Kabul faces problems of modest prosperity

The slow return to normalcy is pushing up prices

By Kate Clark BBC correspondent in Kabul

Kabul is showing increasing signs of an economic upturn, but its impact on the lives of the Afghan people across the board is quite unclear.

Much of Kabul lies in ruins

There has been a huge influx of aid agencies and foreign media. Wages for translators and drivers have risen sharply.

And record numbers of refugees, particularly educated Afghans, have returned to Kabul looking for work.

Kabul is now busier than it has ever been before.

Dizzy rise

Traffic police, using loudspeakers and whistles, desperately try and keep the traffic flowing.

Taxis and land cruisers belonging to aid agencies and commanders, now clog the capital's streets.

Kabul needs a massive reconstruction project

Rents have also soared across the city since the fall of the Taleban.

In the poshest neighbourhoods landlords who used to get $300 a month for a house, are now asking $3,000, $4,000 or even $5,000.

And people are paying, mainly the United Nations, aid agencies, media outfits and embassies.

Wages are so much better in the foreign sector, that it is not uncommon to find doctors, teachers, even judges working as translators or drivers.

Unhappy homecoming

Refugees are returning in record numbers. Many are educated Afghans hoping to find work.

But generally, it is not clear how much of the new money is trickling down to Afghans outside the boom sectors and outside Kabul.

Travelling to villages, or even poorer, outlying suburbs of the capital, little has changed.

In the past the over-development of Kabul compared to the provinces, eventually caused political fallout.

This time the government says it is aware that a bubble economy here in Kabul would not help Afghanistan as a whole.