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Competitive coexistence: Soviet town

planning and housing projects in Kabul in the
1960s
a
Elke Beyer
a
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) , Zürich , Switzerland
Published online: 14 Jun 2012.

To cite this article: Elke Beyer (2012) Competitive coexistence: Soviet town planning and housing projects in
Kabul in the 1960s, The Journal of Architecture, 17:3, 309-332, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2012.692598

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 309

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Competitive coexistence: Soviet

town planning and housing projects
in Kabul in the 1960s
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Elke Beyer Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH),

Zürich, Switzerland

This paper reviews 1960s’ Soviet technical assistance projects related to town planning and
housing in Afghanistan: the drafting of the 1964 master plan for the development of Kabul
and the planning and construction of the first Mikrorayon neighbourhoods envisioned in
this plan. Drawing on previously unexplored archival materials from Soviet building insti-
tutions, it documents the circumstances and outcome of the Soviet town planners’ employ-
ment in Kabul, and situates their involvement in the context of competitive coexistence
between communist and capitalist development aid missions in Afghanistan. In conclusion,
the paper underscores the multipolar character of knowledge transfer between unequal
stakeholders. It proposes a reading of the contested history of the 1964 master plan for
Kabul as an example for the emergence of a productive, conflictual space of negotiation
between experts in the design of urban space from South, East and West, within which con-
cordant visions of modern urban development acquired their shape and global reach. Ulti-
mately, the general plan’s vision of a tabula rasa reconstruction of central Kabul according
to 1960s’ international planners’ wisdom had little effect. But its most significant outcome,
the Mikrorayon neighbourhoods, provided an everyday experience of modern urban life-
style for a minority until the development of Kabul was brutally interrupted by civil war
and foreign military forces.

Introduction promised economic and technical progress.2 The

In the first half of the 1960s, Soviet architects at the
Central Scientific Research and Design Institute for
Town Planning in Moscow were asked to plan and
build several projects in Afghanistan that they—
just like their client, the Afghan government—
expected to bring about ‘a progressive transform-
ation of the everyday life of the broad masses’ of
Afghan society, as the journal Arkhitektura SSSR
put it.1 A general plan for Kabul and modern Mik-
rorayon housing districts heralded the modernis-
ation of urban lifestyle, while projects such as
irrigation dams, industrial plants, technical schools
and highways with motels and service stations
Soviet town planning and housing projects in
Kabul embodied a transfer of knowledge and tech-
nology on many levels: Soviet experts undertook
geological, social and economic surveys. They
suggested how to organise settlement based on
urbanist principles that were actually just being re-
formulated in the Soviet Union after Khrushchev’s
ascent to power. The key to modernisation was
the same as French, Danish and West German build-
ing companies were proposing—prefabricated con-
crete housing, sanitation and electrification—only
according to Soviet standards and typical projects.
But with the export of a plant for building

# 2012 The Journal of Architecture 1360-2365 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2012.692598

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Competitive coexistence: Soviet
town planning and housing
projects in Kabul in the 1960s
Elke Beyer
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components, heavy machinery and a power plant,
the matching industrial technology was handed
over to the Afghan government in the same
parcel, financed through one of many Soviet
loans, and setting an example for state-financed
approaches to housing that the Soviet Union was
promoting internationally.3 Thousands of Afghan
staff were trained by and worked with Soviet engin-
eers and foremen. Last but not least, an education
facility for construction engineering following the
Soviet model was opened in Kabul in 1967, with
the Soviet-sponsored and designed campus of the
Polytechnical University.4
These instances of Soviet involvement in the pro-
duction of urban space in Kabul in the 1960s are
part of a history of post-colonial and pre-invasion
efforts to wield political and economic influence
through technical assistance in one of the many
theatres of the global Cold War. But at the same
time, they can be read as a case study in the cultural
construction of modern urban space as a global
desire, promoted by the politics and practices of
competitive coexistence. This paper reflects primar-
ily on the latter process and on some of its results
in the Afghan capital. It shows how the trajectories
of knowledge transfer amounted to more than an
asymmetrical power relationship between donor
and recipient. Instead, it brings forward the argu-
ment that in Kabul, the conceptual base and the
design of such global modern urban spaces were
formulated in a multipolar exchange between stake-
holders and experts from South, East and West. In
working out a modern master plan for Kabul,
Soviet experts did not simply export a pre-fabricated
blueprint to an ostensibly underdeveloped client. I
wish to put forward the thesis that the neutral
ground of an non-aligned country opened up a
space of negotiation where Soviet planners inter-
acted with their international and Afghan counter-
parts, and integrated the expertise of both to such
a degree that the actual authorship of the plan
remained a matter of debate.
Moreover, my findings suggest that the experi-
ence Soviet experts gained by running their own
and observing international competitors’ projects
in Kabul—or Cairo, Accra and Jakarta, to name
but a few sites of Soviet planning and building
activity abroad—served in turn as an important
feedback in the internal evaluation of Soviet build-
ing practice. These arguments shall be developed
in the main part of the paper, which situates the
Soviet architects’ endeavour to formulate and
export an internationally valid, progressive urbanist
blueprint in the context of development aid from
East and West in Afghanistan. Its first section
traces some of the entanglements of communist
and capitalist technical assistance missions. The
second section discusses the genesis and content
of the 1964 master plan for Kabul as an example
of a shared vision of global modernity. To conclude,
the third section briefly considers the principal
outcome of Soviet planning and building in Kabul,
the Mikrorayons. The contribution of Soviet urban
planners did not result in the large-scale reconstruc-
tion of central Kabul envisioned in the 1964 master
plan, but in the introduction of modern housing
typologies, public spaces and facilities on the neigh-
bourhood level. Thus, the paper shows how, ulti-
mately, Soviet blueprints provided a tangible,
micro-level experience of everyday modernity for a

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privileged minority instead of transforming the
centre of a capital city in order to represent the mod-
ernisation efforts of an entire country.
This paper draws primarily on previously unex-
plored archival material from the Soviet State Comit-
tee for Building (Gosstroi) in Moscow and Soviet and
international architecture publications from the
1960s, as well as studies of and reports from Kabul
from the 1950s until today. The history of Soviet
building abroad is a hitherto extremely understudied
field, and, especially in the case of Afghanistan, many
records and sources have been lost. Paying close
attention to literature by Afghan researchers in
foreign languages may, as I hope, compensate for
not being able to read any of the country’s languages.
Justly, most studies published since the large-scale
Soviet military engagement began in late 1979
seek to explain in the first place this tragic and revolt-
ing outcome of Afghan-Soviet relations. But there is
good reason to assume that the USSR pursued long-
term interests in peaceful cooperation and that the
disastrous military intervention resulted from a politi-
cal shortcut within the Kremlin in the particular
context of the Iranian revolution and NATO double-
track decisions.5 For the purposes of this paper,
Soviet town planning and building projects in the
1960s are understood as a yet open-ended modern-
isation endeavour: without denying the heavy-
handed paternalism of the development idea upon
which this endeavour was based and which ulti-
mately came to justify a brutal war.
How to benefit from the Cold War
For this is the era of competitive coexistence, and
nowhere is the competition more obviously
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competitive than in Afghanistan. Hearts and
minds are the prize, the Soviet Union and the
United States the principal competitors, and
rubles and dollars the weapons.6 The Atlantic
Monthly, January, 1958.
Contrary to the grim future ahead, in the 1950s and
1960s international observers paid tribute to Afgha-
nistan’s steady course of neutrality and its ability to
benefit from the competition between the socialist
and the capitalist blocks by attracting grants, loans
and projects earmarked ‘development aid’.7 The
country had been released from its geographical
buffer position between the British colonial empire
and Russian and Soviet expansionism in Central
Asia to become part of the geostrategic contain-
ment schemes the USA were trying to establish
with massive financial, military and modernisation
input. Right after the Second World War, the
Afghan royal government approached the United
States as a first potential partner for the financing
and implementation of development projects.
Because of its reluctance to allow US military pres-
ence, however, Afghanistan’s requests met disap-
pointing resonance in comparison to its unloved
new neighbour Pakistan in the late 1940s and
1950s. Nikita Khrushchev entered the scene in
1955 with a ‘great global charm offensive’8 and a
100 million US-Dollar credit, at more favourable
terms than any that had been granted by the US
or West Germany before. This was the beginning
of stepping up ‘competitive coexistence’. More
and more money, and building projects, came
forward as members of the two blocs tried to
impress their superiority in terms of technical exper-
tise, planning and building competence (Fig. 1).
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Figure 1. Schematic
map of Soviet aid to
Afghanistan indicating
industrial and
educational facilities
(symbols), gas pipelines,
roads and geological
surveys of natural
resources (hatching);
source: M. Arunova,
Afghanistan.
Spravochnik (Moscow,
Nauka, 1964), p. 197.

By the early 1960s, the Afghan authorities had
successfully catalysed—or, in the terms of an obser-
ver, ‘forced’—competition between the capitalist
and socialist donor countries into de facto
cooperation in many places across the entire
country.9 Complementary, if not explicitly coopera-
tive projects included vital strategic issues such as
aerial photography surveys, mapping projects,
long-distance roads and infrastructure for air
travel. For example, the USSR helped construct the
buildings of Kabul International Airport (Fig. 2),
while the communications equipment was provided
and installed by US technicians. In turn, the US
installed a new airport at Qandahar (Fig. 3) and
PanAm invested in the foundation of the Afghan
national airline Ariana. The Kabul electricity
network and power stations were built with West
German and Soviet assistance during the 1960s.
The city’s water supply was engineered by Japanese
companies from the 1950s, financed by West
German credits, and extended by Soviet initiatives
in the 1960s. Even with regard to military and

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security forces, the Afghans cultivated diversity, with
Red Army equipment and training for the army on
the one hand and US and West German equipment
and training for the air force, police and special
forces on the other. For a while, Afghanistan
seemed to gain. Well into the 1970s, the long-
term Afghan resident Louis Dupree reports how:
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[. . .] at the Ministry of Planning, Afghan planners, Figure 2. Kabul
United Nation planners, Soviet planners and U.S. International Airport,
completed in the early
planners (from Robert Nathan Associates, an
1960s with Soviet (and
international development consulting firm in US) technical
Washington, D.C.) sit in on conferences at the assistance. (Photograph
ministry and spend one another’s money in by James Burke, 1963;
overall projects. As I write, the People’s Republic source: Time Life
Pictures/Getty Images.)
of China is considering sending a planning
specialist to the ministry. None of these joint Figure 3. Qandahar
endeavours came about voluntarily, and most of International Airport,
them occasioned bitter arguments between par- opened in 1962, built
ticipants [. . .] But since the West and the Soviet with 15 million dollars
in US grants and loans
Union are both interested in winning, the ques-
by the engineering firm
tion of ‘Who’s winning, the Americans or the Rus- Morrison Knudsen.
sians?’ should be considered. In all honesty, one (Photograph by James
must answer, ‘Neither—the Afghans are Burke, 1963; source:
winning.’ Perhaps that is as it should be.10 Time Life Pictures/Getty
Images.)
‘Competitive coexistence’ was not just a chess game
played by distant Superpower governments, but
was made and shaped by the practices of technical
cooperation on the ground: by those people who
interacted and negotiated their countries’, their
companies’ and their personal interests in the fra-
mework of ‘development aid’.11 And it is in these
interactions where the definition of what is
modern, and what material and cultural changes
and achievements are considered desirable, took
place. What, then, was the lived and built reality
of technical assistance in Kabul in the 1960s?
Reports by contemporaries suggest that the material
lifestyle of technical advisors, and the modern archi-
tectural typologies and housing arrangements their
organisations created for them, were scrutinised as
intensively as the suitability of the technologies
they were selling as development tools. West
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town planning and housing
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Figure 4. Staff housing

and social facilities of
the Gulbahar textile
plant, constructed by a
West German
engineering firm,
1953 – 1960.
(Source: HOCHTIEF
Aktiengesellschaft.)

European and North American industrial developers
and building companies set high standards in con-
struction and comfort.
Morrison Knudsen had set up very well-equipped
Aircon bungalows for their engineers on the other-
wise ill-famed Helmand Valley irrigation project.
Dozens of public and private buildings in Kabul
were constructed by the West German company
Hochtief, indeed it was busy with setting up an
entire construction industry, catering to the inter-
national clientele in Kabul (including Czechs and
Soviets).12 Starting in 1953, Hochtief built a textile
factory ‘of European dimensions’ in the budding
industrial area Gulbahar, 85km north of Kabul. The
operation—in the words of an American observer,
‘really a self-contained town’—included a factory
producing concrete building components for two-
storey workers’ housing rows, a separate compound
for the German staff and social facilities ranging
from a modernist mosque designed by a German
architect to a casino selling alcoholic drinks and an
outdoor swimming pool for the recreation of the
Western experts (figs 4, 5, 6).13
But independent American and West German
observers noted the criticism and ‘damage to com-
munity relations’ provoked by the alienating
display of excessively comfortable living standards
(and by unfortunate occasions of confusion
between private companies’ commercial interests
and their countries’ development aid funds).14

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Such projects and attitudes set the background for
Soviet engineers to show equivalent technical exper-
tise at better value. To many, Soviet technology
appeared ‘less advanced but more adaptable, [. . .]
able to substitute ingenuity and brawn for technical
and mechanical superiority’, while, ‘Russian’ techni-
cal advisors were supposed to be ‘able to live at
village level without encasing themselves in
imported surroundings’.15 But Soviet engineers did
not fail to create befittingly modern material sur-
roundings for themselves (figs 7, 8):
In towns outside Kabul such as Herat, Mazar-i-
Sharif, and Pul-i-Khumri, where the Russians had
major projects, their technicians lived as well
as—if not better than—the Americans. Spacious
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Figure 5. Mosque at
the Gulbahar textile
plant, constructed by a
West German
engineering firm,
1953 – 1960.
(Source: HOCHTIEF
Aktiengesellschaft.)
hotels and apartment accommodation, lavish
commissaries, private theaters, olympic-sized
swimming pools today sit relatively unused and
deterioriating, having been turned over to the
Afghan government, which, incidentally, paid
for these luxury constructions out of the Soviet
loans.16
Khrushchev’s generous 100 million US Dollar
grant of 1955 had been invested in highly visible
infrastructure building projects—like the asphalt
paving of Kabul’s roads—which earned Soviet tech-
nicians a good reputation for getting tangible
results, technically respectable, with no frills and in
time.17 More grants, exchange contracts and pro-
jects to develop the Afghan road network, power
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town planning and housing
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Figure 6. Main building

of the mosque at the
Gulbahar textile plant,
constructed with prefab
concrete elements by a
West German
engineering firm,
1953 – 1960.
(Source: HOCHTIEF
Aktiengesellschaft.)

stations and industrial plants followed in the early
1960s. One of them was a contract for town plan-
ning and housing, with a budget of about 80
million US Dollars, signed by the Soviet and the
Afghan governments in April, 1962. It provided for
the development of a master plan to modernise
the city of Kabul, for the establishment of a Domo-
stroitel’ny kombinat (DSK, a factory for precast con-
crete and other elements for a particular series of
standard buildings) and for the planning and con-
struction of new housing districts in the capital.18
With this investment, the Afghan Ministry of
Public Works wanted to introduce standard projects
for European-style housing in order to raise living
standards, and to counter the dominance of Hoch-
tief and other Western construction firms who
‘practically dictated’ prices in the non-traditional
construction industry, as representatives of the
Soviet State Building Committee (Gosstroi) were
informed.19 At the Afghan clients’ request, the
Soviet combine was adapted to turn out not only
one type of four-storey block of flats, but also a cat-
alogue of modern urban detached houses with four
to twelve rooms, for private purchase (Fig. 9). To
design these new bungalow types and to overcome
technical restrictions in order to prefabricate con-
struction elements for them in a standard DSK
plant required a significant investment of time and
money.20 In this case, Soviet project organisations
went out of their way to show themselves
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Figure 7. Surroundings
of a Soviet-built hotel
near Khindzhan on the
Salang highway with
swimming pool,
pavillions and open-air
cinema: architect,
G. Isakovich. (Source:
Arkhitektura SSSR, 10
1965, p. 58.)

Figure 8. Soviet-built
motel with forty rooms
on the Kushka-Herat-
Qandahar highway,
opened in 1965:
architects, V. Borisov,
V. Evstigneev,
D. Zaprudnov
(Mosgiprotrans).
(Source: Arkhitektura
SSSR, 11 1967, p. 66.)

technically on a par with international competitors
in an ‘underdeveloped’ country.
What motivated such investments, as technical
goods and expert manpower were dearly needed
in the renewed Soviet urbanisation drive? Aid pro-
jects around the globe, ranging from Cuba, Brazil
and Argentina to Ghana, Mali, Egypt, Yemen,
India and Mongolia, tested Soviet capacities
severely: even for UN posts, often no suitable
Soviet specialists could be dispatched.21 Of course,
geostrategic and political interests motivated
Soviet altruism—mirroring development aid
inititiatives by the capitalist camp. But the corre-
spondence of Soviet architects and planners
involved in Afghanistan and other ‘developing
countries’ in the 1960s suggests that there might
have been more to gain than prestige. The unique
circumstances of competitive coexistence allowed
for an otherwise unthinkable degree of expert
interaction and insights into international planning
and building practice. Soviet experts participated
hands-on in an international community and they
were expected and equipped to deliver ‘export
quality’.
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Figure 9. Two types of

individual town houses
for construction with
prefabricated elements
in Afghanistan, façades
and floorplans:
architects, I. Kibirev,
A. Labin, D. Levin.
(Source: Arkhitektura
SSSR, 10 1965, p. 56.)

After the rigid isolation of the late Stalin era, these in the field of urban planning and housing con-
experiences allowed for an informed assessment of struction. Soviet technical advisors working on
the Soviet Union’s own standing and requirements prefabricated housing projects abroad pointed out

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in their internal reports that it would be helpful to
implement practices of quality control and regular
client feedback—as employed by Western compa-
nies like Camus or Hochtief in ‘developing’
countries—in the domestic building practice of the
Soviet Union itself, first of all.22 Lessons from Afgha-
nistan could be usefully employed in Southern
Soviet republics with similar conditions, eg, in the
reconstruction of the Tashkent and Ashkhabad
later in the 1960s.23 These feedback loops reveal
how Soviet technical assistance in town planning
and housing in the 1960s engendered a multipolar
process of knowledge transfer. In this particular situ-
ation of exchange between South, East and West, a
shared modern conception of urban development
found its expression in the 1964 master plan for
Kabul.
How to modernise Kabul
The first general plan for Kabul, drawn up by Soviet
urbanists in collaboration with the Kabul city archi-
tect Esmetullah Enayat Seraj in the early 1960s, illus-
trates to what extent the visions of urban modernity
advocated by stakeholders and experts from South,
East and West converged at that time. The city had
never had a master plan for development before.
Building proceeded according to the King’s decisions
and the community-organised settlement pat-
terns24 in the hilly topography of Kabul Valley.
Between the two world wars, several urbanist inter-
ventions and new quarters with geometrical road
grids and building typologies like European-style
villas and bungalows began to change the city’s
structure and appearance. ‘Development experts’
from various countries and agencies poured into
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the city in the 1950s, as urbanisation processes
emerged in the overwhelmingly agricultural
country and spontaneous settlements began to
appear on the hillsides.
The United Nations launched the idea that a
master plan for Kabul would be helpful to deal
with the expected rapid growth of the city’s
quarter-million population . In 1960, the French
architect Roger Aujame, who had worked for Le
Corbusier, had actively participated in the last
stages of CIAM activity and had acquired some plan-
ning experience in African countries, was nomi-
nated as the UN technical expert in charge of
preliminary studies for a master plan in Kabul and
spent four years there before returning to the UN
Centre for Planning, Housing and Construction in
New York.25 But in April, 1962, in accordance with
the previously mentioned contract between the
Afghan and Soviet governments, a Soviet team of
town planners, economists and engineers led by
Sergei I. Kolesnikov, director of Gorstroiproekt (Insti-
tute for Town Construction Projects) in Moscow,
was assigned the task of drawing up a general
plan for Kabul.26 This plan was elaborated in the fol-
lowing two and a half years under the umbrella of
the Central Scientific Research and Design Institute
for Town Planning (TsNIIP gradostroitel’stva) in
Moscow.
It was the first of a number of opportunities for
this institution to serve as a contracted planning
office for a foreign client city.27 In the Soviet
Union, town planning and theory were re-emerging
from substantial trend reversals and repeated insti-
tutional restructuring. The TsNIIP gradostroitel’stva,
like many other central research and project
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institutions in the building sector, achieved its per-
manent structure only in 1963, as it was transferred
from the dissolved Academy of Construction and
Architecture of the USSR to the State Committee
for Civil Construction (Gosgrazhdanstroi) and
merged with Gorstroiproekt, designated to
become the top central institution for research,
theory and actual urban planning until the demise
of the USSR.28 Many of its senior staff had won
their spurs during the heroic period of Stalinist
reconstruction of war-torn Soviet cities. In the
course of the 1960s, this institution was in charge
of reviewing the general plans of many major
cities in the USSR, as those drawn up in the immedi-
ate post-war era were considered outdated and
dozens of large cities had grown quickly without
the instrument of a general plan. Thus, when
Soviet urbanists were asked to plan the future of a
large thriving city in a ‘developing’ country, they
could offer an impressive record of building under
the most difficult economic circumstances. But
they were also shifting their own bearings in plan-
ning theory and practice towards a more complex
understanding of the city, adopting a new focus
on mobility, mass housing, provision of services
and modern spaces of leisure and consumption. In
this renewed search for a progressive model of
urban development that could be applied under
the most diverse conditions within and beyond the
USSR, a special emphasis was placed on inter-
national expert exchange and the study of foreign
experience.29
Under what circumstances did the Soviet team of
planners around Kolesnikov and Rimsha plan the
modernisation of Kabul? Their first mission to
Kabul from August to November, 1962, reported
that there was little data to build on: there were
no reliable estimates regarding population growth
or industrial development, neither were there suffi-
cient geological and hydrological data upon which
the engineering of urban infrastructure could be
based.30 In the absence of a building code, the
Soviet Building Standards and Rules for Town Plan-
ning of 1956 were applied. Kolesnikov and his
group cooperated closely with Kabul’s City Architect
Seraj, as protocols of extended meetings and mutual
visits testify,31 and they consulted Aujame repeat-
edly. From the Soviet perspective, the Moscow
team developed the master plan in competition
with the ‘parallel and concurrent work of the UN
specialists’.32 The municipal and national planning
authorities in Kabul would usually ask the Soviet
planners for a choice of variants, and, as can be
inferred from UN sources, freely disposed of the
respective experts’ contributions according to their
needs.33
Finally, in January, 1965, the 247-page, English-
language Master Plan of the City of Kabul was
presented to the the King and the Kabul city
administration by a delegation from TsNIIP grado-
stroitel’stva. But, later in the same year, the
French journal L’architecture d’aujourd’hui credited
Aujame with the master plan for Kabul—much to
the dismay of Kolesnikov, who approached both
Aujame and Seraj for rectification.34 This episode
underlines the tenuous nature of international
experts’ collaboration when it came to national
prestige, but the emergence of a controversy
about authorship also implies a fundamental com-
patibility of positions. In order to pursue a debate

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on copyrights, and to attribute individual features of
the plan with absolute certainty to the Soviet collec-
tive, Aujame, or Seraj and his staff, substantial
further research would be required. Yet for the pur-
poses of this article, it is most essential to establish
that the 1964 master plan cannot simply be
regarded as a pre-fabricated Soviet blueprint
imposed on Kabul: it was also a reflection of inte-
grated local and international expertise.
For the urban development of Kabul over a
twenty-five year period until 1989, the plan
suggested the implementation of some basic mod-
ernist principles.35 Overall zoning according to func-
tions, a differentiated road network preparing the
city for motor vehicles, an up-to-date network of
infrastructures (public transport, electricity, water
mains, etc.), the introduction of public parks and
separate spaces for pedestrian circulation, as well
as proposals to tear down and replace much of
the traditional building stock deemed too dense
and un-hygienic: all these were common fare for
the reconstruction of cities across the globe in this
period. In the context of Soviet urbanism and econ-
omic thought, it is most remarkable that the future
development of Kabul was projected not on an
industrial base, but mostly in the tertiary sector: an
increase of government bureaucracy, of represen-
tations of foreign countries and international organ-
isations, of international finance and trade
networks. Employment growth was expected pri-
marily in commerce and administration, and in all
levels of education, health care, culture and services.
Industrial development would be limited to consu-
mer goods, construction and food production
(figs 10, 11, 12).
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Based on these assumptions, the general plan
proposed the radical reconstruction and enlarge-
ment of the city centre as the area where most
places of work would be concentrated and which
ought to receive maximum attention and expression
in planning and architecture. Adjacent to the King’s
Palace, government buildings and ministries were to
be arranged in free-standing slabs and towers
around the main square of the city and along the
central axis of ‘Prospekt Pushtunistan’, facing a
central business district with hotels and a district
for culture and entertainment across the river
Kabul. The plan thus envisaged the creation of
representative places and public spaces for political
bodies and a civil society that only very recently
had begun to emancipate themselves from the
royal court. It juxtaposed them with a totally recon-
structed centre of gravity for economic and cultural
activity, spatially expressed in several stretched-out
building complexes of megastructural dimensions
accessed by a network of pedestrian passages.
Groups of hotel, office and residential towers were
to frame this polyfunctional urban core on both
sides of the river. The project thus united a monu-
mental triad of political centrality—central govern-
ment building, central assembly square, central
parade axis—with a more complex and less hier-
archical matrix of economic, cultural and social cen-
tralities. In addition, the plan proposed the
distribution of different types of centralities across
the city: for example, centres for sports, research,
higher and professional education. Compact indus-
trial areas and markets were placed on the periphery
of the city, on the main roads to the North, South-
West and East.
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Figure 10. Planning

scheme for Kabul:
authors, S. Kolesnikov,
A. Rimsha,
V. Nenarokov,
V. Zaytsev, et al. (TsNIIP
gradostroitel’stva),
1962 – 1964. Elements:
1. City and government
centre; 2. District
centres;
3. Neighbourhood
centres; 4. Sports
centre; 5. Exhibition
grounds; 6. Central
park; 7. District parks;
8. University; 9. Higher
learning institutions;
10. Science centre;
11. Polytechnic;
12. Technical and
professional schools;
13. Medical centres;
14. Sports park; 15.
Botanical garden;
16. Zoo; 17. Airport;
18. Central bus station;
19. Markets;
20. Industrial and
storage areas. (Source:
Arkhitektura SSSR,
9, 1965, p. 29.) The Soviet authors emphasised the preliminary envisioned multifunctional, multilevel cultural and
nature of the project and the need for more detailed shopping complexes so in vogue at the time to
research.36 But even its schematic outline clearly transplant a pulsating heart into the reconstructed
showed to what extent the plan reflected inter- centre just where the old bazaar quarter would
national architectural debates of the early 1960s. It have to be razed to the ground: a strategy resonat-
suggested modern monumental public buildings ing with the demolition of Les Halles in Paris as much
and spaces akin to Chandigarh and Brasilia, and as with the modern megastructure that replaced
rehearsed new high-rise business districts like part of the Arbat quarter in Moscow. But it would
those proposed for Paris or Milan. Not least, it be mistaken to interpret this modernisation
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Figure 11. Planning

scheme for the City
centre and government
centre of Kabul:
1. Central square;
2. Royal palace;
3. House of
Government;
4. Administration
buildings; 5. Ministries;
6. Embassy district;
7. City administration;
8. Panorama
‘Independence’;
9. Shopping centre,
commercial enterprises,
hotels; 10. Central bus
station; 11-12.
Theatres, cinema,
museum, exhibition
hall; 13. Main sports
complex; 14. Exhibition
complex; 15. Central
park; 16. Medical
centre. (Source:
Arkhitektura SSSR, 9,
1965, p. 31.)
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Figure 12. Model of the

Soviet 1964 General
Plan for central Kabul.
(Source: Arkhitektura
SSSR, 9, 1965,
pp. 32 – 33.)

impetus purely as a prescription by the donor
countries. The importance of the Afghan upper
class and young technical elite in promoting
Western-style modernisation approaches, especially
their desire to see Kabul transformed according to
international modern standards and to replace tra-
ditional buildings and winding alleys by more pro-
gressive structures, cannot be underestimated.37
The circumstances of the master plan’s genesis and
its contents indicate the existence of a space of
negotiation where Soviet planners interacted with
their international and Afghan counterparts, and
underscore the compatibility, if not exchangeability,
of town planning visions traded between the
Afghan royal kinsman Seraj, the former CIAM acti-
vist Aujame and the high-ranking Soviet planner
Kolesnikov. Beyond ambiguities and rivalries in insti-
tutional responsibility, a shared vision of a modern
capital city emerges in the entanglements of com-
petitive coexistence.
How to evaluate the outcome
What were the effects of the 1964 master plan? Its
assessment by Afghan and international scholars is
contradictory. Some reported that its active influ-
ence on the life of the city was immediately felt,
among them Najibullah Habib, who evaluates the
plan’s adoption as a milestone in institutional devel-
opment, establishing the Central Authority for
Housing and Town Planning.38 This highly regarded
authority, headed by the architect Abdullah Breshna
and co-funded by the UN, oversaw town planning
for Kabul and other cities, and it formed a perma-
nent link between the Ministry of Public Works
and international town planning consultants
throughout the second half of the 1960s and the

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1970s. Remarkably, its initial staff, with a dozen
international consultants, did not include any
Soviet technical advisors. UN reports had a sceptical
view of the 1964 master plan’s feasibility. They
recorded that the new institution was conceived
by Aujame:39 yet another indication of how his
input was integrated by the Kabul authorities in con-
junction with Soviet advice. Breshna’s daughter, the
architect Zahra Breshna, asserts that the ‘Soviet’
1964 master plan was not even officially approved
until a Communist government came to power in
Kabul in 1979.40 It was revised at least twice
during the 1970s in collaboration with Soviet con-
sultants; however, at least some of its provisions
were put into practice from the mid-1960s onwards.
Somewhat in contradiction to the plan’s focus on
the city centre discussed above, the first buildings to
be realised from 1965 onwards in accordance with
the project were sixty housing blocks of a mikrora-
yon neighbourhood, including small sub-centres of
public amenities, shops, social and leisure facilities,
and a mosque (figs 13, 14).41 In the 1964 general
plan, following the Soviet ‘unified system of central-
ities’, the Mikrorayon figured as a structural unit of
25-30,000 inhabitants for the distribution of urban
amenities, without prescribed layout, density or
area, and theoretically allowing for different archi-
tectures including individual single-storey houses.
In practice, Mikrorayon No. 1 consisted only of
uniform four-storey blocks of flats churned out by
the DSK: approximately 2,000 dwelling units for
10,000 people. It was officially named Nader Shah
Meena (Fig. 15), to honour the royal family. Thus,
the regime inscribed its name on an urban modern-
isation process based on mass housing and on
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industrial building enterprises financed and run by
the state.
The progressive transformation of urban lifestyle
was kicked off at micro-level. Mikrorayon No. 1
introduced not only a specific typology of collective
housing catering to a modern core family, but it
implemented the principle of a rational, equal distri-
bution of public services and facilities, and provided
generous public spaces open to collective use.42 Its
first-priority realisation, followed by several more
mikrorayons, resonates with the importance of this
type of housing estate as the most significant
feature of Soviet urbanist practice, overshadowing
the impact of the re-planning of the city centre by
far. Only in the mid-1970s, were small patches of
a new representative government and business
centre realised with the first fourteen-storey office
tower and demolitions of old quarters, before war
interrupted.
The Mikrorayons built by the Soviets or accord-
ing to Soviet projects took on a specific meaning
in the social and urban fabric of Kabul, which
can only be sketched briefly here. The progressive
housing developments were not cheap and,
initially, demand was slow. Some blocks served
to house Soviet technical advisors and their
families, and even as offices for the above-men-
tioned Central Authority for Housing and Town
Planning.43 Others were inhabited by government
servants and leftist Kabul intellectuals of some
wealth in the thriving 1970s. Then, the Mikrora-
yons became part of the war as Soviet officers
were quartered there, barbed wire closed off the
open public spaces and mujahedin attacks were
waged against them and all other inhabitants.44
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Figure 13. General Plan

of Mikrorayon No. 1 in
Kabul: architects
I. Kibirev, A. Labin,
D. Levin. (Source:
Arkhitektura SSSR, 10,
1965, p. 49.)
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Figure 14. Nomads in

front of the new Kabul
Mikrorayon in 1970.
(Photograph by
Bradford Child; source:
Private Collection.)

Writing in the mid-1980s, Habib bitterly states
that: ‘The success [of the building programme
based on foreign loans] was the master plan and
the construction of modern roads—roads for
tanks, as we have seen, no matter whether they
were designed and built cooperatively by the
USSR, Germany and America [. . .].’45 Today, the
Mikrorayons are renovated and seem to have
gained popularity again: as decent and affordable
housing, as an embodiment of the memories of
the hopeful 1970s shared by present and past resi-
dents united in the virtual community of a Face-
book group and as a model of strictly planned
urbanisation. Inspite of all its shortcomings, the
debate is still open as to whether to condemn
this modernisation pathway as utterly failed, or
whether the legacy of the modern master plan is
still preferrable to the disrupted island
urbanism of reconstruction in a war-torn urban
setting.46
Conclusion
This review of 1960s’ technical assistance projects
related to town planning and housing in the
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Figure 15. A 1972

tourist map of Kabul,
showing Mikrorayon
No. 1/Nader Shah
Meena in relation to the
city centre. Figures and
symbols indicate sights
and main points of
tourist interest, eg,
hotels and restaurants.
(Source: Kabul City
Map, Afghan Tourist
Authority, 1972, with
pencil notes by the
geographer H. Hahn;
Bonn University,
Geographical Institute,
Map Collection.)

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context of competitive coexistence in Afghanistan
underscores the multipolar character of knowledge
and technology transfer in several respects. It has
shown how consultants, organisations and compa-
nies from the two camps opposing each other in
the global Cold War were employed in complemen-
tary projects and cooperated or substituted for each
other at the disposal of the Afghan authorities,
backed up by funding from their respective
countries. This allowed for a remarkable degree of
interaction and exchange between Soviet and
Western experts. On the base of previously unex-
plored archival material, significant feedback loops
back to Moscow could be documented, not only
with regard to the specific urban planning and
housing projects realised in Afghanistan, but also
concerning the self-assessment of Soviet building
practice in a global perspective. From the contested
history of the 1964 master plan for Kabul, the con-
tours of a space of negotiation between unequal
stakeholders and experts in the design of urban
space from South, East and West begin to emerge:
not just a showroom for competitors, but a pro-
ductive, conflictual space of interaction and knowl-
edge transfer, within which concordant visions of
modern urban development acquired their shape
and global reach. But while the general plan envi-
sioned a complete renewal of the city centre accord-
ing to contemporary international planners’
wisdom, its most significant outcome was Soviet-
style Mikrorayon housing districts, of subsequently
mixed fate and renewed present-day popularity.
These quintessentially modern neighbourhoods
and their effects on the physical and social space
of Kabul certainly deserve more research.
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Notes and references
1. O. Smirnova, ‘Generalny Plan Kabula’, Arkhitektura
SSSR, 9 (1965), pp. 28 –34; quotation p. 28.
2. For a review of Soviet architectural production abroad,
see: ‘Sovetskie architekturnye sooruzheniya za rubez-
hom’, Arkhitektura SSSR, 11 (1967), pp. 62 –68;
‘Zhiloy kompleks v Kabule’, Arkhitektura SSSR, 10
(1965), pp. 49– 56; ‘Doroga cherez gorny khrebet Gin-
dukush v Afganistane’, Arkhitektura SSSR, 10 (1965),
pp. 57– 58.
3. The question of state or private financing of housing in
‘developing countries’ was a bone of contention
between the USA, the USSR and France in the UN
Committee on Housing, Building and Planning. On
this issue, even US-friendly Pakistan and Iran sided
with the Soviets according to reports in the Russian
State Archive for Economy (RGAE; fond 5, opis 1,
delo 707).
4. Work on the project was started in 1963 by the Soviet
State Design Institute for Higher Learning Institutions
(GiproVUZ; RGAE f. 5, op. 1, d. 67, l. 1). Its rival, the
Kabul University Engineering Faculty, had been
founded in 1956 with USAID support and started an
architecture department in 1967. Cf., N. Habib, Stadt-
planung, Architektur und Baupolitik in Afghanistan
(Bochum, Brockmeyer, 1987), pp. 10, 16, 197, 235.
5. B. Chiari, ‘Kabul, 1979′ , in, A. Hilger, ed., Die Sowjetu-
nion und die Dritte Welt (Munich, Oldenbourg, 2009),
pp. 259– 280; 275. See also E. Meier, Eine Theorie für
‘Entwicklungsländer’—Sowjetische Agitation und
Afghanistan 1978 – 1982 (Münster, LIT, 2001), p. 27;
O. A. Westad, The Global Cold War (Cambridge, Cam-
bridge UP, 2005), pp. 300, 324.
6. ‘Afghanistan’, The Atlantic Monthly, 201 (January,
1958), p. 12.
7. P. G. Franck, Afghanistan between East and West
(Washington, National Planning Association, 1960);
J. Burke, ‘Fight for the Land of Hindu Kush’, LIFE, 55
 330
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(August 9th, 1963), pp. 19– 27; E. Rhein, A. G. Ghanie
Ghaussy, Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung Afghanistans
1880– 1965 (Opladen, Leske, 1966), p. 32;
V. A. Pulyarkin, Afganistan. Ekonomicheskaya geogra-
fiya (Moscow, Mysl’, 1964). Cf., UN Technical Assist-
ance Mission to Afghanistan, United Nations Day 24
October 1963. Summary of Technical Assistance to
Afghanistan (Kabul, UN, 1963) and UNDP, United
Nations Day 24 October 1966 (Kabul, UN, 1966).
8. T. Rupprecht, ‘Die sowjetische Gesellschaft in der Welt
des Kalten Kriegs’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuro-
pas, 58, 3 (2010), pp. 381– 399; quotation p. 385.
9. L. Dupree, Afghanistan (Princeton, Princeton UP,
1973), p. 529; J. Burke, op. cit., p. 20. The following
paragraph is based on Dupree 1973, pp. 512 –530;
A. Manan Aseer, Afghanistan im politischen Span-
nungsfeld zwischen den Grossmächten in den
1950er Jahren (Hamburg University, PhD thesis,
1983), pp. 33 –36, 236f., 247 –255; N. Habib, op.
cit., pp. 17, 57 –59, 206– 216, 241– 248; E. Rhein/
A. G. Ghanie Ghaussy, op. cit., pp. 132 –136.
10. L. Dupree, Afghanistan, op. cit., pp. 529– 530.
11. Cf. O. A. Westad, op. cit.; A. Hilger, op. cit.; M. Linder,
Projecting Capitalism. A History of the Internationaliza-
tion of the Construction Industry (Westport, Green-
wood, 1994), pp. 207– 221; R. Boden, Die Grenzen
der Weltmacht. Sowjetische Indonesienpolitik von
Stalin bis Breschnew (Stuttgart, Steiner, 2006);
M. Matusevich, No Easy Row for a Russian Hoe: Ideol-
ogy and Pragmatism in Nigerian-Soviet Relations,
1960– 1991 (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2003).
12. V. A. Pulyarkin, op. cit., p. 223; Statistisches Bunde-
samt, Afghanistan 1966 (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer,
1966), pp. 33–34; Author’s interview with Dr. Harald
Peipers, former Member of the Board of Executive
Directors of Hochtief, 04.02.12.
13. ‘Gulbahar’, Die Baubude. Werkzeitschrift der Hochtief
AG, No. 13 (July, 1957), pp. 22–27; quotation from,
D. N. Wilber, Afghanistan. Its people, its society, its
culture (New Haven, HRAF Press, 1962), p. 248.
14. Ibid., p. 241; P. G. Franck, op. cit., p. 10; E. Rhein, ‘Hilfe
für Afghanistan aus Ost und West’, Aussenpolitik, No.
8 (1964), pp. 557 –564; 562.
15. M. B. Watkins, Afghanistan. Land in Transition (Prince-
ton, Van Nostrand, 1963), pp. 104 –105. Cf. also
J. Burke, op. cit.; E. Rhein, op. cit., p. 559.
16. L. Dupree, op. cit., p. 527.
17. P. G. Franck, op. cit., p. 5.
18. A. Omar, Die russisch-afghanischen Beziehungen von
der ersten russischen Gesandtschaft 1878/79 nach
Afghanistan bis zum sowjetischen Einmarsch in Afgha-
nistan am 27.12.1979 (Frankfurt/Main, Peter Lang,
1987), pp. 166– 170. The dollar figure has been calcu-
lated on the basis of the official exchange rate in 1961
of 1 Ruble ¼ 1.11 US dollars.
19. Letter from S. Kolesnikov to N. V. Baranov, Deputy
Head of Gosstroi, May 4th, 1962 (RGAE f. 339,
op. 3, d. 1439, l. 2). In 1961 –1963, a Czech concrete
plant was set up in Pul-i Khumri to replace expensive
imported concrete; Statistisches Bundesamt, op. cit.,
p. 33.
20. Chart of duties and cost estimate by S. Kolesnikov and
A. Labin, June 19th, 1962 (RGAE f. 339, op. 3, d. 1439,
l. 4-7). Correspondence and reports concerning the
design and construction of the 16 type-projects for
these bungalows are in RGAE, f. 5, op. 1, d. 139,
333 and 143; drawings were published in ‘Zhiloy kom-
pleks v Kabule’, Arkhitektura SSSR, op. cit., p. 56.
21. RGAE, f. 5, op. 1, eg, d. 186, 707, 1092.
22. Cf. letters from M. Posochin, Head of Gosgrazhdan-
stroi to V. Novikov, Head of Gosstroi, September,
1963 (RGAE, f. 5, op.1, d. 139, l. 172) and from
V. Ermolenko, Head of the department for foreign pro-
jects and international relations, to Karavaev, Deputy
Head of Gosstroi, 6th July, 1963 (RGAE f. 5, op. 1,
d. 139, l. 181– 186).

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23. See, for example, A. I. Rimsha, Gradostroitel’stvo v
usloviyakh zharkogo klimata (Moscow, Stroyizdat,
1979), pp. 174– 188. To trace the trajectories of
exchange between the Central Asian Soviet Republics
and Afghanistan lies beyond the scope of this paper,
but would be an extremely valuable subject for
further research. See Paul Stronski, Tashkent. Forging
a Soviet City 1930 –1966 (Pittsburgh, University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2010), pp. 234 –246 for an account
of the model function for ‘developing countries’
assigned to Tashkent.
24. Z. Breshna, ‘Wiederaufbau des historischen Zentrums
von Kabul’ in, S. Schäfer et al., eds, Kabul/Teheran
1979ff (Berlin, b_books, 2006), pp. 147 –160.
25. N. Habib, op. cit., p. 258; UN Technical Assistance
Mission to Afghanistan,1963, op. cit., p. 6; ‘Nouvelles
d’Afghanistan’, L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, 119
(1965), p. XXI; C. Blain, ‘Roger Aujame. Notice
biographique’, in, Centre d’archives d’architecture
du XXe siècle, ed., Cité de l’architecture et du patri-
moine (Paris, Institut français d’architecture, 2006);
http://archiwebture.citechaillot.fr/awt/asso/FRAPN02_
AUJRO_BIO.pdf (last access 10.10.11).
26. The authors’ collective consisted of the architects
A. Rimsha (who was associated with the Foreign Min-
istry and regularly sent on missions with UNESCO),
V. Nenarokov and V. Zaitsev, plus O. Kudryavcev,
N. Efremenko, D. Levin, L. Sokolov, E. Tovmasyan,
the economist M. Polynev and the engineer
I. Biryukov. Cf. O. Smirnova, op. cit., p. 28; ‘Sovetskie
architekturnye sooruzhenia’, Arkhitektura SSSR,
op. cit., p. 67.
27. The Institute also drafted general plans for Havana and
Ulan Bator. Preliminary talks regarding Cairo came to
nought. Gosgrazhdanstroi planned new towns in
several countries, eg, Ghana (Tema), Yemen (Kho-
deyda) and Mongolia (Darkhan); workers’ settlements
near big projects like the Arax dam in Iran or the Bhilaj
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steel works in India; and held seminars on planning
new towns for specialists from South America, Africa
and Asia on behalf of the UN (RGAE f. 5, op. 1,
d. 957, l. 35-44).
28. See RGAE f. 5, op.1, d. 26-27 for the integration of the
two institutes and yearly reports of TsNIIP gradostroi-
tel’stva in RGAE f. 5, op. 1. E.g. The Central Institute
for Theory and History of Architecture was re-organ-
ised seven times between 1944 and 1964 (RGAE
f. 377, op. 1, Predislovie).
29. TsNIIP gradostroitel’stva, Osnovy sovetskogo grados-
troitel’stva, vol. 1 (Moscow, Stroyizdat, 1966), pp. 4 –
5. The task of ‘studying and implementing foreign
experience’ was taken so seriously in the Soviet build-
ing institutions during the 1960s that special depart-
ments were set up for the distribution of information
and institutes were closely monitored to report on ful-
filment. (Cf., eg, RGAE f. 5, op. 1, d. 528, l. 168.)
30. RGAE, f. 339, op. 3. d. 1439, l. 1-7. Kabul’s population
was estimated by Aujame at 230,000 inhabitants in
1960, while the 1965 Census found 435,000:
H. Hahn, ‘Die Stadt Kabul (Afghanistan) und ihr
Umland’, Bonner Geographische Abhandlungen, 34
(1964), p. 46; E. Grötzbach, ed., Current Problems of
Regional Development and Urban Geography of
Afghanistan (Meisenheim, Hain, 1976), p. 228.
31. Seraj visited Moscow at least twice for several weeks in
1963 and 1964, to comment on drafts and to visit
Soviet building sites: see Programmes and Protocols
in RGAE, f. 5, op. 1, d. 143, l. 141, l. 156 –160;
RGAE f. 5, op. 1, d. 181, l. 11; RGAE f. 5, op. 1,
d. 387, l. 114 –115; RGAE, f. 5, op. 1, d. 337, l. 37–
40; RGAE, f. 5, op. 1, d. 387, l. 137; O. Smirnova,
op. cit., p. 28, quotation in RGAE f. 5, op. 1, d. 695,
l. 6.
32. Letter from V. A. Shkvarikov, Director of TsNIIP grado,
to V. I. Kuz’min, Deputy Head of Gosgrazhdanstroi,
December, 1964 (RGAE f. 5, op. 1, d. 337, l. 165).
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33. UN Technical Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, 1963,
op. cit., p. 13.
34. ‘Nouvelles d’Afghanistan’, L’Architecture d’aujourd’-
hui, op. cit., p. XXI and correspondence in RGAE f. 5,
op. 1, d. 695, l. 6– 9.
35. Even though at the TsNIIP gradostroitel’stva, unfortu-
nately, material related to the plan was lost after the insti-
tute moved several times and dismissed five-sixths of its
former staff after the demise of the USSR, Soviet publi-
cations make it possible to trace the principal ideas,
namely O. Smirnova, op. cit., A. I. Rimsha, Gradostroi-
tel’stvo v usloviyakh zharkogo klimata (Moscow, Stroyiz-
dat, 1979), pp. 174–197. Author’s interviews with V. P.
Korotaev, present director of TsNIIP gradostroitel’stva,
December 14th, 2010; M. Ya. Vil’ner and E. M. Yaffe,
senior planners at the institute, June 16th and July 15th,
2011.
36. O. Smirnova, op. cit., p. 34; Programmes and Proto-
cols, RGAE, as in Note 31.
37. N. Habib, op. cit., pp. 10, 16, 197, 235; Louis Dupree,
‘The Emergence of Technocrats in Modern Afghani-
stan’, American Universities Fieldstaff Reports, South
Asia Series, Vol. XVIII 5 (1974), esp. pp. 8 –10.
38. N. Habib, op. cit., pp. 44, 259, 264; E. Grötzbach,
Städte und Basare in Afghanistan (Wiesbaden,
Reichert, 1979), pp. 52 –56.
39. UN Technical Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, 1963,
op. cit., p. 15; UNDP, op. cit., pp. 11– 14.
40. Z. Breshna, Das historische Zentrum von Kabul, Afgha-
nistan: Grundlagenermittlung für eine Strategie der
Wiederbelebung (Karlsruhe, Universitäts-Verlag,
2007), pp. 92 –96.
41. L. Dupree, Afghanistan, op. cit., p. 638; E. Grötzbach,
op. cit., p. 38.
42. O. Smirnova, op. cit., p. 32.
43. Personal communication by Bradford Child and Russ Du
Pree, former Peace Corps volunteers in Kabul, January,
2012.
44. C. Issa, S. M. Kohistani, ‘Kabul’s Urban Identity:
An Overview of the Socio-Political Aspects of
Development’, ASIEN, 104 (July, 2007), pp. 51 – 64;
57.
45. N. Habib, op. cit., p. 17; translation by the Author.
46. For a positive account by a resident, see A. Ahangar,
‘The Microrayons of Kabul’, www.jadidonline.com/
story/061207/akmf_afghan_building_eng (last access
10.10.11); for a discussion of alternatives, see
Z. Breshna, N. Habib, B. Mumtaz, K. Noschis, eds,
Development of Kabul. Reconstruction and planning
issues (Lausanne, Comportements, 2004); ‘Secure
City, Public City: Kabul’, Supplement to Volume, 15
(March, 2008).