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WORLD-CLASS MALL EMERGES FROM RUBBLE OF KABUL

In the universe of difficult retail projects, few can match the story of Kabul City Center, a high-end vertical mall set in the heart of Afghanistan’s capital city.

Construction of the center began three years ago, not long after U.S. forces drove the Taliban from the city. Large parts of Kabul lay in ruins at the time, the legacy of Afghanistan’s civil war that followed the departure of the Russians in the late 1980s and, more recently, bombing by the Americans.

Backed by local developer Haji Abdul Qudus Safi, the project moved ahead despite widespread power shortages and the occasional Taliban rocket attack on the city. Finally, in September, it opened its doors.

Kabul City Center occupies the first three floors of the 10-story building, which also houses the expensive Safi Landmark Hotel. The mall’s 97 stores sell goods that are, by most residents’ standards, extraordinarily expensive, such as Breitling watches and imported perfumes. The public areas feature a cappuccino bar, a bank of glass-walled elevators and Afghanistan’s first escalator.

By most accounts, business has been strong. Customers include Western embassy and aid agency workers, government officials and local entrepreneurs. Some might think the sources of the latter’s wealth a bit suspect, given the recovery of the country’s opium industry.

But though there is plenty of foot traffic in the mall, most visitors can only window-shop. And that’s the rub. Outside of the downtown area, Kabul is a shambles, a place where most residents have electricity for only a few hours every other night, where public transportation is virtually nonexistent and where thousands live in shantytowns.

Having endured adversity all around it, Kabul City Center is clearly serving its intended market. But it does not diminish the need for other retail, such as a hypermarket, that would serve a broader segment of the population.

“God is great,” a young man outside the mall told a reporter from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, an organization that assists local journalists working in areas of conflict. “He gives so much to some people that they are able to build places like this, while I don’t even have enough to eat.”

— CH