SV - How is the control of the Government over the tribes and warlords and the whole country? Do they have full control or is the country still run by the tribe leaders.

AB - Karzai has always been referred to as sort of the Mayor of Kabul because the control of the central government never spread out into the provinces very strongly. While the central government appoints the governors, they've been doing so in a way to just kind of bribe people to not cause trouble and try to keep them quiet to sort of buy them off for their support.  Probably the country would probably be doing better if it were the tribal leaders who were in charge. Because the old tribal leaders are the folks who really do have the best interests of their people in mind. They are from families, from the region who are respected and for the most part are much more interested in peace and security. The problem is that the folks who  have control in the provinces are the warlords whose power comes from having guns, having money and having been able to buy this power because, basically the west gave them the money, training and guns to fight the Soviets and most recently to fight the Taliban. It's the warlords, the drug lords at this point, and there's lots of overlap between who's who. But, Afghanistan’s poppy crop was 59% higher than last year. This year they're estimating they're able to meet 130% of world wide demand for Heroin. It's just astronomical and not the way to keep peace and security in a country.  And that money doesn't go to the farmers, the farmers are estimated to get about 10% of that, the money's going to warlords, the Taliban, the drug dealers, and the criminals.

SV - I remember when the Taliban were in power they banned the poppy crops, they were made illegal. Is it legal now, or is it just tolerated?

AB - It's not legal but it's tolerated, it’s out of control. The problem is that there are many people in the ministries and in Karzai's government who are benefiting from it. And so because there are people at high levels who would have reasons to protect it, nothing happens to stop it. Plus, right after they defeated the Taliban, when there were peacekeepers put in place they weren't put in place outside of Kabul, there weren't enough of them and so there was just this window of opportunity with basically no one in control. The one thing the Taliban did, you have to say, is they kept control. With them gone there was no one keeping control and anyone could do anything and that's where the beginning of the rise of the poppy crops came from. The other thing that was happening was that there had been a 4-5 year drought and poppies are quite drought resistance so it became sort of quick thing that you could put in and it would grow in very degraded soil without of lot of water and so, farmers said to themselves, I know this isn't right, this isn't the crop I want to grow, but what do I do, my family will starve. Now what we're starting to hear alot more is that farmers are saying, they’re forcing me to do it, I don't have a choice. Someone is coming with a gun and telling me what to do with my land.

SV - How is the level of poverty now in Afghanistan?

AB - Enormous. It's just enormous. The last estimate I read is that unemployment is 40%. From what I saw even in Kabul or in the provinces it is hard to believe that it's that low. The economic progress has just not come to the people. All of that aid money, all of that reconstruction money seems to have disappeared into projects that benefit the wrong people. Like, for an example, early on, I was out in a village outside of Kabul and we were probably 45 minutes out. Out in the middle of nowhere, I don't know the area, but look around, we are in the middle of farm country, little villages and they are putting in a black top road where, they weren’t putting blacktop road in Kabul at the time, and I asked, why here? And they said, oh well, there's a base there so they need it, NATO wants it out here. And those kind of decisions you see everywhere. In Kabul for instance, in the new city center, they're putting in fancy glass buildings, elevators and lots of people see pictures of it, you know, fancy stores and hotels and restaurants, but that doesn't do anything for the average person. There's been almost no public housing built, the people in houses or apartments are sort of doing their own kinds of repairs, there's no money for doing that and also there just hasn't been investment in jobs. There's a bread factory that's barely running, they used to have cement factories; they're importing all their cement from Iran and Pakistan. So, the way you could have seen employment, you could have seen products, you could have seen all these things benefiting the people, working hand in hand with reconstruction. It just hasn't happened. I was out in Herat and they complained about the fact that everything is coming from Iran, the milk, eggs, and the cloth. They're growing the grapes, the grapes are going over to Iran where they're being cleaned and processed and then they’re coming back as raisins at a higher price. And they're not getting the wages.

SV - What's the situation for children? Are they able to go to school or do they have to work?

AB - You certainly see alot of child labor. You see them on the streets of Kabul, in Herat. I was working with this organization called 'Voice of Women Organization’ and they were putting in a grant to try to get some projects for Herat street children and the project wasn't totally to take them out of work because they needed to be able to work to help their family to survive but it was to provide them with education half time and try to provide some field training so that they could get better jobs, safer jobs. It's true that the schools reopened, which is a wonderful advancement over the Taliban, but if you actually look at the numbers there may be 5 million children back to school but the numbers of children in Afghanistan is more than 15 million. Two of the other things about kids being back to school; girls only make up about a quarter of that total, there're alot of girls still missing from schools. And the majority of kids who are back in the school come from the five major provinces the ones that are much more urban, and so, so much of the rest of the country just hasn't seen the impact of schools reopening.