Even the dead must make way as construction transforms Afghanistan's capital

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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The door that once led to a family room now faces nothing but the void. Most of the floor is gone, as are the walls and roof.

This used to be Syed Murtaza Sadar’s home in Kabul, on top of the barber shop and public bath that was his family’s business. Those, too, are nearly all gone, reduced to bricks and rubble. Sadar and his family were forced to tear down most of the building themselves.

“This was our house and now I am destroying it with my own hands,” the 25-year-old said, taking a brief break from pulling down a brick wall. “It will be very difficult for us.”

Two months ago, municipal authorities came to this street and told home and business owners their properties were being expropriated to make way for a wider road, part of efforts to modernize the Afghan capital's heavily congested streets.

At first, nobody believed them, Sadar said. But then the demolition crews arrived.

Homes, businesses, even a graveyard are being razed across Kabul to make way for road construction. Widened roads, flyovers and underpasses are rapidly replacing narrow and often deeply pot-holed streets.

Much of the plan was drawn up years ago, when Afghanistan had a U.S.-backed government. But most work never got off the ground, mired in red tape, corruption, and security risks due to the Taliban insurgency.

Shortly after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops, Kabul’s new municipal authorities set about reviving the projects.

In the past four and a half years, roughly 450 kilometers (280 miles) of roads have been built in the capital, Naimatullah Barakzai, Kabul municipality’s representative for cultural affairs, said during a recent news conference. During that time, 11,278 properties were expropriated.

Another 233 projects are planned for this year, with over 1.9 billion afghanis ($29 million) allocated, said Mohammad Qasim Afghan, the municipality’s head of planning.

The road construction projects are paid for entirely by municipal funds, Barakzai said, noting that over the past 4 1/2 years, Kabul municipality had raised more than 28 billion afghanis (about $434 million).

Property owners are given about three months’ notice and paid compensation at rates set by the municipality. In the past year, more than 1.2 billion afghanis ($18.6 million) were paid in compensation, Barakzai said.

Dissent isn’t really an option.

Sadar, the property owner, said demolition crews tore down the front part of buildings in his street. Then authorities told owners they must finish the job themselves.

His business employed about 25 people, Sadar said. It sustained his extended family — five families in all, each with three or four children.

“If the government gives us money (in compensation) then God willing, I will be able to go back to work and I will be able to buy a house or build a house for myself,” he said. For now, they are living in rented accommodation, eating into their savings.

And yet, Sadar said he is happy the road is expanding. The existing one, with a single lane in each direction, is so choked with vehicles that going anywhere means spending an hour sitting in traffic, he noted.

At another construction site in the city, project manager and engineer Obaidullah Elham said crews work around the clock, seven days a week, to build a Turkish-designed 1.5 billion afghani ($23 million) flyover and underpass to replace the heavily congested Baraki intersection.

Five hundred workers, skilled and unskilled, are employed on the project, Elham said, providing much-needed jobs in a country with widespread poverty.

Work on the 470-meter (1,540-foot) long underpass began last July and it is 80% complete, the project manager said, as an excavator dug into the earth behind him. Construction on the flyover began earlier this year. It will be just the second in Kabul.

In Kabul’s Qala-e-Khater neighborhood, part of a graveyard that has held the bodies of residents for about 200 years also must make way for a new road that will slice through the community.

Graves lie empty, with large rectangular holes where the dead have been exhumed. Their remains have been moved across the street to another section of the graveyard.

Abdul Wadood Alokozay said his grandfather’s body was among them.

Alokozay's extended family owned three properties in the area. One was a girls' madrassa, or religious school. The other two were homes for his family. All were expropriated and razed to the ground. All that remains is a vague imprint in the muddy ground.

“At first our family (were) all sad for this, that we lost our house,” the 21-year-old said. Even harder was tearing it down themselves, after living there for more than two decades.

As compensation, they received more than $13,000 for all three buildings and have been promised more for the land. The family has built a new, three-story home on other land they owned, overlooking the former site.

Plans for this road have existed on paper for decades, said 30-year-old community representative Shah Faisal Alokozay, Abdul Wadood’s cousin.

“It’s a very important road, connecting east and north Kabul,” he said. “So it is very important for the community.”

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Associated Press writer Abdul Qahar Afghan contributed to this report.