KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — In parts of Afghanistan where there are no street names or house numbers, utility companies and their customers have adopted a creative approach for connecting. They use mosques as drop points for bills and cash, a “pay and pray” system.
Now the national postal service wants to phase this out by putting mailboxes on every street across the country, part of a plan to modernize a service long challenged by bureaucracy and war.
The lofty aspirations include introducing access to shopping via e-commerce sites and issuing debit cards for online purchases. It will be a leap in a country where most of the population is unbanked, air cargo is in its infancy and international courier companies don’t deliver even to the capital, Kabul.
The changes mean Afghans will pay higher service fees, a challenge as more than half the population already relies on humanitarian aid to survive.
The Afghan Post, like much of the country, still does everything on paper. “Nobody uses email,” said its business development director, Zabihullah Omar. “Afghanistan is a member of the Universal Postal Union, but when we compare ourselves to other countries it is at a low level and in the early stages.” . . Post offices in Afghanistan are vital for women wanting to access services or products they would otherwise be denied, since they are often barred from entering ministries or other official premises.
But the spectre of the Taliban’s edicts targeting women and girls also looms at the Afghan Post.
At the entrance to the main Kabul branch, a sign tells women to correctly wear hijab, or the Islamic headscarf. One picture shows a woman with a red cross over her visible face. The other has a green check mark over the face because only her eyes are seen.
I don’t want feel good stories about a country run by literal terrorists.
Give people hope, information, mobility, and access to the global economy and you have yourself less terrorists
Yeah, I don’t buy it. The world does not need the people running the show there in any legitimate discourse. They want to run that place, let them as long as nothing leaks out.
I feel sorry for the women there but they where betrayed by their countrymen.
Keep slaves oppressed because slave masters don’t deserve credit for loosening the chains?
I do. Regardless of the government, I want better for humanity worldwide, full stop.
This does not make it better for them. It just allows a more streamlined process of indoctrination and wholesale opression of women.
“Ran” in this context is part of a dialect of English in certain parts of the US. It is spoken that way, on purpose, by native speakers, and is thus perfectly correct.
Saying that it “makes people think you share teeth” shows that you are in fact aware of this cultural distinction and your problem with the usage is not about grammar but about classism, which is also clearly on show with your bigoted description of poor southern US people.
Under developed country is attempting to get some public services going after being occupied by not one but two white man empires within last 50 years… three if look back further when British did the thing.
You really got a low bar for “feel good”
Like it or not, Taliban expelled the US and is now the government. That’s how these things work. This line of thinking is how we got into invading countries in the first… maybe people should learn the lesson finally.
Yeah yeah… that’s some revisionist history right there.
A group of Muslim fundamentalists took over a “country” and allowed binLaden and Co to use it as a base to reighn terror on the world and they got rightfully kicked in the teeth for it. That’s how these things work.
When it was clear there was nothing to be gained there and there was no “winning” the occupiers left. It was a nice idea to try and get Afghanistan to be a fun running country… but it isn’t… it is a tribal area ruled by warlords. And this does not work in the framework of the UN and such.
When the yanks left, it became apparent that getting the country functioning, was never possible because the people propped up to take the reigns had been more busy with enriching themselves than actually wanting a future for their coutrymen.
And now the country is again ran by Islamic fundamentalists and the people live in a hellhole again.
Whatever these terrorists do to try and gain legitimacy is irrelevant.
Lastly 2 white men armies… Sigh… So incredibly sad.
Damn boy! easy on that koolaid haha
Since you are trying to get a little more granular:
A group of Muslim fundamentalists
Aka US allies during USSR invasion of the country, which US trained and supplied with materiel.
You do also understand that Saudi Arabia is the main perpetrator of the 9/11, right? This is common knowledge now. So did US end up invading two wrong countries?
it is a tribal area ruled by warlords
You mean the US allies?
In December 2010, a leaked diplomatic cable revealed that foreign contractors hired by the American military contractor DynCorp had spent money on bacha bazi in northern Afghanistan. Afghan Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar requested that the U.S. military assume control over DynCorp training centres in response, but the U.S. embassy claimed that this was not “legally possible under the DynCorp contract”.[38]
In 2011, an Afghan mother in Kunduz Province reported that her 12-year-old son had been chained to a bed and raped for two weeks by an Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander named Abdul Rahman. When confronted, Rahman laughed and confessed. He was subsequently severely beaten by two U.S. Special Forces soldiers and thrown off the base.[39] The soldiers were involuntarily separated from the military, but later reinstated after a lengthy legal case.[40] As a direct result of this incident, legislation was created called the “Mandating America’s Responsibility to Limit Abuse, Negligence and Depravity”, or “Martland Act” named after Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
When the yanks left
COPE HARDER haha
Lastly 2 white men armies… Sigh… So incredibly sad.
Factually correct statement you should consider getting properly educated on these issues instead of spouting state sanctioned propaganda with air of authority that is not backed up by any proper understanding of the subject.
Why wouldn’t I? If the Americans end up voting trump into office again, they will get what they deserve. More dead babies, more dead mother’s, more school shootings, more income disparity if the left fails to keep Trump out of office… they fucked themselves.
My worry would be that a country that chooses cruise missiles over school lunches and warplanes over public healthcare will actively try and export their brand of christofacism to the rest of the Christian world.
It’s like with a drunk driver. I don’t care if they fold themselves around a tree in their car. It’s the others that get hurt who are the problem.
Flawed as the US is, they also do a lot of good in the world. Having the likes of China and Russia at the reigns would be worse for literally everyone.
- Americans never voted Trump into office because he has never won the popular vote. He got into office in 2016 due to the archaic Electoral College system.
- Even if a majority voted for Trump, many millions will not have, so why do they deserve what you’re cursing them with?
