According to the captioners at AP and Reuters you get:
Traffic jams and pollution:
Abdul Saboor, 37, an Afghan traffic police officer, regulates the vehicles circulation at the rushed hours in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday Dec. 2, 2004. For 12 years Saboor does his duty as a traffic police officer in Kabul where he has experienced a few regimes in the past as like, Najibullah's regime, Mujahedeen's and Taliban's regimes too. But he says ' In the past regimes there wasn't so traffic jam as it is now. ' Since the ousting of the Taliban over two years ago, the number of vehicles on Kabul roads increased to 350,000 in a city designed for 40,000 vehicles resulting in traffic chaos and air pollution.
It looks to me like he's directing the hellish post-Taliban traffic with flair. I guess he must be crying on the inside.
Joblessness and homelessness:
An Afghan refugee woman carries her child as she enters a tent at a center for returnees in the Afghan capital Kabul, December 1, 2004. Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, about 3.5 million Afghans have returned to their country, but many have found difficulty finding jobs and places to live and are forced to live in temporary shelters, mostly provided by the United Nations
Since they've been living in refugee camps in Pakistan for God knows how long, isn't their coming home at least a step in the right direction? Having their first election ever is also pretty good news. It's also nice that WHO is able to get in there now and inoculate all the children against polio.
We'll get cracking on the condos and top-flight employment any time now.
(Via Bohemian Conservative.)
Posted by floridacracker at December 3, 2004 08:27 PM