Kabul--The rows of vacant mansions in Sherpur, also home to some former warlords, symbolise the hobbled state of Afghanistan's economy, propped up for years with hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign aid.
With the inexorable exodus of aid and investment, the war-battered nation is in the throes of what local observers describe as a transition from "a dollar economy to an Afghani economy".
For many Afghans, concerns over rampant unemployment driven by a tanking war economy, after more than a decade of double-digit growth, outstrip fears over deteriorating security.
As the country struggles to wean itself off its heavy dependence on foreign assistance, cynics liken Afghanistan to a coma patient surviving on a glucose drip for years.
The artificial nourishment is suddenly stopped, the joke goes, and the patient is expected to get up and start running.
But Sherpur's kitsch mansions, viewed widely as symbols of megalomaniacal excess, also highlight another woefully pervasive problem: corruption.
Sherpur is widely lampooned as "Sher-chur" -- or lion's loot.
Before the 2001 US invasion, Sherpur used to be a barren patch of hillside that was home to refugee colonies.
But human rights groups accuse Kabul's nouveau riche former warlords and bureaucrats -- the lions -- of sending in bulldozers in 2003 to evict the refugees.
The source of wealth funnelled into these mansions remains a subject of hushed speculation, with suspicion falling on Afghanistan's booming opium production -- which the UN says is estimated to be worth $3 billion a year.
"Think about it. How does a government bureaucrat earning a monthly salary of $2,000 afford a $2.5 million luxury mansion on land valued at $1 million?" said Bashir Omar, the owner of Kabul-based Bashir Omar Real Estate.
"You have to ask: where has their wealth come from?" he said, adding that the real ownership structures of Sherpur's villas remain opaque.
When Latif got the owner of the 52-room villa on the phone, he declined to be interviewed.
AFP
