Inexplicable Wealth of Afghan Elite Sows Bitterness

Karzai has publicly acknowledged that corruption plagues all levels of his government, yet critics say he is either unable or unwilling to stop it. The new Afghan constitution has numerous provisions requiring officials to disclose their assets and perform their duties with financial transparency and accountability, but they are rarely heeded, according to a recent study by the Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan.

The public mood of frustration, desperation and disgust has played into the hands of Taliban insurgents, who present themselves as an alternative source of justice and carry out swift physical punishments of thieves or other miscreants in rural areas under their control. It was a similar appeal to law and order in the mid-1990s, when Afghanistan was in the throes of civil war, that allowed the Taliban militia to quickly achieve power with little bloodshed.

Most Afghans do not favor a return of the Taliban, especially in cities where their extreme version of Islam clashed with the lifestyles of the country's educated classes. But more and more, people recall the five years of Taliban rule as a time of brutal but honest government, when officials lived modestly and citizens were safe from criminals.

"Nobody loved the Taliban, but what we see now is outrageous. The leaders are not rebuilding Afghanistan, they are only lining their pockets," said Abdul Nabi, 40, a high school teacher. "I haven't been paid in three months. The other day, a colleague came to me weeping and asked to borrow money to buy bread. Who can we blame for this?" he demanded. "Where can we turn to change things?"

In the tent colony next to the Evening in Paris, Zakia, a mother of seven, recounted how her family had been forced to leave its refugee camp in Pakistan and return to Kabul last year. They had expected to obtain land and jobs but found neither, she said. Last week, a young woman in one tent died while giving birth. "If we had known what we would face here, we would never have come back," she said.

Across the street, sitting in his ornate office, the owner of the French-themed wedding hall expressed surprisingly similar sentiments. He complained that the government had done nothing to encourage private development, that he had to buy water and power privately and that the unpaved street outside his elegant premises was a sea of mud.

"Do I regret making this investment? I regret it 100 percent," said the owner, who gave his name as Hajji Obaidullah. "When I built this hall five years ago, there was a lot of hope and excitement, but now it has all turned to disappointment. We have no electricity, no drinking water, no security. If the government doesn't want to help people like me, how is the man with the little shop or the donkey cart going to survive?"