Afghanistan city of Ghazni becomes sister to HaywardBy Matt O'Brien, STAFF WRITER
HAYWARD — The city officially cemented its sisterhood with Ghazni, Afghanistan, this week.In a unanimous decision Tuesday, the Hayward City Council voted to set up a sister-city relationship with the mid-sized Afghan city to encourage collaborative education efforts in both countries.
In a written statement, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she was "particularly pleased that Hayward has reached out to a city in Afghanistan, a country whose people have known the horrors of poverty and war, but are eager to build a new country based on freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, and the rule of law."
Hayward Councilman Kevin Dowling raised some concern with the plan, citing terrorism and the resurging power of the Taliban in parts of the country. Councilman Bill Quirk, who organized the sister-city campaign, said participants in the program know the country and are working with good people there.
Literacy advocates in Hayward and elsewhere in the Bay Area have been using the budding relationship between the two cities to launch efforts to educate young women unable to attend school when the Taliban was in power.
Organizers have raised thousands of dollars in Hayward, which has had a substantial population of Afghan immigrants since the early 1980s, to pay for school supplies and teachers working in Ghazni.
Quirk said the collaboration also will help local students and Hayward residents learn more about Afghanistan.
City helps quench 'thirst' for learning among women of Ghazni
By Matt O'Brien, STAFF WRITER
HAYWARD — Thirty women in Ghazni, Afghanistan, will receuve schooling for the first time ever next year as part of a budding sisterhood between the cities of Ghazni and Hayward.Rahima Haya, a former Hayward educator who chairs the Hayward-Ghazni Sister City Formation Committee, said it is trying to raise enough money from local residents to launch the school next March.
"We have widows, we have married women, we have (teenage) girls," said Haya, a Pleasanton resident who lived in Hayward for 19 years. "These women haven't had education, but they are really thirsty to learn."
The committee holds its first official event Saturday evening — a fund-raiser at Hayward's Kabul Restaurant.
Committee members have been trying for two years to form a formal sister city relationship with Ghazni, which lies southwest of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, on the route to the southern city of Kandahar. With an estimated 150,000 residents, Ghazni is about the same size as Hayward and similarly known for its diversity, with Pashtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks and other ethnic groups living side by side.
But while the Hayward school district still struggles with underperforming schools, educators in Ghazni must recover from an era of repression that left school-age girls without any education at all.
"The whole education system broke down for nine years during the time of the Taliban," said Humaira Ghilzai, presidentof the Bay Area's Afghan Friends Network, which is co-sponsoring the Ghazni school project.
The project is known as the Widow's Literacy Project because many of the women, who were never schooled, lost their husbands during the war.
Schools for girls were prohibited until the U.S.-led war against the Taliban in 2001.
"A lot of them were married," said Ghilzai. "They can't even provide basic support for their kids, who may need some help with school, reading basic signs and such."
Ghilzai said organizers chose Hayward because of the city's large Afghan population. They chose Ghazni because it needs the attention.
"Because it's so close to Kabul, it gets overlooked by a lot of the support that comes from international organizations," Ghilzai said.
A similar literacy program began in Kabul two years ago after Haya, who spent years as a liaison for Afghan-American students in the Hayward Unified School District, traveled to Afghanistan to help jumpstart a schooling program for women there.
For 30 women, programs such as these cost a mere $3,000, she said.
"We rented somebody's living room," Haya said of the pilot program she launched in 2002. She said it doesn't matter "if they are outside in a tent or inside in a living room, as long as they can learn."
The school season in Ghazni lasts for nine months and begins in March or April to avoid the region's frigid winters. Many classes are held outside.
The program already has received more than two thirds of the funds it needs to operate.
Haya, who moved to Hayward from Kabul in 1983, said the schooling programs have received a great deal of support in Hayward and Fremont, where many Afghan immigrants settled in the late 1970s and early 1980s after the Soviet invasion.
"Most of the people had relatives in Hayward," Haya said. "That's why I came."
Hayward Councilman Bill Quirk said he became active in the project because he was interested in learning more about Afghanistan. He wants to formalize the sister city relationship.
"The recognition by the city would give it some extra legitimacy," he said. "We're trying to get a core of 10 or a dozen people in Hayward, or nearby, who are interested in this."
As part of the sister city formation process, Hayward invited Ghazni's provincial governor, Asadullah Khalid, to visit the city last year. Khalid, who visited sites including Tyrell Elementary School, was appointed governor of the larger Kandahar province earlier this year.
Voters in Ghazni and across Afghanistan, many of them women, voted in parliamentary and local elections on Sunday.
Nearly 50 years after President Dwight Eisenhower launched the country's official sister cities program, there are still few relationships between American and Afghan cities.
The San Diego City Council voted in 2004 to establish sisterhood with the Afghan city of Jalalabad in 2004. According to the Web site of Sister Cities International, the only other formal Afghan-American city relationship is between Bamiyan and Scottsbluff, Neb.
If local committee members succeed in their efforts, Ghazni will become Hayward's fourth sister city, joining Funabashi, Japan; Faro, Portugal; and San Felipe, Mexico.
Contact Matt O'Brien at mattobrien@dailyreviewonline.com or (510) 293-2473.
Bay City News Wire
BAY AREA TEACHERS AID AFGHAN SCHOOLS
04/17/05 2:35 PDTFive Bay Area teachers embarked Thursday on a mission to improve math and science education in Afghanistan by training teachers, purchasing school supplies and conducting research.
The weeklong mission takes place in Ghazni, Afghanistan's second largest province, where teachers Camilla Barry, David Barry, Marianne O'Grady, Elsie De Laere and Mary Lu Christie will conduct lessons on basic math and science teaching methods.
Classes will be supplied with items found in American math and science classrooms such as protractors, rulers, test tubes and scales.
In addition, teachers will compile data on current teaching methods and training needs to design future workshops planned for this summer and set to continue on a regular basis.
Planned by the Afghan Friends Network, Barry Scientific, and the Ghazni Governor's Office in Afghanistan, this mission is funded by the Afghan Friends Network initiative, "Teaching Rainbows and Radio Waves.''
The Afghan Friends Network, a grassroots non-profit organization, "has been fostering strong relationships between Afghanistan and the United States,'' since 2002, spokeswoman Susan Aumack said.
"This mission is a part of an initiative to empower the people of Afghanistan through education,'' Aumack said.
TEACHERS EMBARK ON MISSION TO IMPROVE EDUCATION IN AFGHANISTAN
Afghan Friends Network provides $8,000 in funding for essential supplies for Teacher Training Program in Ghazni Province
April 11, 2005 San Francisco, CA: Five Bay Area teachers embarked this week on a humanitarian mission to Ghazni, Afghanistan as a result of the unprecedented cooperation of three organizations—Afghan Friends Network, Barry Scientific, and the Ghazni Governor’s Office in Afghanistan. Between April 14-21, 2005, the group plans to conduct teacher training, purchase essential science and math supplies for schools in Afghanistan’s second largest province and do further research for future educational and humanitarian programs there.
Afghan Friends Network raised the funds needed to pay for the essential school supplies and teacher training for this mission through an initiative entitled “Teaching Rainbows and Radio Waves,” which was kicked off in February 2005 at a reception hosted by Dana King, CBS-5 News Anchor. To date AFN has raised more than $12,000 for this worthy cause. The goal for 2005 is to raise $50,000 which would provide 125 or one third of the Ghazni schools with the necessary supplies for hands-on teaching as well as a sustainable training program for an entire year.
“We are pleased to support this effort and we are looking forward to an excellent training program,” said Humaira Ghilzai, President of Afghan Friends Network. “This is the first of several programs of this kind planned for 2005, and we are continuing our efforts to secure the funding and resources needed. We are also seeking dedicated and talented teachers who would be interested in working with us in the future.”
The Bay area teachers participating in this trip are: Camilla Barry & David Barry - Barry Scientific, Marianne O'Grady- San Francisco Friends School, Elsie De Laere- Albany Unified School District, and Mary Lu Christie - Early Childhood and Primary Education Specialist. They will be conducting 4 days of extensive training with the first day dedicated to women teachers. The balance of the training will include both men and women. The lessons are designed to illustrate basic math and science teaching methods in a number of disciplines, including geometry, physics, astronomy, math, and chemistry.
Additional research will be conducted by Mary Lu Christie in Ghazni primary schools to determine the current teaching methods and training needs. She will use this data to create workshops specifically designed for primary school teachers which will be conducted in the summer of 2005.
In addition to the ‘Teaching Rainbows and Radio Waves’ campaign, AFN has been involved in several other projects designed to encourage and empower Afghan citizens. The organization has enabled exchanges of politicians, urban planners and teachers, and is now working to establish a formal ‘Sister City’ relationship between the city of Hayward, California and the city of Ghazni. The results have been inspiring.
Since 2002, AFN has been fostering strong relationships between Afghanistan and the United States. Established as a response to the 9/11 attacks, AFN believes forging friendships and partnerships can enrich people and their communities. AFN is a non-profit organization, and is entirely dependent on tax-deductible donations and volunteer efforts. AFN is led by a group of highly dedicated Americans and Afghans with diverse backgrounds including high tech marketing, urban planning, architecture, engineering, law and politics.
BAY AREA WOMEN UNITE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR EDUCATION IN AFGHANISTAN
Unlikely pair spearhead initiative to empower Afghan teachers and children by providing teacher training, school supplies, and financial support
January 14, 2005 San Francisco, CA: The Afghan Friends Network (AFN) announced an initiative, entitled “Teaching Rainbows and Radio Waves,” designed to raise funds for essential school supplies and science teacher training in Ghazni, Afghanistan's second largest province. This campaign will be kicked off on Friday, Feb. 4th at 6 pm at a reception being held in San Francisco at the Museo ItaloAmericano located in Fort Mason. The event will be hosted by Dana King anchor of CBS news—KPIX-Channel 5. Ms King traveled to Afghanistan during the summer of 2004.
“Our goal in 2005 is to raise $50,000 to provide 125 or one third of the Ghazni schools with science supplies for hands-on teaching and a sustainable training program for teachers who have not had any type of modern training for more than a decade. Our main emphasis for this campaign is to support science programs,” said Humaira Ghilzai, President of the Afghan Friends Network. “It's amazing how much a dollar can buy there. $60 will cover a science teacher's salary for a month, $120 will support a school's science program for 3 months, and just $500 will buy 60 chairs and tables for a girl's school.”
The idea for the ‘Teaching Rainbows and Radio Waves' campaign began when Ms. Ghilzai, a former high-tech marketing executive, met Camilla Barry, a science teacher in San Francisco schools and principal of Barry Scientific who had traveled to Afghanistan to teach hands-on, experiment-based science program to Afghan teachers and youth in Kabul. Ms. Barry then expanded her teaching to include the training of middle and high school teachers in Ghazni, located 70 miles Southwest of Kabul. The Ghazni Education Ministry wants to adopt Barry's curriculum as part of their science program.
”When I first learned that the Taliban had closed schools for girls for several years throughout the country, I longed to be able to share my skills and education with the people of Afghanistan,” said Camilla Barry. "I am so grateful that through my affiliation with the Afghan Friends Network, I am able to extend my program to Ghazni, a place where I have wanted to teach for a long time but was unable to find a way to do it. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to continue my work instructing teachers and helping children who have been deprived of education for too long. It is very rewarding."
Ms Barry and two other teachers are going to Afghanistan in April 2005 to conduct additional training for teachers in Ghazni, a province that generally doesn't get much attention from the outside world. The group will purchase all the supplies with the proceeds of the fundraising campaign and will personally deliver them to as many schools as possible.
In addition to the ‘Teaching Rainbows and Radio Waves' campaign, AFN has been involved in several other projects designed to encourage and empower Afghan citizens. The organization has enabled exchanges of politicians, urban planners and teachers, and is now working to establish a formal ‘Sister City' relationship between the city of Hayward, California and the city of Ghazni. The results have been inspiring.
Since 2002, AFN has been fostering strong relationships between Afghanistan and the United States. Established as a response to the 9/11 attacks, AFN believes forging friendships and partnerships can enrich people and their communities. AFN is a non-profit organization, and is entirely dependent on tax-deductible donations and volunteer efforts. AFN is led by a group of highly dedicated Americans and Afghans with diverse backgrounds including high tech marketing, urban planning, architecture, engineering, law and politics. For more information visit the AFN website http://www.afghanfriends.net/
Mill Valley teacher going back to Kabul
By Elizabeth Peer, IJ correspondent
Camilla Barry's trip to Afghanistan last year left her hungry for more.
"It was successful beyond my wildest dreams," said Barry, 50, a Mill Valley science teacher, who brought her passion for science and education to young children thirsty for knowledge.
Barry will continue to share her love of education with more Afghan schoolchildren this summer when she makes another trip there on July 19 for six weeks.
Barry, who finances her trips out of her own pocket and with private donations, traveled to the capital city of Kabul last August for a month to teach science to elementary school children at the Aschiana Center, a private school.
She brought her own supplies for students to create hands-on experiments involving electricity, simple chemistry and the principles of elementary physical science.
Afghan children are usually not exposed to science education until high school, Barry said, and there they focus on formulas, not classroom experiments. She was encouraged by the reactions from the children.
"Students could relate to the science projects," she said. "The kids' eyes would just light up."
Her classes, taught with the help of a translator, were so popular that her classrooms were often packed with children trying to see what was going on.
When she's not in Afghanistan, Barry teaches science to elementary grades at about a dozen Marin schools that employ her on a contract basis.
"She has an incredible enthusiasm and excitement with science," said Joe Martini, a teacher at Park School in Mill Valley, where Barry teaches his third-grade class.
Besides returning to the Aschiana Center in Kabul, Barry will visit Ghazni, the capital of the second-largest province of Afghanistan, where she will train teachers at a new vocational school.
That connection came about after the governor of Ghazni visited the Bay Area earlier this month and heard of Barry through Humaira Ghilzai, the president of the Afghan Friends Network in San Francisco.
Ghilzai had learned of Barry's work from a mutual friend, Asma Eschen, a teacher at Strawberry Preschool in Mill Valley.
"What's exciting to me is that she has been interested in Ghazni for a long time," Ghilzai said.
The vocational school in Ghazni was funded by a donation from Afghans4Tomorrow, a group of Afghan American citizens who contribute to reconstruction and development projects in Afghanistan.
Barry will be paying her airfare herself, but the schools will provide her with food and housing.
Although she brought her own school supplies last year, this year she will buy them in Afghanistan - and that won't be easy, she said.
"We tried to make ice cream (last year), but it took a while to find ice and it was hard to find milk."
Linking two worlds
AFGHAN EMIGRES USE FRESH HOPES TO SPARK A MOOD OF ACTIVISM AND CHARITY IN OTHERS
By Lisa Fernandez
Mercury News
Gone are the news trucks that once clustered in a three-block strip in Fremont nicknamed ``Little Kabul,'' home to the United States' largest concentration of Afghan emigres.
When an Afghan author recently came to Marin County to sign his new book, ``The Kite Runner,'' the audience peppered him with questions about Iraq. The average American seems to no longer care that Afghanistan is the source of most of the world's heroin or that the country's president, Hamid Karzai, rarely leaves his palace for fear of being assassinated. The words ``Pashtun'' and ``Northern Alliance'' are no longer on everyone's lips.
But Afghanistan remains very much a presence in the lives of the estimated 40,000 Afghan emigres in the Bay Area -- fiercely independent people from a violent land 7,500 miles away. Some of them are turning into committed grass-roots activists, raising money to buy tables for schools and stethoscopes for bombed-out medical clinics.
They call themselves ``reborn Afghans.''
It's a brand-new role -- the term ``grass-roots activist'' doesn't exist in their native Dari language.
But as they incorporate American-style philanthropy into their lives, activists who were shocked into action by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks bring with them a fresh optimism. They are convinced they can improve conditions in their ravaged birthplace, even if they choose not to return there to live.
``I feel hopeful for the first time,'' said Humaira Ghilzai, 35, of San Francisco, president of the 2-year-old Afghan Friends Network, which has about 30 core members of men and women and is expanding into other states. ``I guess I had this `doom and gloom' outlook like other immigrants have. That any day, you could lose everything . . . But this is my opportunity to do something. It's a way for me to roll up my sleeves without having to go there or join the Peace Corps.''
She joins a small cadre of longtime Afghan activists who say that since emigres began arriving after the Soviet invasion in the late 1970s, it's been a challenge to get the larger community to volunteer. The concept of good Samaritan, they say, is something most emigres learn slowly, only after living for many years in the United States.
Ghilzai fled Afghanistan in 1979 with her parents and five siblings and has pursued the American dream ever since. She married an American, a Harvard University graduate who is an executive in a software company. She worked as a marketing executive for Sun Microsystems and Oracle. She has two daughters, ages 2 and 4.
``I was busy with my life,'' she said.
`The Afghan in me'
Then Ghilzai watched as the World Trade Center collapsed on television.
``I always thought the U.S. was a safe place, away from extremists,'' she said. ``But then I saw that extremists were here, too. It really woke up the Afghan in me.''
Ghilzai's father, who was dying of cancer at the time, reinforced this awakening. ``He told me, `This is the time for you to get involved,' '' she said.
Now, she spends up to 20 hours a week on her pet project: Trying to establish a sister-city relationship between Hayward, home to the Bay Area's largest Afghan mosque, and Ghazni, a city of 35,000 residents, 70 miles southwest of Kabul. This month, she gave her frequent flier miles to the governor of the province of Ghazni, Asadullah Khaled, so that he could fly to Hayward and tour a medical clinic, Tyrrell Elementary School and California State University-Hayward.
Her efforts are having an impact.
Children in Ghazni and Hayward have become pen pals, and a fundraiser here netted enough money to buy 150 tables and chairs for a school in Ghazni. Hayward kids learned from the governor that few families in Ghazni have cars and that schools are bare of computers; sometimes a classroom is just children sitting under a tree.
Now, a large part of Ghilzai's task is bringing the activist message to others in the immigrant community.
``I have been able to inspire and encourage other people to get involved,'' Ghilzai said. ``I don't necessarily go after people, but I live it. I think other people are joining in.''
A role model
One of her role models is Meryem Katibi, 41, a Hayward real estate agent who has been helping her community since she fled Afghanistan's civil war in 1982. She has traveled three times to Afghanistan since the Sept. 11 attacks and is a member of at least three Afghan non-profits that help new immigrants navigate the tangle of social services and career options in the Bay Area. She joined Ghilzai's group, too.
``Since I travel and spend time there, people usually ask what I think,'' Katibi said.
What she thinks is that Afghanistan, at least cosmetically, is improving -- but still is a long way from being a place where professional people such as herself can live. On her visits, she has noticed women wearing lipstick, greener grass, furniture in schools, hospitals with walls -- which have come about, in part, with the help of emigres like herself and Ghilzai.
Katibi is motivated by a need to pay back the good fortune she received from Catholic Charities, which sent her a $500 plane ticket and helped her get a Social Security card when she first arrived in the East Bay.
In a perfect world, Katibi said she hopes that every Afghan emigre would become ``reborn'' like her new friend, Ghilzai.
And so the two women continue to speak out, urging their fellow emigres to find time to help those beyond their immediate families. Both women won small victories in cajoling their friends and family members -- perhaps future volunteers -- to cook for a recent Afghan event.
``I'm never quiet; I go to different events and tell my family and friends at parties what the country needs, what we should do, why we need to spend the money,'' Katibi said. ``I tell them Afghans need help, and I try to pass my message as far as I can.''
Group seeks sister city in Afghanistan
Article Last Updated: Friday, June 04, 2004 - 3:15:34 AM PST
By Michelle Meyers, STAFF WRITER
HAYWARD -- It was as if Arnold Schwarzenegger had walked into Tyrrell Elementary School.
But the celebrity governor who was swarmed on the playground Thursday was 34-year-old Asadullah Khaled from the province of Ghazni, Afghanistan.
Khaled, who has been a guest of the State Department for 31/2 weeks, visited with Hayward officials and community members in an effort to establish a sister city relationship between Hayward and Ghazni, the city within the province of the same name.
In recent months, a group of about 20 Hayward and other area residents has been meeting in an effort to establish a Hayward-Ghazni sister city relationship. More than 100 Hayward residents have signed a petition asking Mayor Roberta Cooper for just that.
Cooper, who met with Khaled at City Hall earlier Thursday, said she's supportive of the relationship but wants to make sure there is "a ballast of a community that will sustain it."
The effort comes on the heels of the dissolution last spring of the city's sister city relationship with Faro, Portugal, due to a dearth of community support. Hayward is also a sister city to San Felipe, Mexico, and Funabashi, Japan. Another relationship in the works is with Zitacuaro, Michoacan, Mexico.
Speaking through an interpreter, Khaled said Hayward is a good match for Ghazni because of its climate, earthquake fault, diversity and role as a community hub for 25,000-some Afghans living in the area.
While Fremont and Union City have more dense Afghan populations, Hayward is home to Aboobakr Mosque -- one of the country's largest mosques -- as well as Mission Paradise, where about 75 percent of the Afghan wedding receptions are held, said Humaira Ghilzai, president of the San Francisco-based Afghan Friends Network. Afghan Friends Network has been working to establish the friendship between the two cities.
Tyrrell teacher Zar Barakzoy, who speaks Farsi, helped her fifth-grade students send artwork and gifts to students in Ghazni.
Khaled thanked the students and fielded questions ranging from what schools were like in Ghazni to whether people had cars or video tapes. Barakzoy said the students were wondering whether it's hard to be governor of Ghazni.
He explained how Afghanistan had been torn apart by many years of war and terrorism and has only known peace for two years. He said it has been difficult to rebuild because no one has money, so the government has trouble levying taxes. He described overcrowded schools lacking furniture and other resources. Sometimes classes are held under trees, he said.
The city of Ghazni is located about 70 miles southwest of Kabul. The province of Ghazni is the country's largest.
Those interested in participating in the Hayward-Ghazni committee can call 510-785-2840.
or attend the next meeting on June 16 at Hayward City Hall, 777 B St., Room 1C.
Afghan EE toils to rebuild Kabul's infrastructure
By Stephan OhrEE Times
January 28, 2003 (6:13 a.m. EST)SAN FRANCISCO — Abdul Rashid Janbaz has his work cut out for him. The 47-year-old electrical engineer is the Minister of Planning and Finance for Kabul, Afghanistan. He chats about a digital wireless boom in his city, where cellular technology, using European-style GSM modulation, is the simplest way of rebuilding the communications infrastructure destroyed by the factional fighting that leveled Afghanistan in the first half of the 1990s. However, more pressing problems loom.
Since the fall of the Taliban regime, more than a million refugees have flooded into the city. Kabul has electricity for roughly four hours a day. It can guarantee clean drinking water to only 15 percent of its residents; the rest draw water unsupervised from possibly contaminated wells. Roughly 95 percent of Afghans are illiterate and wouldn't know what to do with the buttons of a cell phone, Janbaz says. Sponsored by the San Francisco Bay Area Friends of Afghanistan and the local chapter of the Society of Afghan Engineers, Janbaz's visit here is intended to familiarize him with modern city planning techniques and practices. Fremont, Calif. — across the bay from San Francisco and home to many Silicon Valley companies — has arguably the largest population of Afghan immigrants in the United States. The local press mostly ignored Janbaz's trip, but the San Francisco Chronicle reported on his visit to the water purification plant in Carson City, Nev., outside of Reno. In addition to the crash course in Western-style modernization, Janbaz is also serving as fund-raiser and talent recruiter for his troubled city. Asked by EE Times to prioritize his needs, Janbaz hardly knew where to begin. "All infrastructure is a priority: We need healthy water, transportation, sewage systems, emergency housing . . . We need electricity. We need schools, roads, street lamps," he said. "An old gas turbine generator came apart when the fighting started. We need people [experts] to get it working again."
Janbaz's engineering education, an EE degree from the Afghan Institute of Technology (whose faculty and curriculum were borrowed from U.S. colleges, particularly the University of Nebraska and the University of Wyoming), hardly prepared him for the reconstruction tasks he's currently charged with. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979-82 and the subsequent civil war effectively short-circuited Janbaz's commercial engineering career, though his largely mechanical-engineering work on sanitation systems for a German charitable organization (from 1995 to 2001) earned him visibility in the government of Hamid Karzai, and paved the way for his current appointment. But the need for money — private investment, as well as international humanitarian contributions — is clear. The United Nations Tokyo Conference a year ago allocated $4.5 billion over a five-year period for the emergency reconstruction of Afghanistan. But Afghan officials are encouraging private-sector investment as means of promoting long-term growth.
The buzzword Janbaz uses is "privatize." Wherever possible, the government is encouraging private business interests to set up shop as profit-making ventures. The national government and the city of Kabul are establishing mechanisms to make it easy and profitable for the investor, Janbaz said. The phone system, for example, is a profit-making venture of the Afghan Wireless Communications Co. (AWCC), a subsidiary of the New York-based Telecommunications Services Inc. TSI shoulders the investment cost and extracts 80 percent of the profits. The contract is worth $2.25 million, said Humaira Ghilzai, an Afghan expatriate and San Francisco-based marketing consultant. The GSM system has 10,000 subscribers in Kabul and 30,000 throughout Afghanistan, Ghilzai said. The latter number is expected to double to 60,000 this year. The handsets used are primarily Nokia and Motorola models, she said, but a city-imposed "tax" could bring the cost of a handset up to $450. Since there are no mechanisms for billing air time, cell phone users need to buy talk time in advance (in the form of a phone card) and must enter an access/billing code every time they dial a number.
Afghanistan will allow limited competition among telephone service providers: The government foresees two wireline and two wireless service providers, but not more. Applications to do business in Afghanistan tend to favor Afghans, Ghilzai said, but expatriates are as valued as those who have never left the country. The president of AWCC, for example, is an expatriate. This same model is being used to finance the development of business-class hotels, required to bring Western attention (and investment) to developing nations. The Karzai government has received many proposals for the construction of new hotels, Janbaz said, and the Intercontinental (the name leased from the worldwide chain) is currently being renovated as a five-star hotel with funding from the Aga Khan foundation. Here too, Afghan interests (including Afghan Americans) are favored. Janbaz said he wants to use the same investment model for building and home construction. The government is trying to establish credit systems to enable individuals to buy new homes. "First, we like to give Afghans shelter," he said. Of its geographic neighbors, Afghanistan most admires Iran and India, Janbaz told EE Times. His country's language and culture are most similar to Iran's, he said, while India's thrusts in high technology are a regional success story. Indeed, Indian business interests have been among the most aggressive new investors in Afghanistan, Janbaz said. Humble beginnings
Still, it would be difficult for Afghanistan to follow India's lead directly, since the skill set of the Afghan work force does not come close to that of India in knowledge of computer software, Janbaz said. Perhaps the talent for close handwork that goes with the traditional crafts of weaving and rug making could be employed in microchip packaging and lead frame assembly, he speculated, pointing to similarly humble beginnings for high-tech industries in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Bay Area engineers might find fulfillment by serving in a country that sorely needs their expertise, said Rashid Joyaa, president of Fremont-based JEI Automation Systems. Voter registration mechanisms, complete with computers and database systems, for example, are required to ensure widespread participation in the democratic process. Afghans could certainly benefit if Silicon Valley engineers chose to share knowledge in personal computers and network technology, Joyaa said, though he noted that technology expansion in Afghanistan is limited.But some late-breaking news causes Janbaz to smile near the conclusion of his interview: The gas turbine generator is operational again, and the city of Kabul can now extend electricity to its residents for up to eight hours a day.
Kabul planning department looks at Reno city services
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
1/13/2003 11:23 pm
Surrounded by mountains with a river running through it, the head of Kabul's city planning department said Monday he saw many geographic similarities between his war-torn home and northern Nevada's high desert city.But that was where the parallels ended, said A. Rashid Janbaz, who is in Reno to learn how to rebuild and modernize Afghanistan's roads, sewers and other city services.“The difference is in the economy situation and the infrastructure facilities,” Janbaz said while visiting the Reno-Sparks Waste Water Treatment facility. Janbaz is meeting with officials to learn aspects of water distribution and treatment, municipal codes and enforcement, traffic operations and maintenance, and housing and planning.After two decades of conflict, Kabul, Afghanistan, is beginning to rebuild from its ruins with foreign assistance. The immediate problem is inadequate drinking water for a population that keeps growing, Janbaz said.In January, officials said, its population was 1.2 million. With people returning to their home city and Afghans from other regions moving there in search of jobs, the population has grown to 2 million. The city can supply water through its 95-year-old network to 15 percent of the population, Janbaz said. The remaining people get water from shallow wells or water tanks.“I hope that one day we have this kind of system in our country,” Janbaz said.What the city needs most is “a lot of money,” he said.The World Bank, Japan and Germany have given money for reconstruction, Janbaz said. Other organizations are helping out by clearing garbage, repairing roads and digging wells.Kabul is using a master plan prepared in the mid-1960s and revised in the 1970s. Janbaz said it was time to implement a new plan for the city's development.His three-day tour of Reno, which was paid for by the San Francisco Bay Area Friends of Afghanistan, is scheduled to continue today with meetings with the city planning department. He also was scheduled to meet with city council members and receive a proclamation from Mayor Bob Cashell declaring the day as Kabul-Reno Cooperation Day.
Kabul planner looks at Carson water
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
1/15/2003 11:01 pm
A. Rashid Janbaz is matter-of-fact about life in Kabul, Afghanistan.As director of finance and planning for the city of 2.7 million people, he is paid $50 a month.After 23 years of war — half his life — the country's agricultural economy has been destroyed along with roads, water systems, street lights and shelters.“One thing is important for us,” Janbaz told a group Wednesday in Carson City. “Peace is coming in our country and we must make plans for rehabitation.”The population has grown from 1 million residents a year ago to 2.7 million this year and is expected to grow another 1 million next year as refugees return home.For four hours a day, Kabul residents have electricity. Drinking water is distributed once a week to 15 percent of the population, the rest drink from contaminated well water.Janbaz spent the week in northern Nevada, accompanied by Gay-LeClerc Qaderi of Friends for Afghanistan Redevelopment in Reno and Bonnie Sorensen of Computer Education for Afghan Children in Fremont, Calif.He visited the Reno-Sparks Waste Water Treatment facility on Monday and was invited Wednesday by Sunrise Sustainable Resources Group of Northern Nevada to look at a solar battery water purification system developed by a Minden company.Greg Hanson, president of Aqua Sun International, said the unit was developed for use in remote areas. The system can produce clean and safe drinking water from almost any freshwater source where water purification and electrical power are unavailable.Units have been sent around the world, including a recent shipment to the U.S. Army in Kabul.“We developed this in 1990 to provide safer drinking water to women and children in developing countries,” Hanson said.The system Hanson demonstrated Wednesday sells for $2,700, but he said nonprofit organizations like churches and service groups buy the equipment for developing countries. He donates the replacement equipment.“The people who need this the most are the ones who can't afford it,” Hanson said.Recently, Rotary International purchased a system for Mayan Indians in Guatemala.Because Janbaz said the units were too costly for Afghanistan, he and Hanson discussed shipping parts to Kabul to set up a factory to provide the much-needed water purification systems and employ local residents.Hanson said he doesn't worry about copycats.“I tried to patent all this stuff,” he said. “That may protect me, but it may not open up the doors to where these need to go. If somebody wants to copy me, so be it.”Hanson began building domestic solar systems in 1973.“Solar is a very enticing way to look at being self-sufficient,” he said. “For developing nations, it's the only way to go to get off that choke line of oil and power that only a few nations can afford.” Janbaz, sporting lapel pins from the Reno mayor, Reno police department and a group in California, plans to visit Southern California and Washington, D.C., during his monthlong visit to the United States.“In Washington, I am going to visit expatriate engineers from Kabul and ask them to come home and help rebuild Afghanistan,” he said.
Kabul May Join S.F.'s Sister City Family
By Meg Dixit
Special to AsianWeek“I left ... a devastated country with a happy and friendly populace that almost seemed to say, ‘America don't leave us, we need you,'” said Sondra Meyrose, a Carmel, Calif., real estate agent and member of San Francisco Friends of Afghanistan, a nonprofit group seeking to establish an official Sister City relationship between Kabul and San Francisco.In early March, Meyrose and Mina Sherzoy, Afghan native and Fremont, Calif. resident, flew to Kabul. The two Northern California women departed on their 36-hour journey with a letter of interest from the San Francisco's mayor's office and several brochures about the Sister City program, along with blankets, medical tools and prescription drugs for an orphanage in Kabul. The $100,000 in aide was raised at a recent fund-raiser by the Afghan Women's Association.Sherzoy, co-chair of the S.F. Friends of Afghanistan, left Afghanistan 23 years ago just before the Soviet invasion. Sherzoy's father, Rahim Sherzoy, is the newly appointed deputy foreign minister of the interim government in Afghanistan.“There is so much to be done there, from schools to hospitals, kids' welfare and women's clinics,” said Meyrose about the possible Sister City projects.The program seeks to establish sister cities in every town possible in Afghanistan with cities through the United States. This program will facilitate the donation of food, clothing and volunteers. If this one-year pilot program proves successful, then a five-year plan will be put in place. The project will attempt to pair similar businesses or organizations in Kabul to those in San Francisco. For example, the tax collector's office in Kabul will be paired with the Assessor's office in San Francisco.But Meyrose cautioned that an official Sister City program would not be possible until Afghanistan holds a presidential election in June.“It seems that most people like the current interim president, Hamid Karzai, which is good for our efforts because he and his administration see the need and like the idea of a Sister City program,” she said.Meyrose said the possibility of establishing Sister Cities in all of Afghanistan's major towns may be a problem because of poor infrastructure in the country.“Things move slow in government offices as well as on the roads because of poor conditions and lack of transportation. So for our program, we [want to] begin with Kabul and go from there,” she said.The brainchild behind the idea of establishing a Sister City relationship between San Francisco and Kabul is San Francisco attorney and former three-time member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Carol Ruth Silver.Television images left Silver feeling guilty for the suffering in Afghanistan. She then approached her two powerful friends Assessor-Recorder Doris Ward and Former Millbrae Mayor, Doris Morse. With their political support and consciousness, Silver was able to get support to undertake this effort.“The network and involvement for this program just kept getting larger. I then met Mina Sherzoy who was eager to join our effort and go back to her homeland,” she said.Doris Ward was involved in the Sister City program which matched Osaka, Japan as well as Abijau, Ivory Coast to San Francisco.“This will be a little different because of the instability of the Afghan government, but I am thrilled at supporting this effort,” said Ward.Morse said she felt unsure when first approached to support this program, but after she examined the objectives, she was excited about participating.Cynthia Maka, regional director of Asia and Oceana for Sister Cities International, the parent organization of all official Sister City programs in the United States, said that her department is excited about being involved with Afghanistan, but the instability of leadership there may cause up to a three-year delay in establishing a Sister City program.Maka remarked that a request for a seed grant has been initiated. The request seeks between $25,000 to $75,000 to hire a full-time person in the United States to oversee this particular effort.Alternative options for aid discussed by Maka included starting an International Partnership Program, which would allow humanitarian and educational assistance on a short-term basis for specific projects.Meanwhile, Silver and Meyrose will be meeting about fund-raising efforts here to continue their missions to Afghanistan.“It was wonderful to see kids wanting to go to school, not a common sight here,” she recollected about her recent visit.Funds for future missions will be raised by various events in the Bay Area. The next one is a cocktail reception scheduled for April 18, at 5:30 p.m. at IMG Warehouse, a furniture shop operated by a pair of Afghan brothers on Harrison Street in San Francisco.San Francisco has 15 other sister cities including Manila, Philippines and Haifa, Israel.
Sister Cities International was founded in 1956 and is known as the “People-to-People” program. It was part of the National League of Cities before it became a separate entity in 1967.
On a sister-city mission
Two Bay Area women fly to Afghanistan
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer Two Northern California women left for Afghanistan yesterday, hoping to set up a sister city relationship between San Francisco and a community or two in the war-torn country. Kabul native and Fremont real estate agent Mina Sherzoy and Saundra Meyrose of Carmel hope to persuade Afghanistan officials to explore the possibility of a partnership that they say will help foster peace. "The war is against terrorism, not against the people of Afghanistan, so that's why the road is clear for all Afghans -- and anybody -- to help rebuild the country," Sherzoy said as she awaited her flight at San Francisco International Airport. Meyrose said she was excited but apprehensive about the trip, which also includes humanitarian aid. "It will be dangerous, but we have to remember that there are women and children out there who are living in great difficulty, and they are the future of the country," she said. Sherzoy is a co-chairwoman of San Francisco Friends of Afghanistan, a group established earlier this year to explore the creation of a sister city relationship. She is the daughter of Rahim Sherzoy, the newly appointed deputy foreign minister in the interim government of Afghanistan. He was former Afghan ambassador to Pakistan and adviser to exiled Afghan King Muhammed Zahir Shah. Meyrose and three other women raised $100,000 for blankets, sleeping bags, prescription drugs and medical supplies for an orphanage in Kabul. The women's sojourn will take a grueling 36 hours, with stops in Houston, London, Dubai and Islamabad before they finally arrive in Kabul. There, they will meet with officials to see whether some kind of sister city pairing can be established. Among the nine cities being considered are Kabul, Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif. Sherzoy's daughters, Farah Siddiq, 19, and Zareen Siddiq, 18, sent her off at the airport. Their mother will be returning to Afghanistan for the first time in 23 years, when she was forced out of the country just before the Soviet occupation. "It's such a beautiful country," Farah Siddiq said. "It breaks my heart that no one can see what it used to look like. There's a lot of mixed emotions. " The sister city program has created pairings of some 675 communities in the United States with more than 1,500 communities in 121 countries around the world. Many U.S. cities have more than one partnership, and San Francisco currently has 15 sister cities, including Caracas, Venezuela; Shanghai; Haifa, Israel; Osaka, Japan; and Assisi, Italy. The delegation will be carrying brochures from Sister Cities International in Washington, D.C., which promotes sister city relationships, as well as a letter from San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown's Office of International Trade and Commerce. Cynthia Maka, regional director for Asia at Sister Cities International, said the sister city program would be a big help for any Afghanistan cities that take part. Mark Chandler, director of the mayor's international trade and commerce office, said, "If this could lead to people meeting people and finding out that we're the same, there's the possi"Afghanistan would greatly benefit from U.S. sister cities, and I think the sister city network is a really good way to help them rebuild as they struggle with a market economy and the concept of democracy," Maka said. bility that potential conflict in the future is lessened."E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.
Afghan Friends Network
San Francisco, CA 94117
