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While Western governments, media-consumers, and soldiers tend to focus their attention on the civil conflict rocking Afghanistan, most Afghans are more concerned with their local markets. The global economic crisis has surely slowed the march toward recovery in the region, but there is another dimension to Afghan market woes, the increasing economic and cultural divide.
This past spring, my Afghan colleagues and I drove down to the Lycee Maryam shopping area in suburban Kabul to buy a suitcase to ship files back to the home office in Washington, SC. My folks back home imagined a rough-neck huddle of street toughs armed with Kalashnikovs selling a bag of beans. But they would be pleasantly shocked to find that Kabul’s markets are modern and growing despite the war.
The otherwise mundane task of buying the suitcase presented a grand opportunity to explore how the market had changed through the war period since my economic research four years earlier. Back then, research I conducted in Kabul, Kunduz, and Tajikistan pointed to a relationship between security barriers and hunger.
Food prices could be affected when the area was isolated due to fighting near the main road, when police extorted bribes from traders, or when opium production raised incomes for some while reducing the local production of affordable food. If you're curious, here are some video snapshots of Kabul’s shopping environment:
The BBC offers a positive view of the Kabul food market:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz-SgaLjYRY&feature=related
Kabul’s old town market, in normal times, with more raw footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeCw2YAntzg&feature=related
But here’s the view of the same market, wintertime, but with bombs bursting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhjKrhwLvn0&feature=related
The Kabul shopping mall is not only a radical departure from the norm, it may be the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwUUK9QjiJI
And for you economists out there, here’s a means of following staple food prices: http://wwww.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/ASAZ-7S7J2J?OpenDocument
The challenge of the market right after the Taliban’s fall from power was primarily for traders to overcome security risks just to fill markets with mass consumption goods which sustained lives. Traders would risk bringing in what they knew for sure that all families would want to buy: rice, wheat, cooking oil, salt, tea, onion, turnip, lentils, tomatoes, sheep, chicken, auto repair tools and parts, cooking fuel, and then, after the sure things were selling, they’d procure new and diverse products to fill other needs.
The Taliban, in its austere vision of society, had prohibited recorded music, images of humans or animals, and modern conveniences, so from 1996-2001, there were very few fashion, technological, or recreational supplies in the market. By 2004, traders were making up for lost time.
When the Taliban fled to the mountains, and the northern and more moderate members of Afghan society returned to run the marketplace in the early 2000s, the market opened up more broadly to technology, entertainment, and the arts, but supply was of course dependent on how many people were willing and able to buy. This year, as I trekked through the muddy streets from shopping plaza to shopping plaza, I found the market unrecognizable from four years earlier.
Chinese everything can be found now in the shiny malls, Indian actress look up from posters and DVDs. But for those still either committed to the Taliban’s ultra-conservative vision, or convinced they should maintain it for fear of the movement’s wrath upon a potential return to power, the market is a pasture filled with difficult decisions.
What is newly available is often too expensive for those of traditional livelihoods, prohibited to the very religious, or offensive to those who've never seen such things before. While the moderates, former socialists, and the new America-philes are excitedly filling up on the latest technology, DVDs, music, fashion, cafes, wedding palaces, thai food, and frozen dinners, the traditionalists among them are likely furious that they cannot enjoy or afford any of the new windfall. It is one of the daily tensions – economic as well as spiritual – that one sometimes forgets to consider or cover in war reporting when documenting the pursuit of peace and its many political barriers. What do you think?
For more on Afghan market evolution, the BBC still covers it best at news.bbc.co.uk while the UN maintains the best compendium of economic indicators at www.reliefweb.int.
While Western governments, media-consumers, and soldiers tend to focus their attention on the civil conflict rocking Afghanistan, most Afghans are more concerned with their local markets. The global economic crisis has surely slowed the march toward recovery in the region, but there is another dimension to Afghan market woes, the increasing economic and cultural divide.
This past spring, my Afghan colleagues and I drove down to the Lycee Maryam shopping area in suburban Kabul to buy a suitcase to ship files back to the home office in Washington, SC. My folks back home imagined a rough-neck huddle of street toughs armed with Kalashnikovs selling a bag of beans. But they would be pleasantly shocked to find that Kabul’s markets are modern and growing despite the war.
The otherwise mundane task of buying the suitcase presented a grand opportunity to explore how the market had changed through the war period since my economic research four years earlier. Back then, research I conducted in Kabul, Kunduz, and Tajikistan pointed to a relationship between security barriers and hunger.
Food prices could be affected when the area was isolated due to fighting near the main road, when police extorted bribes from traders, or when opium production raised incomes for some while reducing the local production of affordable food. If you're curious, here are some video snapshots of Kabul’s shopping environment:
The BBC offers a positive view of the Kabul food market:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz-SgaLjYRY&feature=related
Kabul’s old town market, in normal times, with more raw footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeCw2YAntzg&feature=related
But here’s the view of the same market, wintertime, but with bombs bursting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhjKrhwLvn0&feature=related
The Kabul shopping mall is not only a radical departure from the norm, it may be the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwUUK9QjiJI
And for you economists out there, here’s a means of following staple food prices: http://wwww.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/ASAZ-7S7J2J?OpenDocument
The challenge of the market right after the Taliban’s fall from power was primarily for traders to overcome security risks just to fill markets with mass consumption goods which sustained lives. Traders would risk bringing in what they knew for sure that all families would want to buy: rice, wheat, cooking oil, salt, tea, onion, turnip, lentils, tomatoes, sheep, chicken, auto repair tools and parts, cooking fuel, and then, after the sure things were selling, they’d procure new and diverse products to fill other needs.
The Taliban, in its austere vision of society, had prohibited recorded music, images of humans or animals, and modern conveniences, so from 1996-2001, there were very few fashion, technological, or recreational supplies in the market. By 2004, traders were making up for lost time.
When the Taliban fled to the mountains, and the northern and more moderate members of Afghan society returned to run the marketplace in the early 2000s, the market opened up more broadly to technology, entertainment, and the arts, but supply was of course dependent on how many people were willing and able to buy. This year, as I trekked through the muddy streets from shopping plaza to shopping plaza, I found the market unrecognizable from four years earlier.
Chinese everything can be found now in the shiny malls, Indian actress look up from posters and DVDs. But for those still either committed to the Taliban’s ultra-conservative vision, or convinced they should maintain it for fear of the movement’s wrath upon a potential return to power, the market is a pasture filled with difficult decisions.
What is newly available is often too expensive for those of traditional livelihoods, prohibited to the very religious, or offensive to those who've never seen such things before. While the moderates, former socialists, and the new America-philes are excitedly filling up on the latest technology, DVDs, music, fashion, cafes, wedding palaces, thai food, and frozen dinners, the traditionalists among them are likely furious that they cannot enjoy or afford any of the new windfall. It is one of the daily tensions – economic as well as spiritual – that one sometimes forgets to consider or cover in war reporting when documenting the pursuit of peace and its many political barriers. What do you think?
For more on Afghan market evolution, the BBC still covers it best at news.bbc.co.uk while the UN maintains the best compendium of economic indicators at www.reliefweb.int.
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