Just in time for Monday morning comes Chrenkoff‘s Good News from Afghanistan. Today’s highlight:
Ismail Khan set himself a daunting task when he took office as Afghanistan’s minister of water and energy in December. The former mujahedin commander who long held sway over the western city of Herat promised the hard-pressed residents of Kabul that he would fix their energy shortage within two months.
Now, through a combination of hard work and good luck, it appears that the strongman from Herat has been able to fulfil his pledge. Instead of having power for only a few short hours, three nights out of seven, residents of much of the city now have electricity on a nightly basis.
Right now, 70 per cent of Kabul’s homes have electricity every night,’ Ismail Khan [said].
This makes me cry. I don’t know what kind of man Ismail Khan (sounds like something out of Kipling) is, but from a previous GNfA that says he’s turned Herat into a veritable paradise, and now this, I suspect he’s the kind of man his country needs.
This is really comprehensive. It is mostly accurate to what I have experienced. Although Ismail Kahn has done quite a few good things it is always difficult to know the motivation for it. Depending on which tribe a person is from that you talk to you will get a different take on it. What I have mostly heard is more negative stuff about him. Bt this could be biased and he could be reforming which is great. It will be good to have electricity when I return!
-Paul
About the new Tolo TV program, it is also really contraversial over there. Yes it is popular amongst the young people (and probably older too, but they’d be ashamed to admit it), but it is a shock for a lot of people in a society that although it is changing, some of what is aired is too offensive. I am concerned also that in a nation th athas only 36% literacy (and I’ve heard lower numbers) that with the flooding in of TV, Satelite, and Cable that the need for literacy and reading books for info is being filled with the fluff of entertaining (and often corrupting) TV shows.
I guess that’s the price of freedom. I think that it is better for people to abuse their freedom than for tyrants to abuse the people.