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Aga Khan fund to redevelop downtown Kabul...
The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) has announced a substantial investment to initiate tourism, commercial and urban redevelopment in Afghanistan. The fund will establish a world-class hotel in the centre of Kabul, Prince Amyn Aga Khan, the younger brother of His Highness the Aga Khan, has said. Following meetings with President Hamid Karzai and senior government ministers, including Foreign Minister Abdallah Abdallah and Minister of Justice Abdul Rahim Karimi, Prince Amyn made an extensive tour of the premises of the former Hotel Kabul, accompanied by the Minister of Civil Aviation and Tourism, Mr Mirwais Sidiq, and the Mayor of Kabul, Mr Mohamed Anwar Jekdelik, according to a All Africa Global Media report. "The Government of Afghanistan has invited us to address urgent development priorities in the nation's tourism industry by creating facilities of an international stature that will have an immediate, positive impact on the local Economy as well as on the urban and cultural landscape of Kabul," said Prince Amyn, Director of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (Akfed) and Chairman of its Executive Committee. "This project for an investment in Afghanistan's hospitality sector," he said, "will also allow us to contribute through the training of skilled manpower, the reinvigoration of artisanal and craft industries, and through an upgrading of the urban fabric in a sensitive manner. Clearly, the revival of tourism will be of major importance to this project for its long term future success". The Kabul Serena Hotel (as the revitalised property will be called) is a Soviet era hotel built some 50 years ago amid handsome gardens. It dominates a busy junction in the city's commercial centre and overlooks Zanegar Park, an open public space whose rehabilitation the AKDN is expected to manage. In the past, the hotel has served as a refuge for the famous carved wooden effigies moved from Nuristan and other master-pieces that were moved in 1996 from the Kabul Museum. The Ismailis are one of the Muslim groups — probably the preeminent Muslim group — that hold out hope for Islam as a religion. Somehow their charitable activities don't end up financing guys with turbans and bombs. That means that about the time the hotel is rehabbed, it'll be rocketed by some wahhabis. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-11-25 |
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