Rebuilding Afghanistan's Tourism Infrastructure
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Date: 19/2/04
By Michael T. Luongo etrubonews 17 February, 2004
"We once had 500-700,000 people visiting the country a year. Many came to ski, some for luxury hunting trips," recalled Captain Bashit Akbaryar,
a Senior Pilot with Ariana, Afghanistan's national airline. In those heady days 30 years ago when a King still ruled Afghanistan, he explained, women wore mini-skirts in any of Kabul's 7 nightclubs, and hippies roamed the streets.
All of this is almost impossible to imagine in the Kabul of 2003, a war-torn ruin where the majority of women still wear the blue burqas forced on them by the banished Taliban. Restaurants catering to foreigners operate with paranoid caution about the alcohol consumed on their premises, let alone the idea of a noisy nightclub to entertain visitors. The differences between the Kabul of the King and the Kabul of Karzai would seem to be unreconcilable, but there are many working to return Afghanistan back, if not to the same tourist spot it was 30 years ago, to something resembling it.
Rebuilding the infrastructure has the important pay off of potentially creating jobs all over the country, helping Afghanistan become self-sufficient long after the current population of foreigners - almost all of which are from the military, NGO's or embassies - moves on to the next post-conflict destination. It will take a lot of time and money, but the main issues are the pace of transportation improvements and ongoing security problems.
Any trip to Afghanistan must begin and end in an airplane. "We have no ocean, no railroad, no roads. The only way to connect Afghan people is air transportation," said Khalil Ahmad Najmyar, Ariana President. While its status as a landlocked nation crisscrossed by difficult mountain passes was once a reason for peace and security centuries ago, none of this translates into making the nation a modern tourism destination. Yet as much as the country's people suffered during the war, so did the airline.
"After the establishment of the new government, we were left just one Boeing 727." The answer to what happened to the other Ariana planes is all over the airport. "The rest of the fleet was destroyed by coalition bombing," Najmyar explained. Ariana, its fleet headquartered and stored at Kabul International, was sacrificed for the sake of liberating Afghanistan. "We got a benefit from that, but at the same time, they were commercial aircraft."
To put itself back on its feet, the airline began buying and leasing additional planes. The airline currently services 18 international and domestic destinations. Still, this is not enough to fuel his vision of what the airline could be. He envisions service to London, Paris and Amsterdam. Tapping what he estimates are nearly 300,000 Afghan families in the United States is ultimately part of the company's plan. Najmyar himself had lived in the Washington D.C. area, which along with San Francisco and New York, is where most Afghan-Americans are concentrated.
To get this market, however, he needs long range planes, which he feels it is the U.S.'s responsibility to provide. "It's a good propaganda for the U.S., a benefit to the people and will show the fairness of the U.S." For now, working out whether the company can afford planes on its own without a handout is difficult. Records are jumbled, and without computers tracking revenue paid almost exclusively in cash, he has no idea how solvent the company is. "That is one of the biggest problems: our balance. To say how much we make and how much we lost."
Once on the ground, choices abound for where to stay in Kabul, but none rival the quality of accommodations found in nearly every other world capital. Rebuilding projects are quickly bringing new rooms online. Aga Khan, one of Afghanistan's wealthiest men, is renovating the Kabul Hotel. It is currently closed while the downtown building is completely gutted.
Nearby, 33-year old Afghan-American Wais Faizi is slowly renovating the Mustafa Hotel, built by his family in the mid-1970's. He moved here in 1991 from Bergen Country, NJ, to keep an eye on the property and did not wait for peace to begin improvements. "All during this time," he said, "I added additions to the hotel." With 180 rooms, it is the second largest in the country. Journalists and business people remain the bulk of his clientele, and even the flight of the Taliban has not changed that. "Nobody comes here sightseeing. I can't even say 5 people have been tourists in 2 years."
There is no timetable for the renovations of the Inter-Continental Hotel, the largest and perhaps best known hotel in the county. "This is Afghanistan. If you want to bring something from the outside, it sits for 5 months at the border," said Resident Manager Lailla Salari-Mercier. The hotel is owned by the Afghan government, and leased by the Dubai based company Freecom. Technically, it is no longer part of the Inter-Continental chain, but rejoining is one of the renovation's goals. "Bringing it up to 5-star standard, that is the agreement with the government," she said.
Currently only the 5th floor has been completed, but the other floors remain in use. Rooms still maintain the décor from 1968 when the hotel was built, along with various pieces of mismatched furniture added over the years. Prices vary considerably depending on what room a traveler takes. The hotel was never heavily damaged, but did sustain a few rocket blasts. Salari-Mercier credits "solid British construction" to the hotel's survival.
For some of the industry's leaders, there is a moral imperative to bringing back tourists. "Just thinking that I can feed 40 families, that 100 people depend on my paycheck means a lot to me," said Faizi. Some of his staff live in the hotel and he counts young men orphaned through the war years among them.
Salari-Mercier tolerates labor inefficiencies which would be unacceptable in Europe or the United States. With 330 employees, the majority Afghan nationals, the hotel is one of the largest private employers in Kabul "We can run with half of the staff, but what are they going to do?" she said. "We have a moral responsibility. We will streamline, but at the moment, we can not."
That thousands will benefit from tourism improvements is also on the mind of Dr. Hessamuddin Hamrah, the Minister of Civil Aviation and Tourism. He explained that 30 years ago, "1,200 people worked for this office. Under the Taliban, there were 8 people. Now I have 100." By expanding into other parts of the country and opening up regional tourism bureaus, he hopes to return to those old numbers. Currently there are only offices in Kabul, Herat and Bamyan.
While Hamrah would not say what his budget was, he explained that some of the revenue comes from visa processing and car taxes. He said that this is not enough for his needs which though basic for a Western company, are obstacles in a country like Afghanistan. He said, "We need computers and fax machines, and secondly, we need a publishing company to print maps and brochures." The most current guides that his ministry offers date from the mid-1970's. They highlight sites which have been destroyed, such as the Bamyan Buddhas, blown up in March 2001 by the Taliban.
What he wants is more help from the United States. "We were hoping the U.S. would help in the tourist expense, but unfortunately, it didn't do anything for us." Hamrah acknowledged that the U.S. is involved in " a lot of projects in different ways" such as rebuilding tourist sites like the Babur Gardens and the Kabul to Kandahar road, but these only indirectly aid his office. "The Americans are a superpower. They have to create more jobs," he said.
With the possibility of increased visibility of tourists and business travelers in Afghanistan, security will become an even bigger issue. The U.S. Embassy currently warns Americans to keep a low profile and part of doing so is staying out of the big hotels. According to Dr. Roy Glover, the Embassy Counselor for Press and Cultural Affairs "we tend to recommend some of the guest houses because the Inter-Continental is such an obvious target."
The Embassy staff itself is periodically subject to lockdowns in which it can not leave the compound. Glover explained, "I haven't gotten out that much" since the most recent security announcements made after the second anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Improving tourism in such an environment will be difficult.
Salari-Mercier defends her hotel as safe for visitors. "We have soldiers patrolling the hotel 24 hours a day." Barriers and checkpoints surround the hotel on the long winding road up its hilltop location. "But at the end of the day, it's a hotel. Anywhere in Kabul can be a target."
In spite of his predecessor's fate, Hamrah said "I have no problems, I am not insecure." He felt those who visit Afghanistan firsthand will feel the same. Already, he explained, his office has assisted 6 groups of foreigners, a mix of adventure travelers and journalists from Europe and Japan who are seeing cities and natural and historic sites throughout the country. "The area that we are going to, we are 100% sure about their security."
Even if these tourists might be safe where they are going, huge sections of the country remain unsettled, particularly in the south, impeding both tourism now and infrastructure initiatives meant to aid its future. The country's most important project is the reconstruction of the Kabul to Kandahar road, linking the country's two largest cities and paid for with U.S. funds. The resurgence of the Taliban however has variously slowed and stopped the work.
Gary Helseth, the Country Coordinator for the United Nations Office for Project Services, explained it is unpredictable when an incident on this road will occur. "You can have some guys sitting on the road one day and nothing happens. The next day, those same guys can have a gun and start shooting at people." The U.N. operates free flights for its staff and for NGO's, but the cost for journalists and regular tourists is high at $880 roundtrip.
The road has higher goals than mere tourism behind its reconstruction, such as improving commerce and ensuring medical clinics along the way are better supplied. Still, improved security and road transport mean the ability to stop and visit points along the way. Currently, according to Mohammad, virtually no Americans take the risk, but in addition to Afghans who use the road, "the Europeans are using it too, but at many times there is a fear of attack."
What tourists will see when they arrive into Afghanistan is itself controversial. To tour Kabul now is to tour utter destruction, perhaps one of the most devastated cities in the world. When asked about whether tourists will come to see the ruins of Kabul, Hamrah refused to comment, mentioning instead the country's climate, handicrafts and that "what is interesting to the tourists are the historic sites." However, he did feel that if and when Osama bin Laden is found, his hiding places will become the country's largest tourist attraction. The intense bombing campaigns by the United States, seen nightly by Americans on television, may also be an inspiration for tourists. He said, "I am thinking everybody from the United States is interested in seeing the caves of Tora Bora."
Even the Inter-Continental is deciding whether some of its damage will be a useful attraction. Patrons dine in the restaurant in the shadows of the Taliban's cultural destruction. A wall mural once depicted the Bamyan Buddhas, but like the originals, this was destroyed, chiseled out of the wall. According to Salari-Mercier, "We've left it as a reminder of the Taliban regime." There are ongoing discussions as to preserving it as is, or inviting the original artist to redo the work.
Still, tourists do come, many of them happy to be here before the masses return. Pip Rau, a London art dealer who has been visiting for 30 years, feels she is "respected" by those she deals with for coming through the various regimes. She recently brought a friend to the country who came purely as a tourist. Part of the delight, she explained is visiting rural Afghanistan which is like "like going back 500 years." Even the unchecked drug trade produced stunning images like "fields of marijuana everywhere" simply growing along the sides of the roads, recalling the country's hippy days.
John Deupree, who works for the NGO Coordinating Council for International Universities, liked being in Afghanistan now during what he called its "pre-post card society" phase. (Though postcards do exist.) Ray Woods, a retired lumber entrepreneur from Kansas, was excited to see the country unencumbered by crowds. He declared himself, "the first tourist in Afghanistan," though there were indeed many who came before him. He chose the Inter-Continental hotel and hired a small staff of drivers and translators to take him around Kabul, providing work for several families as he toured the city's ruins.
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