Indian doctor happy to serve Afghans in former Taliban hub

, Feb 25: Set to complete a decade in this run-down former power hub of the Taliban, Dr Shah Nawaz, the 'lone Indian' here, is happy to serve the war-weary

people in their medical needs.

Nawaz, 45, working at a private hospital, says he is happy to serve the people in Kandahar, the southern province of Afghanistan, also the birthplace of the Taliban movement.

Recalling his journey to Afghanistan, Nawaz said an Afghan businessman here who was into dry fruit business had contacts with his family in India and he often told him about the plight of people in Kandahar and their medical needs.

"I then gave him a proposal to build a hospital. He (the businessman) was ready to invest and I expressed readiness to come to Afghanistan and serve the people," Nawaz told .

"People here are very simple, their needs are very limited. Actually even basic treatment is not available," said Nawaz, who hails from Maharashtra.

"I am here since August 2005. My family is not here. They are in Malaysia. I visit them twice or thrice in a year, and they come once in a year to India," he said.

Officials said Nawaz was the only Indian working in the city apart from a handful of staff at the Indian Consulate in Kandahar city, which was the headquarters of the erstwhile Taliban regime during 1996-2001.

About life in Kandahar, Nawaz said though he was the only Indian working in the city, a number of his compatriots were employed in a huge US military base here.

Sources said the Indians working at the US base come through Dubai and are not registered with the Consulate.

India last week helped Afghanistan establish its first agriculture university here as part of a major capacity- building project to help the war-torn country to increase farm output and attain economic independence.

The Afghan National Agricultural Sciences and Technology University (ANASTU) coming up in the sprawling Tarnak farm in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar was an important activity of the India-Afghanistan strategic partnership.

Interestingly, the Tarnak farm was slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's main Afghan residence during much of the late 1990s. From there he oversaw al-Qaeda's plot to fly hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre in New York and Pentagon in Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.

PTI