北约：阿富汗人民生活有很大提高

Ten years since the Taliban were driven from the Afghan capital, Kabul, Nato's ambassador to Afghanistan, Simon Gass, says there have been big improvements.

北约驻阿富汗代表西蒙·盖斯称，塔利班势力已被驱逐出阿富汗首都喀布尔达十年时间，期间人民生活有很大提高。

On 13 November 2001 that the western-backed Northern Alliance swept into the Afghan capital virtually unopposed.

But, Mr Goss says, plenty of things have not been done.

Critics stress the Taliban can still bring death into the capital. Many are anxious about the coming withdrawal of foreign combat forces.

A decade after the liberation of Kabul by the Northern Alliance, the city is growing fast, but it still has the architecture（建筑学） of war - checkpoints, blast walls and heavily fortified buildings.

A city of bicycles has become a city of jeeps and traffic jams, a monument to commerce and to corruption.

The poverty remains, but there is progress - like electricity around the clock in most neighbourhoods.

Nato's ambassador to Afghanistan, Simon Gass, says the city has changed beyond recognition.

"When you walk around in Kabul, this is now a bustling（忙乱的） lively city with women on the streets, people able to go to hospitals, schools open where girls can go to as well as boys and it feels very very different to how it did 10 years ago."

But the ambassador admits that many things have not been done.

Some - troubled by the ghosts of the past - worry about a return to all-out civil war.

Ten years on, Kabul is still waiting for peace.

According to one veteran analyst here, people assumed and hoped things would be a lot better by now.