, a day’s walk across the mountains. They say the heavy snows and rough terrain form a natural barrier to potential terrorists.

The deputy governor of the province, Mohammed Asif Kazidada, a native of Gandomak, said: “There are no security problems there at all. It is safe to travel.”

He added that American soldiers occasionally patrolled the rough roads.

Banditry, however, is a problem at night. Nabi said robbers were particularly active on the outskirts.

“When the sun sets, the local people cannot travel,” he said. “There is a small river on the south side of the village near my house, and after 8 p.m. no one can cross it.”

He added: “The administration is very weak and cannot do anything. The last time we felt safe was in the king’s time, 30 years ago.”

Taliban fighters entered Jalalabad from the west, and the village lost 160 people resisting them. But its claim to fame is as the graveyard for Britain’s vain attempts at conquering Afghanistan in the 19th century. In 1842, about 60 British soldiers made their last stand on a hill near the village as hundreds of Afghans surrounded them. Nearly everyone in Gandomak claims to have an ancestor who fought the outsiders.

But Haji Abdullahad Sherzad, 90, the biggest landowner in the village, said some of the elders had revised their views of the British.

“If we had let them stay, we would have been better off than Pakistan because the English ended up helping their colonial conquests, like America and Canada. Look at Pakistan. They are now making atom bombs and we can’t even make a needle.”

Kholam Sayed, 55, said that since the international community had given up, he had little choice but to grow opium poppies.

“One kilogram of poppy earns me about 10,000 afghanis [about $230], and the big local commanders come and buy it. If I had 700 kilos of wheat I could only buy a pair of shoes and trousers.”

Sherzad’s son Mohammed Nadir criticized the U.N. for overreacting to the perceived dangers of the country. In any case, he said, they were not spending money on the Afghans.

“The U.N. and the nongovernmental organizations in Kabul are renting houses for $3,000 a month. I am a farmer growing wheat, and after I pay my workers I am left with $180 a year.”

He added that it was time Afghanistan’s standard of living caught up to those in the Western world.

“I have been to several countries,” he said. “We also would like to have a bungalow, a mobile phone in our hands and maybe a Mercedes.”