KABUL, Dec 26 (Reuters) – When a Taliban suicide bomber killed two people on the edge of the Afghan
capital this month, there was another casualty – a global fruit juice business optimistically called “Spring Wish” which provided work for
thousands of farmers across the country.
Mustafa Sadiq’s empire had been expanding healthily, bringing in badly needed foreign capital, before the attack inflicted the kind of
financial loss cash-strapped Afghanistan can ill afford.
The pomegranate juice business was nearly wiped out in the split second it took the militant to detonate explosives in a truck parked
near the factory on Dec. 17.
Pieces of shredded metal were scattered everywhere. Chairs were hurled across the office where Sadiq had spent so much time
figuring out how to beat the odds against decades of war, instability and hopelessness.
Sadiq was in Dubai drumming up new export deals when an assistant called with the bad news. The call that Sadiq said he did not get
is also troubling him.
“So far no officials, for the sake of sympathy, have called us,” Sadiq, 40, told Reuters, standing beside a year’s supply of juice in
containers that were ruined in the attack – nearly $10 million in losses overall.
“In this situation they should have called me and asked what kind of help they could provide. The agriculture, finance, commerce
ministries. Nobody so far has visited or called.”
The impact of the war, and expectations for the future, are often seen only through the eyes of Western or Afghan soldiers, or officials
who point to the progress that has been made.
Sadiq offers another perspective. Some workers told him the bomber triggered the loudest blast they had heard in 30 years.
A Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was followed by a decade of resistance by mujahideen fighters who drove them out. Then
warlords carved out fiefdoms and destroyed half of the capital in the civil war that followed.
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