Barrier business booms as Afghan security worsens

By Peter Graff

KABUL (Reuters) - Three years ago, Nosair Tawakali's uncle from a village north of Kabul looked around at the deteriorating security in the Afghan capital, saw many more foreign troops and had an idea for a business.

Barriers. Concrete blast barriers.

Tawakali and his uncle set up the Sultan Sohrab Construction Co. on a road north of the Kabul airport, making blast walls from concrete poured into moulds around steel reinforcement bars.

Other relatives from the same village also set up in the same business on neighbouring plots of land.

Today, a kilometre-long stretch of the road is lined with family concrete barrier businesses, stacked as far as the eye can see with row upon row of freshly made, 2-metre-wide wall sections, like tombstones in a vast graveyard for giants.

With security worsening and tens of thousands of American troops arriving this year, business has been brisk.

Tawakali and his uncle normally sell 100-200 sections of wall a month. The wholesale price for a single 3.5-metre-high section is $550.

They had their biggest month when a new brigade of U.S. troops arrived at the beginning of this year, ordering 500 sections of 1.5 metre-high walls for a base in Logar province.