Kabul Complexities

Driving into Kabul city from the countryside makes the city’s numbers (frequently quoted by journalists, demographers, political analysts, and the likes) disappear from importance….the landscape says it all.

The hillsides are covered with makeshift housing…quick-builds replacing the houses destroyed over 25 years of war (1 out of every 3 houses were destroyed during they decades of war) and meeting the needs of the millions of returning refugees from Pakistan and Iran annually.

In the past 6 years, Kabul’s population has burgeoned, with only small gains in the physical size of the city. Though this phenomenon is widely understood, actual figures on Kabul’s population is difficult to come by. Population estimates range from just over 3 to nearly 5 million, shedding light on the lack of quality information about city demographics and needs. With basic information such as population lacking, one can only imagine how difficult it must be to create and run systems of education, sanitation, health, governance and the likes.

To complicate issues further, Kabul’s artificially inflated economy (resulting from the large ex-pat presence among other factors) places rent (alongside household needs/commodities) at exorbitant rates. Despite an annual per capita of around $360, a 1 bedroom apartment in Kabul averages at $200 per month (compared to $7/month for a 3 bedroom home prior to the Soviet invasion...and thank you BBC for the quote!) Consequently, families often live together, pooling incomes to make rent.


**The above picture is taken from an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp on the outskirts of Kabul. No matter how long I live here, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the shoe choice for women. It seems if I could imagine and manufacture the worst type of footwear possible, practically speaking, for this terrain (under a burqa no less) I would have created the local shoe market.