By Emma Graham-Harrison
DEHSABZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - As night falls, Afghans at the desperate end of Kabul's housing crisis swarm up the steep hillsides that cradle the capital, taking advantage of the cover of darkness to throw up illegal mud and stone homes.
A city built for a few hundred thousand people now houses a population estimated at over four million, many crammed into tents or shanty homes, complicating efforts to revive a conflict-riven country and help returned refugees rebuild their lives.
The worries about bombs and kidnappings that plague foreigners in Kabul can seem almost irrelevant to many struggling to get by in one of the world's poorest countries.
Less than half the city's residents have running water, regular power or access to any kind of sewage system.
The sprawling, unplanned, low rise construction also means most face long commutes over gridlocked, muddy roads, using a transport network that all but collapses if there is heavy rain.
"There is a lot of need for shelter. Beside the influx of Afghans who have been living across the border, rising insecurity in the country as a whole is pushing people towards the urban areas," said Lex Kassenberg, Country Director for aid group CARE.
Many problems have their roots in overcrowding, as refugees returning after decades of civil war, or seeking an escape from poverty and violence in rural Afghanistan cram into the capital.
"When I first came here it was so hard to find a house. It took eight months," said cleaner Fereshte Shamseddin, who returned after years as a refugee in Iran and Pakistan and now spends nearly half her salary on $100 rent each month.
The city is already fraying at the seams. It could be home to as many as 8 million people by 2025, says Mahmoud Saikal, an Afghan architect and diplomat working on an ambitious solution to the capital's problems, an entirely new city.
"Kabul is now at the limits of its capacity. Water shortages, environmental degradation, traffic, all originating from high population growth, have started undermining life," he told reporters recently.
"Thousands of people are living in tents on the city outskirts, and 60 to 70 percent of built areas are illegal."
INVEST IN OLD KABUL?
Saikal hopes Dehsabz, or "green village," a sleepy cluster of villages some 20 kilometres north of the city, can be transformed into the high tech answer to these problems. He aims to unveil the masterplan for a new Kabul by the end of the summer.
It will be based in an area that is now a dusty rural plain, rattled by the roar of passing Black Hawk helicopters and littered with graveyards, bleak reminders of cycles of war that have splintered and then reunited Afghanistan over three decades.
That violence, and rising corruption, makes pouring billions into a new city seem risky at best.
Development and housing experts say the estimated $36 billion budget for the project could be better spent improving infrastructure and housing options in the existing city.
"The construction of a new town is strongly unadvisable at this time," the World Bank wrote in a 2006 report on how to deal with the city's rapidly expanding population.
"It is hard to justify large capital investments for new areas while 80 percent of Kabul's already settled population has inadequate access to infrastructure."
The World Bank still stands by that report, a spokesman said, but declined to comment directly on the New Kabul project.
The project would also mean massive upheavals for the farmers who live in Dehsabz now. They are keen for the schools, transport and healthcare they have been promised the new city will bring.
But steeped in rural tradition and poverty, they are ill prepared for the changes urban life will bring.
"We have many graveyards and the people are very close to God. We want to keep these values and these graveyards," said Haji Mir Afzal, head of the Shura or local council that represents the area's 70,000 inhabitants.
HOUSING THE POOR?
City authorities say the plan makes perfect sense. They have chosen a secure location, between the current capital and the major U.S. airbase in the area and they have international donors with funds to help revive Afghanistan and its economy.
"We have golden opportunities. These include the fact that this is the country on the planet earth where we most experience international cooperation," Saikal said.
Ground has already been broken on a couple of private projects that will be incorporated into the masterplan. Saikal says the first stage of construction should start next year.
The ambitious plans include a huge pipe siphoning water from a river tens of kilometres away, high-tech agriculture projects, and eventually much-needed homes for up to three million people.
There has been almost no construction of public housing in Kabul since the Macrorayan project of walk-up apartment blocks built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Pockmarked with bullet holes and the odd rocket crater from decades of civil war, they have become newly desirable after water and heating supplies were reconnected a few years ago.
Their popularity is blunt testament to the administration's failure to meet the city's housing needs.
"The government has done nothing to help people like me," said cook Abdul Dayan, who built his own wooden home and says he gets two hours of power a day if he is lucky.
Saikal promises improving housing is central to the new city, and it will include at least 60,000 truly low price houses for the poor. He says he is currently exploring how to offer mortgages to people with no credit history and little capital.
But years of fighting for everything from power to water may have made those he aims to help into his toughest critics.
"I would like to move into somewhere like that (new city), but I don't believe it will happen," said Dayan with a sigh.
(Editing by Megan Goldin)
