Making up for lost time in Afghanistan

You view Kabul differently if you were there before the fall of the Taliban. If it's your first trip to the city, then it looks pretty dismal, despite the pure aesthetics of the hills, the snow and the sky. -- Rubbish in the streets, hideous traffic, desperately poor beggars, erratic electricity, meat hanging on hooks outside the butchers' for want of refrigeration, one-legged mine victims hobbling along potholed roads, entire families piled into one- or two-roomed mud-walled homes without proper sanitation and without proper food either.