Glimmers of hope for land stuck in the past

Inhabitants of Sango-Bar village have recently received electricity courtesy of a Lithuanian infrastructure team. Photo / Patrick Gower

An Afghan boy-shepherd leaves his flock and rushes down the caked-dry walls of the Harirud River valley to stare at the convoy of bullet-proof trucks carrying Lithuanian and Croatian soldiers.

This valley is a world of its own: it is desert now, but in winter the snow cuts it off from the rest of Ghor province even though the closest town is just 25km away. And that same snow cuts the entire province off from the rest of Afghanistan for the winter months.

It is the green tinge along the river's banks that keeps people here. There is just enough for rudimentary agriculture and subsistence living - the wheat here would hardly pass as long grass by New Zealand standards.

It is not just remote here - it is medieval. The Tajik people burn dry dung as fuel for cooking.

The Lithuanian soldiers are officially on "reconstruction" in Ghor province but the reality is that much of the work here is simply construction.

Ghor is a "stable" province in central Afghanistan and currently Taleban-free.

While I walked and talked freely with the valley's locals, a helicopter full of civilians was shot out of the sky in the southern Helmand province where war was raging and it was temporarily shut down to all non-military visitors.

Ghor shows the other side of this conflict - that parts of Afghanistan are exceptionally poor. Ghor has been ravaged not just by 30 years of war, but by drought and the tyranny of distance. There is not enough food to go round its 485,000 people. More than 80 per cent of them are illiterate and living below the poverty line. The average wage is $91 a year.

It has never had a paved road. The military presence means it now has a dirt runway of such a low standard that I hope I never have to land on one like it again. But for the people of Ghor it is a god-send, with arriving planes often accosted by locals trying to get relatives back out for decent medical care.

The poverty seen here is part of Afghanistan's vicious circle. Until its people's lives are of a decent standard, instability reigns and Afghanistan remains vulnerable to the Taleban.

And conversely, while at war and fearing for their lives, people are less able to get on and build themselves a better life.

Which gives rise to two of the pillars of the international forces' new strategy to somehow get out of this nearly eight-year war - security and development. Provide one, and the other will follow. A symbol of this is the Lithuanian base on the outskirts of the Ghor capital of Chaghcharan. A village has popped up next to it, because they feel safe beside it.

The Lithuanians have responsibility for this Provincial Reconstruction Team, which is the same as what New Zealand does in the neighbouring province of Bamiyan.

When it is safe enough, they will leave - and they are locked in until at least 2013. Because even without a Taleban presence, danger is a constant.

Just weeks before I arrived, criminal warlord Mullah Mustafa hijacked a high-spec bullet and bombproof vehicle on its way to the base.

According to a source at the base, Mustafa - a commander of about 100 men in the province - was then driving around in the vehicle, worth upwards of $750,000 and extremely dangerous in his hands.

This led to a US airstrike and claims that Mustafa and some of his men were killed. Then Mustafa came forward to say that he had survived, but his 6-year-old son and 10-year-old brother were among the 22 casualties - 10 of who were civilians. The raid was explained away as part of a round-up of criminals ahead of next month's presidential elections.

The knife-edge stability was also seen when the Lithuanians lost their only soldier in the war last year. There was a riot at the base's walls, and Arunas Jarmalavicius was shot by a rifleman in the 1500-strong crowd. The cause of the uprising? News of the American GI in Iraq who shot a copy of the Koran for target practice.

Problems are certainly the exception, and the pride the Lithuanian soldiers have for their work in Ghor province is clear. Stopping at the Sango Bar village, Second Lieutenant Marius Varna proudly shows off a small hydro turbine they built that has given its 25 families the power to have lights - and television - for the first time.

Ghor is being built from the ground up like this. All manner of school buildings and initiatives seem to have been set up from aid funding, some $31 million of it pumped in by the United States since the war began.

But it is not enough, according to the local Afghans. The deputy governor wanted $500 million in aid to build a road that would go through the middle of Afghanistan, linking Ghor to either side. He also wanted another 500 police.

Before I left, it was announced that one of Ghor's roads would be paved. It wasn't what the Governor wanted, but it was something.

In a place where success is measured by getting power to run a light bulb, you take what you can get.

* Patrick Gower travelled to Afghanistan and Nato HQ in Brussels with assistance from the US State Department.