Bamiyan pays the Afghan peace penalty

The situation in Bamiyan is simple enough for Mohammed Arif Arifie to distill it into two sentences spoken between sips of tea.

First, Bamiyan is so safe that the New Zealand troops posted here have not fired a shot in four years. Second, there is not a foot of paved road anywhere in a province the size of Connecticut.

The two points are connected, says Mr. Arifie, who sits beside the pitted, earthen market road here in a restaurant made of old United Nations emergency food sacks stitched together. Money follows the fighting, with millions being spent in the restive south while other, calmer parts of the country go ignored, he says. "We are punished for our peace."

Available data is often conflicting and incomplete, but it does suggest that a disproportionate share of aid money has gone to the south. Yet experts see signs of a shift as countries realize that their development dollars can achieve more in places of relative peace.

"I can sense an increasing hunger for this," says Rory Stewart, a former British diplomat now working to preserve art and architecture in Afghanistan. "The high ideological days of 2002 are ebbing away, and now officials are listening to grass-roots operations that say, 'We can't work in [the south].' "

The shift is both practical and ideological. In addition to the mounting frustration at having newly built schools and facilities destroyed in the south, there is also a dwindling number of aid workers willing to go there as security deteriorates.

The result could benefit areas like Bamiyan, where the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will spend $17 million this year – one-third more than it spent in the previous four years combined.

Much to the delight of the shopkeepers in town, the outlay will bring the first feet of pavement to the province – nearly two miles, actually – beginning with the market road that runs through the center of Bamiyan City.

"Compared to other parts of Afghanistan in terms of security, we are very good," says Ramazan, a bearded, one-named shopkeeper who leans back in his plastic chair as shoppers bustle by his store. "Compared with the other parts of Afghanistan in terms of development, we have zero."

Such a perception is understandable in a place with no paved roads and only sporadic electricity, which comes from a local diesel-powered generator that shuts down every afternoon at 4 p.m. The reality, however, appears to be more nuanced.

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