Security fears on Chicken St.
Every big city has at least one street that’s a must-see for visitors: King’s Rd. in London, Stary Arbat in Moscow, Paseo del Prado in Madrid, Via Condotti in Rome. Kabul has Chicken St. Only two blocks long, this shabby lane full of competing aromas, lined with shops selling jewelry, antiques, knick-knacks, artworks and, especially, Oriental rugs, has been a magnet for generations of foreign visitors looking for Afghan exotica. For decades, about the only thing missing has been chickens. Now, it is also missing foreigners. Customers of any sort are thin on the ground. Most of the scores of shops have zero patrons at any given moment; one is unusual, two is a crowd. On some days it is so bad, even the beggars do not bother to come to work.
As with so much in Kabul today, the security situation is to blame.
A steady spate of ever-worsening suicide bombings, including a recent one close to Chicken St.; a lack of faith in a corrupt police force; and rampant crime have done to Chicken St. what a Russian invasion, decades of civil war and even urban combat could not do — driven shoppers away.
Embassies and international organizations, most aid groups and foreign contractors have banned their employees from shopping there, depriving Chicken St. of that precious commodity — customers who bargain poorly and pay dearly.
Herat Carpets is one of the street’s most successful rug merchants, but April13 was the last day in Afghanistan for the owner, Wahid Abdullah. He is moving his main business to Istanbul. “Security” was his oneword explanation.
“In the end, children make the decision,” he said. He worried constantly about his own being snatched on the way home from school. “It wasn’t even the bombs so much. Worse than that was the fear of kidnapping.”
Shukrullah Ahmadi, a jeweller, learned the hard way about that.
He and his brother Noorullah had just bought an expansive new building on Chicken St. for half a million dollars, complete with a secret covered passageway in the back, leading to a rug and antique furniture shop down the street, which they also owned. This way they could run both shops, popping up in whichever one had patrons.
Kidnappers abducted Noorullah Ahmadi at gunpoint, then sent Shukrullah Ahmadi a video of his brother being tortured. Shukrullah sold his family’s home to raise the ransom money. When he met the kidnappers to hand it over, they were in police uniforms, their faces unmasked.
Ahmad Wali Shirzad of LS Leather has no plans to stop making leather handbags of camel, goat and calfskin, even though he said business was about the worst he has ever seen. “It’s almost as bad as during the Taliban time.” But then again, he added, the Taliban time finally ended.