Volume 49, Number 1 · January 17, 2002
The Afghan Tragedy
By Pankaj Mishra
In Afghanistan in 1996 the Taliban inherited a profoundly damaged country; and five years later, the tasks of reconstruction and healing were more urgent, even before the US bombing began. The Taliban government's budget for the last year of their regime amounted to $82 million—and the meagerness of this sum for a country geographically bigger than France only tells part of the story. More than half of the income was expected to come from the semi-extortionate toll taxes imposed by their Mujahideen predecessors and continued by the Taliban; and more than half of those revenues were swallowed by the contingency fund to support the wars against the Tajiks in northern Afghanistan, formerly headed by Ahmed Shah Massoud, and against the Shiite Hazaras in the central highlands. The outlay for development was only $343,000, while the ministry that looked after the madrasas, religious schools, received $14 million, which in turn was five times more than the allocation for the Ministry of Health.[1]
Feature, 8474 words
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