Less than ten percent of Afghanistan’s 30 million people have access to electricity and landmines continue to litter large areas of the country.

The past year saw an upsurge in insecurity across Afghanistan as the Taliban and its allies made a powerful comeback, especially in the southern part of the country. Tactics used by insurgents in Iraq, such as suicide bombings and roadside explosives, were also introduced. Meanwhile, life for ordinary people in Afghanistan goes on.

Unemployment in Afghanistan is well over 30 percent, according to an IRC survey. To help the most vulnerable in the country get back on their feet, IRC is providing skills training and small business start-up programs, like this cooperative which makes women’s clothing in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Over 4.5 million Afghans have returned home since the UN refugee agency UNHCR started its voluntary repatriation programme in 2002. However, the lack of work and increased insecurity has slowed down repatriation from Pakistan and Iran where an estimated four million Afghans still live. Farmala Khan recently returned to his home village in eastern Afghanistan after 25 years in exile. “When I came back here I almost didn’t recognize the village,” he says. “My house was destroyed and it was hard to start a new life. I owned nothing and I slept under a tree with my family.” Farmala’s luck changed when he was approached by the IRC which helped him start a weaving business and provided him with a new house. “My life is good now,” he says.

Others have been less lucky. The arid Sheik Misri settlement on the outskirts of the eastern town of Jalalabad is home to thousands of people without property who have returned home to Afghanistan after decades in Pakistani refugee camps. This boy arrived in October with his father, Nur Rahman. “It is very difficult to live here,” Nur Rahman says. “We have to collect water from a well far away from were we have been allowed to settle. And the people living in the area are reluctant to share, so we often have to pay for the water.” Having already provided housing, water and education to over 6,000 vulnerable returnees over the past year, the IRC is planning to provide shelter, water and sanitation for an additional 1,000 returning families in Sheik Misri and in the western town of Herat.

Life is looking better for the returning villagers of Kalar Shahi. Perched on a plateau an hour’s drive south of Kabul, the village sustained severe damage during the Soviet invasion and the ensuing civil war. Houses were turned into rubble and residents fled to Pakistan and elsewhere. With its population now returning, the village is being rebuilt with the help of the IRC. “The road is smelly and there is rubble everywhere,” says one villager, Amir Jan. “It needs to be fixed.” The reconstruction work is organized by IRC-supported “community development councils”. These locally elected bodies decide which reconstruction projects to prioritize and seek funding for.

While some refugees were able to return to their communities and rebuild their lives, about 40 percent have moved to the capital Kabul in spite of not having any family or roots there. There are no reliable figures on the number of people displaced internally in Afghanistan, living with friends and family, or trying to survive in makeshift shelters. In Kabul, an estimated 500,000 people are homeless or living in crude shelters, like this one in a war-damaged Kabul suburb.

Saeema’s husband was shot dead in a local dispute five years ago. “It was terrible,” she says. “My children lost their father and I couldn’t support them. I was forced to beg in my village.” The IRC has since provided Saeema, 32, with a cow that enables her to sell dairy products in the market. Today she gets nine liters of milk per day from her cow, earning her up to 6,000 Afghanis (US$ 100) per month. She can also provide her three children with fresh milk and cheese in a country where most of the dairy products have to be imported from Pakistan and are sold at inflated prices in local markets. “After my monthly costs and expenses for the animal I can save half of my money,” she says, filling up a bucket of water for the cow. “And in a year the cow will get a calf. I was at the bottom, now I am at the top. I am a real businesswoman.” The IRC is currently helping over 6,000 people like Saeema make a living.

Since the Soviet invasion in 1979 a steady decline has all but demolished Afghanistan’s educational infrastructure. An estimated 80 percent of school buildings were damaged or destroyed in the war and Afghanistan has the lowest overall literacy rate in Asia. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, a number of home-based schools have started up, like this IRC-supported one in a village near Jalalabad. The IRC is currently supporting some 7,000 students and over 1,000 teachers in six of Afghanistan’s provinces.

Filament extraction, fabric and carpet weaving are skills that have all but disappeared during Afghanistan’s many years of war, turmoil and displacement. In the Zinda Jan district of the country’s Herat Province, the IRC has helped 1,000 impoverished women – most of them widows – revive the traditional skill of silk production in the region. The women received Chinese silk worm eggs, equipment and money to buy mulberry leaves to feed the larvae that produces the silk. 55-year-old Twos (center) lost her husband and son to the war and was left to raise her grandchildren on her own. For many years she was forced to beg to earn an income but is now making US$30 per month. “It has changed my life,” Twos says. The women uses all available floor space, pans and baskets for rearing the worms, and has achieved a record production of silk, said Professor Habibi, a sericulture consultant from Herat University, adding that the project has boosted the local economy and the women’s ability to buy food and reinvest in their newfound business. “Women who never held a 100 Afghani currency note in their hands were able to count thousands of Afghanis for the first time.”

Students with handicaps face huge difficulties in Afghanistan. “They are normally shunned by society here and are rarely given the opportunity of an education,” explains Karima Sorkhabi, who manages a unique IRC program that integrates blind and deaf children into ordinary schools. Seven-year-old Akhbar Hussein Anwar (left) is deaf and is now enrolled in a class with hearing children. “It’s fun to be in my new class,” he explains, using sign-language. “My new friends help me when I don’t understand.”

(December 2006) It is five years since a new future for Afghanistan was mapped out at an international conference in Bonn. But Afghanistan is still the poorest country in Asia. Growing insecurity and lawlessness have put vast areas of the country beyond the reach of humanitarian workers. The International Rescue Committee has provided humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan since 1988.