NHK Reports On New Afghan Industry(Yes, This Is A Post.)

I watched NHK's (Japanese public television) Asian World program today about an emerging Afghan industry, recycling cars.

With improved roads and increased need for travel, the number of cars in Afghanistan has tripled since the Taliban fell. An Afghan engineer who had been forced to flee to Pakistan under the Taliban has returned to Jalalabad and started his own car company, AHO¹. He employs 30 workers to take old cars from other countries, rebuild them, repaint them, and sell them. The company is just getting started, and it apparently takes his team about two months to finish one vehicle, but they are selling quite well. I'll also say, from the film footage on NHK, the vehicles look pretty nice. I wouldn't have guessed they were recycled.

This little post, by chance, comes out just after Chrenkoff's massive Good News From Afghanistan, Part 10. Check it out for a thorough update on all the good stuff happening in Afghanistan.

I guess this post also marks my tentative return to regular blogging. I seem to be able to manage (i.e., unable to keep from writing despite my best intentions) about one or two posts a week (as opposed to one or two a day before Jan. 15), so that's what I'll shoot for. Still, probably no longer pieces until after March or April, or May ...

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¹ "Aho" means "deer" in the local parlance. Unfortunately, it means "idiot" in Japanese, so I initially chuckled when I saw the name painted on a car.