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Despite greater freedom, a boom of development and relative prosperity, many Afghans insist that life is not always better

"What have the Romans done for us?" Reg an angry cries in the Life of Brian Monty Python movies. Reg friends then come to an impressive list of development projects - which fall to the reg "Ok, but apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a freshwater system and public health, it is Romans done for us? "

Thirty years after the release of the film, the conversation sums up the mood of Afghanistan. There are a lot of development and progress, freedom and prosperity, but the Regs of this world, Malalai Joya to many armchair patriots diaspora, refuse to admit that since 2001, Afghanistan has been greatly improved.

During my visit this summer we've had a Reg outraged as a pilot. We were driving from Kabul to Panjshir on a road very well that, in addition to fragments near Bagram was perfectly smooth and empty most of the time.

was then, in this moment of peace, our driver suddenly blurted out, "The situation is bad, very bad"

was paid in dollars and we had - a group of passengers of friendship and respect - in its solid Land Cruiser. When my family lived in Kabul in the 1980s, a driver would have given his right arm to be paid in dollars. But today, the Afghan drivers to currency granted.

On the way, Reg's cell phone kept ringing. His boss, and many friends and family members wanted to talk to him. In the 1980s, only a handful of families owned a mobile phone and were seen only in Bollywood films. The people I met this summer in Kabul and other places all mobile phones held, sometimes two or three.

When we stopped in the village of Istalif, famous for its pottery yogurt divine single families have been a picnic under the trees green vegetables. The sound of a comedy show was bursting through the speakers, looking Istalifis double laugh every time I broke a comedian joke about the president. Only in the last decade, making fun of the Afghan leader would have cost the actor and his audience of their heads.

But Afghan political freedom seems to have its course. If opposition to the regime of Iran has been in prison, men and women of Afghanistan are free to take a microphone and shouted with all his might to all who want their president to resign. But they still insist that "the situation is bad", although only 15 years ago would not have been able to walk to Kabul, without the risk of being hit by a rocket lost.

off the roads and highways resurfaced, renovated and new schools, health clinics, to name a few, one of the most neglected aspects of progress in Afghanistan the extent of social mobility. Among the class of new business there are many examples of people who had fled the country on the backs of mules, who survive with their families in exile in Pakistan, $ 20 per month.

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