KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - For a sexually repressed country like Afghanistan that frowns on any contact between men and women who aren't married, it may come as a surprise that even in the bustling marketplace in ultra-conservative Kandahar city, women are regularly subject to sexual harassment and assault.
Even with the ouster of the Taliban, many women rarely leave their homes and those who do seldom go out without the guise of their burka.
Yet in the hustle and bustle of the bazaar, men commonly take advantage of the noisy crowds to whisper obscene comments in women's ears or grab their rear ends.
"That happens on a normal average basis every day,'' said Rangina Hamidi, a local advocate for women's rights.
Also the daughter of Kandahar Mayor Ghulam Hayder Hamidi, Rangina calls herself her father's "biggest critic,'' but even she supports his plan to clean up the streets and sidewalks of Kandahar.
A pilot project Hamidi launched shortly after he was appointed to office about a year ago, the plan was to discourage loitering and stop shopkeepers from cluttering up their storefronts by renting out sidewalk space to fruit and clothing vendors.
Although it initially had more to do with tidying up the provincial capital, it had the indirect effect of making city life more bearable for the women of Kandahar.
"I think women loved it because they were not being harassed publicly as much,'' Rangina said.
Unfortunately, the mayor faced much opposition from those who viewed it as an attack on their ability to do business and feed their families and the chaos resumed within months.
In an interview at Camp Nathan Smith, Hamidi said reimplementing the program with help from Canadian civilian and military development workers from the Provincial Resconstruction Team is among his goals for the coming year.
"One of the things were working on is cleaning the sidewalks from the carts and people,'' he said.
"When the sidewalk is free, (women) can walk very easily and her husband, father, brother and mother will feel (she) is safe now. (She) is not touching with the men.''
Enlarging the sidewalks and installing paint limitations are among the initiatives currently underway, said Sgt. Andre Duchesneau of the Civilian-Military Co-operation Team (CIMIC).
Not only will it reduce parking congestion, he said, it will also give the city grounds to ticket drivers, thus generating much needed revenue.
Traffic control is also important from a security perspective, he added, noting CIMIC has purchased and is to help install some 74 street signs.
Reflecting upon his last year in office, Hamidi said he's spent the better part gaining the trust and respect of his constituents and building ties with foreign aid workers and military officials.
The Kandahar native who spent the better part of the last quarter century outside his country raising his family in the United States only returned after the ouster of the Taliban.
"I'm feeling that I owe my country, my house, my village, to work for them because I grew up here,'' he said.
As an outsider, Hamidi said he faced much opposition after the governor appointed him mayor but that he feels things are changing.
"Day by day, week by week, the situation is going better,'' he said. "They can see that I'm not some guy that is coming to go by politics. That I have a target to go to parliament. To be a minister or something like that.
"People know me now. I'm not the guy against them.''
Besides cleaning up his city, Hamidi outlined a long list of priorities for his second year in office which include erecting street signs and numbers to facilitate mail delivery, improving the sewage system and finding ways to generate revenue.
With reconstruction and development being a major focus for this latest rotation of Canadian troops, Duchesneau said CIMIC has already spent about $250,000 on projects within the city of Kandahar in the last four-and-a-half months.
Building ditches to prevent flooding during the rainy season is among the biggest initiatives currently underway, he said, adding CIMIC is also helping construct an abattoir within the city limits so people will no longer have to leave town to have their sheep slaughtered.
With the abandoned land having been acquired by the city, the plan is to contract out the work for a small cut of the profits.
"It's a new way for the city to collect revenue,'' Duchesneau said.
CIMIC is also working with city engineers to teach them the basics of project management and to get them equipped with the necessary computers, software and specialized machinery they might need.
"We really have a limited budget,'' Duchesneau said of the CIMIC team. "It's really about small projects... We try to collaborate with CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and others for big projects.''
