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H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan welcomed the visit today to Kabul of His Highness, Agha Khan, as a long-standing friend to the Afghan people.
During their meeting in the Presidential Palace, the President thanked His Highness Agha Khan for his contribution to the reconstruction of Afghanistan through the projects of the Agha Khan Foundation.

Insurgent violence wracks the countryside, but a building boom fueled by international aid, profits from the opium trade and foreign investment is remaking Afghanistan's dusty capital. The city even got its first five-star hotel Tuesday.
Four years after the Taliban's ouster, a shiny new office building rises amid Kabul's traditional mud-colored buildings, and there is a glitzy shopping mall boasting the country's only escalators. A bright U.S. Embassy is nearly ready, and suburbs of new homes are springing up.

But this city of 4 million people is far from being a metropolis.

War-battered Afghanistan, where using a cellphone is a frustratingly hit-and-miss affair, will get its second GSM network on Sunday, and the company providing it vows to make failed calls a thing of the past.
TDCA Ltd, trading under the name Roshan, meaning 'light' in the Dari language, is owned by a consortium grouping the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, Monaco Telecom International (MTI), U.S.-based MCT Corp and French telecoms giant Alcatel.

Education Minister Zobaida Jalal said Tuesday that the education budget is expected to be further enhanced to Rs. 12.5 billion this year compared to last year and the shortage of textbooks would be over soon. 'Our budget requirements are huge: We are talking about anything from Rs. 12.5 billion, yet it will depend on the resources of the government, she said speaking as the chief guest at the Euro 20 million (about Rs. 1.28 billion) grant signing ceremony between Aga Khan Foundation Pakistan and European Commission (EC) for the Northern Pakistan Education Project (NPEP).

The lobby is a dusty heap of rubble and fallen beams. The once-elegant lounge is piled with old sofas, sinks, and beds stripped from guest rooms. The former cigar bar is a series of dank, brick archways -- with no bar and no cigars.
Welcome to the Kabul Hotel. It is none too inviting in its current state, but come this fall the 110-room hotel will reopen with a five-star rating after a $26 million renovation. The project is part of a broader revival of the Afghan capital's hotel and restaurant scene that marks a fresh avenue in the country's efforts to rebuild following decades of war.

An Indian research team is in Afghanistan to carry out a survey for building a hydroelectric plant which will provide the Bamiyan region with electricity for the first time, a United Nations spokesman said on Sunday.
'It will be the first electricity generated for the central highlands,' Manoel de Almeida de Silva told newsmen. The team from the Water and Power Consultancy Services is studying the impact the dam will have on the Bamiyan region.

Kabul's hotels prepare for visitors' returnTo step through the door of Room 132 of the Kabul Hotel is to fall 20ft to a pile of rubble below.

The white-painted doorway is all that remains of the room that, along with a big chunk of the hotel, was bombed during Afghanistan's fierce civil war.

Over the coming months, Room 132 will be rebuilt as part of a $26m reconstruction project aimed at turning the 110-room hotel into a five-star attraction with shops, a health club and a Mogul-style garden.

Girls' High School in Afghanistan is First with Information Technology Kabul, Afghanistan, 2nd July, 2003 - Tajwar Sultana School, a girls' high school formerly on a frontline in Kabul, today became the first educational institution in the country with state-of-the-art computing facilities, including multimedia and internet access.

KABUL - There's a riddle here few people can solve.
What organization controls the country's largest cellphone company, is throwing itself into humanitarian development work in some of the poorest provinces in Afghanistan, is building the city's first five-star hotel, is restoring historic landmarks in Kabul - and is dominated by Canadians?

The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (Akfed) has been granted a licence to open a bank in Afghanistan.
The bank, now called The First Micro-Finance Bank (FMFB), has an initial capital of US$5 million and is the first to be established in Afghanistan under the new regulatory structure.

In a statement, Akfed, which is a majority shareholder in FMFB, said it was mobilising international resources to help create an institution focused on poverty alleviation with a strong regional presence.

The Aga Khan has said that economic indicators in Pakistan look significantly better. 'My belief is that they will continue to improve,' he said while speaking on PTV programme 'News Night' late on Wednesday night.

After years of being turned away at the schoolhouse gates, girls marched proudly at the head of the class Saturday at a ceremony marking the start of school and the resumption of education for children in this country freeing itself from the Taliban's grip.
'A great day for Afghanistan,' declared interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai after being showered with golden confetti by a choir of gaily dressed girl pupils.

'Probably today was the happiest day for me personally here -- to see our children go to school and to see them happy.'

Afghan girls went back to school for the first time in five years on Saturday, elated and emotional at the end of the draconian ban on female education imposed by the former Taliban regime.
In this northern city, small groups of girls were seen treading the path to schools that had been closed by the Taliban when it took power here in 1998.

Afghan girls went back to school for the first time in five years Saturday, elated and emotional at the end of the draconian ban on female education imposed by the now ousted Taliban regime.
Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and the UN's special envoy for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi led a ceremony to celebrate the start of the new school year at the capital's Amani High School.

Le prince Karim Aga Khan, chef spirituel des musulmans ismaélites, qui inaugurait un hôtel de prestige à Kaboul a critiqué devant des journalistes la remarquable ignorance qui prévaut entre les civilisations des mondes islamique et non-islamique, source de 'conflits durables'.

The efforts of the Aga Khan, apart from US diplomatic pressure, is being seen as a factor, behind the recent attempts towards creating a 'thaw' in Indo-Pak relations, a leading Pakistani newspaper has reported.
At least two knowledgeable ruling politicians and a few senior Pakistani officials have credited intense background efforts of spiritual leader of the Ismaili community, Prince Karim Aga Khan, for diplomatic breakthrough between Islamabad and New Delhi that in the past few days again ignited hope of a durable peace, 'the news' reported today.