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アフガニスタンのゆくえ −アメリカ軍、NATO軍の撤退後は
アフガニスタンの経済は外部からの援助によって成り立っている。アメリカ軍、NATO軍がお金を落としているからである。撤退すると、９０％の外部からの援助はなくなり、アフガニスタンの経済はペシャンコになる。すでにその兆候は現れており、これまでのように軍からの発注は来なくなっているという。
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Afghans Fear Downturn as Foreigners Withdraw
Andrea Bruce for The New York Times
The Milli Factory once made 1,500 pairs of boots a day for Afghan forces, paid for by the international coalition.
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Published: January 31, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — The anticipated withdrawal of most international forces is still two years away, but already Afghans who have depended on the decade-old foreign presence for their livelihoods are feeling tremors as the first troops leave and spending and aid money dries up. Many fear that the rumblings could be a harbinger of far worse things to come.
A store in Kabul now sells 10 Western-style porcelain toilets a day, instead of 50.
The withdrawal of tens of thousands of foreign troops and international aid workers — and the billions of dollars in aid they have brought to the country — has all the potential to undo the fragile progress Afghans have made under the international occupation and, some fear, even set off a new round of insecurity and civil unrest. So dependent is Afghanistan that in 2010, international assistance amounted to roughly 97 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to a commonly cited World Bank estimate.
That foreign money, and the end of the Taliban government, lured back Afghan refugees and moneyed entrepreneurs alike, and it has lifted important parts of the economy to unnatural highs.
“The investors, they are still trying to sell their properties to collect their cash money and move their families back abroad,” said Toryalai Babakarkhail, 45, a former brick kiln operator who now runs a small real estate business here.
Already real estate prices, salaries, store sales and factory orders are shrinking, leaving Afghans in nearly every quarter to wonder what will happen next — to them, their society and their economy.
At the Milli Factory, 150 men and a few women hammered, glued and bent over dimly lighted sewing machines on a recent afternoon. They once turned out 1,500 pairs of boots a day, exclusively for the Afghan security forces — light brown for the army, black for the police. But even those orders were paid for by the international coalition, and already they have stopped.
Farhad Safi, the company’s chief executive, said Milli had received no new boot orders for eight months. As the international coalition withdraws and Afghanistan is forced to pay for more of its own equipment, the government is buying Chinese and Pakistani boots — which are lower in quality but cost 15 percent less, Mr. Safi complained.
“These products we are producing are for our stocks,” he said.
Such a turnaround could reverse the fortunes of Milli and all those who work at the factory, where employees can earn $240 a month, a good salary here.
It could do the same for many other parts of the Afghan economy that flourished as about $54 billion in aid and military spending poured into Afghanistan over the past 10 years.
That money generated thousands of jobs for Afghans. It also produced a new elite in cities like Kabul, who clogged the streets with cars and created wealthy neighborhoods, like Ahmad Shah Baba Maina, a few miles to the east of Milli Factory, where electricity towers sprouted and six-floor apartment blocks rose amid the muddy hovels.
From a prefabricated tin shack on the edge of the neighborhood, Mr. Babakarkhail, the real estate broker, trades property to company directors, government ministers, members of Parliament and others in a class that has benefited from the infusion of foreign cash.
Outside his shack, a salt cart trundled past, pulled by a horse, its driver calling out through a loudspeaker — a reminder of how the neighborhood bridges the old Afghanistan and the new, and how easily the country could slide back.
Already, the housing bubble is deflating. A typical house normally costs $30,000 to $230,000 depending on size and location, but deals dried up and prices dropped by $10,000 to $50,000 last year as people worried about the pullout, though prices bounced back in December, Mr. Babakarkhail said.
The same tremors are being felt about 20 miles away on the icy hills north of Kabul, where Miraj Din, 48, who used to deliver food and firewood in a wheelbarrow, now manages Mumtaz’s Car Salesroom, selling imported cars to the country’s elite.
Last year, he sold about a dozen cars a month, but this year he is selling only one car a month as Afghans with enough money to buy these fancy vehicles delay their purchases or move their money abroad, he said.
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