Chrenkoff: Good News From Afghanistan

[Annie]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007211

It's Raining Again
A roundup of the past month's good news from Afghanistan.

BY ARTHUR CHRENKOFF
Tuesday, September 6, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Across Afghanistan, good news for farmers, and for the rest of the population:

The country's farms are alive again.

Seven years of drought had left fields monochrome plains of brown dust. But good snows and rains have many Afghans seeing color again--seas of golden wheat undulate in the breeze, green apricot trees are plump with yellow fruit, melons of every hue dot fields.

It is much-needed relief for impoverished farmers as well as the estimated 3.4 million Afghans who have been relying on food handouts from overburdened international aid groups.

One wheat farmer sees the end of the drought as a sign that God is pleased with the country's fledgling democracy.

"Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has started to recover from the drought and people's lives have been getting better," said Fazah Rahman, 36.

"In previous years, no one even bothered to plant crops because our lands were dry like a desert, but that has all changed and everyone is sowing their land," he said.

Mohammed Sharif-Sharif, a senior official at the Agricultural Ministry, said the harvest is exceeding expectations.

"This year, we will be in need of less food aid from other countries," he said. "In the past seven years, nearly all our wheat was imported. But fortunately, it will significantly drop this year."

Whether or not God is finally smiling on the long-suffering people of Afghanistan and blessing their new democracy with rain, things are definitely becoming interesting for this, one of the poorest countries in the world. With parliamentary election coming up soon, the world's attention is slowly--though one fears, judging by the past experience, briefly--returning to Afghanistan. The political, security, economic and social challenges facing the country are enormous, but progress has been made, slowly and often painfully, much of it missed by the media and thus Western audiences.

If you have been following this series for the past year or so, this will not come as a surprise. Here are another four weeks' worth of stories from Afghanistan, which so often got lost in the usual media chatter about drugs and violence.

• Society. The authorities officially announced on Aug. 15 the start of the election campaign:

"The official campaign period for the Wolesi Jirga, or lower house, and provincial-council elections will begin on 17 August," UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen said. Candidates will be allowed to campaign until 15 September, when a 48-hour moratorium will be imposed. More than 10 million Afghans are reportedly eligible to vote. Candidates will be allowed to hold rallies, distribute posters and leaflets, and appear in private and state-run media. "Each Wolesi Jirga candidate will be allocated an advertisement of five minutes to be broadcast twice on radio or one advertisement of two minutes to be broadcast twice on television," Baheen said. Baheen said candidates for provincial councils will get one advertisement of four minutes broadcast on radio or one advertisement of two minutes broadcast on television.

And so, one year after the first election, Afghan authorities and the international community are facing up to the logistical challenge of another one:

Afghanistan is preparing for landmark parliamentary elections using a combination of stone-age and modern technology to get polling stations open in under six weeks time.

Mountainous and remote terrain, low levels of literacy and the sheer number of candidates--almost 6,000--all add up to one of the most difficult elections the international community has ever organised.

"I don't think the United Nations have ever seen an election like this, with up to 400 candidates on each ballot paper," Julian Type, of the UN-backed Joint Electoral Management Body [said]. . . .

Despite the challenges and the threat of violence from increasingly active Taliban militants, officials said they thought the lower house and provincial council elections on September 18 would go ahead on time.

"We are very confident we will be able to deliver the operation successfully and have all staff . . . in place," James Grierson, electoral head of logistical support, told a news conference in Kabul.

Some of Afghanistan's remote mountainous districts are only accessible by donkey, while airplanes must be used to freight the 135,000 ballot boxes, 140,000 bottles of ink and 403 tons of furniture to many of the country's 26,000 polling stations, the electoral body said.

Fourteen cargo planes will make deliveries across Afghanistan, in addition to the 1,200 deliveries by cargo trucks and flights by nine helicopters to remote areas not accessible by road.

"The topography dictates that we will have to use air, road and even donkeys to distribute our material across the country," Grierson added.

The furniture must be flown into Afghanistan for this election because the chairs and tables used at the country's first presidential polls in October have already been donated to local schools.

Being any one of the 6,000 candidates is not the safest occupation in Afghanistan, but perhaps the most courageous among the lot are women:[...]