From FT Alphaville, Tuesday August 17:
And yet, it was still always about the money.
In May, 2003 the situation in Afghanistan was looking promising. The international community and their security forces had mostly stabilised Kabul, the Afghan capital that was home to Hamid Karzai’s interim government. And, as far as investors were concerned, things were really looking up.
Western airlines like Lufthansa were considering scheduled civilian flights to the capital, and local expectations were high that the Hyatt hotel group would soon be breaking ground on a new five-star location near the US embassy. If this was built, western officials expected business delegations would flock to the central Asian state in their droves and invest accordingly. “There’s a tremendous demand for quality hotel rooms in Kabul,” Jack G. Kerr, Hyatt’s senior vice-president of development, told Forbes on April 13, 2003.
Aside from rebuilding core infrastructure and telecoms, another priority at the time was attracting international banks. Afghanistan’s banking system had been destroyed by decades of war and five years of Taliban rule, meaning that in 2003 it operated on an entirely foreign cash basis. The central bank’s own coffers had been looted when the Taliban had exited the city. Despite all this, the interim government had managed to successfully relaunch the local afghani currency in October 2002 and mostly maintain its stability with dollar reserve sales (dollars received from aid and international development packages). The fact the currency had held up was viewed as an encouraging sign and many banks were beginning feasibility studies on opening local branches.
I was 24, and in the overly adventurous but naively rash stage of my life. In hindsight, nearly 20 years on, I had been overly influenced by strong-willed female correspondent types like Kate Adie who had made dangerous reporting look easy and, dare I say it, glamorous....
....MUCH MORE
