Gujarat to help rebuild its attacker war-ravaged Mahmud’s Ghazni

AD 1025: Mahmud, the ruler of Ghazni - a city in Afghanistan - plunders Gujarat and destroys the Somnath temple.
AD 2009: Architects and town planners of Gujarat are helping rebuild Ghazni which has been completely destroyed in the ongoing civil war.

Gujarat today is helping rebuild the Afghan town of Ghazni which is in ruins because of the ongoing civil war. Ironically, it was Mahmud, the ruler of Ghazni, who had plundered Gujarat nearly 1000 years back and destroyed the Somnath temple.

Using Google images, a team of 15 architects and urban planners from the Urban Management Centre (UMC) is working on a reconstruction blueprint for Ghazni.
The Ghazni reconstruction plan is part of a project called Afghanistan Municipal Strengthening Programme.

A four-member delegation from Afghanistan, including the director of urban development department Saied Usman and the MoUD and director for administration and finance Mohammad Ibrahim, recently met officials of the UMC and the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) to learn about urban planning and urban designing projects.

“Previous reconstruction plans for Afghan cities failed because local people were not involved in the development work,” Usman told DNA. “We want to rebuild Afghanistan with the participation of the Afghan people. We have the money to re-build our cities and the UMC has the expertise,” he added.

“It is disturbing to see the devastation caused by the war in many Afghan cities,” said Manvita Baradi, a UMC member. “There is hardly any expert there who can help in urban planning and designing. Besides Ghazni, the UMC has prepared development plans for eight cities in Afghanistan.”

He said Afghanistan is looking for experts in urban planning, urban management and infrastructure building, who can come up with the best solution to their civic problems. In fact, some engineers from Afghanistan will be coming to do a six-month course on urban planning at the Centre for Environment Planning and Technology (Cept). 

“We have a request,” Usman said. “We have come to invite the people of India to help us rebuild Afghanistan.  “Once we have manpower well-trained in urban planning, we will be better off. In the future, we would like to set up an institute like Cept to train more people,” said Usman.  The Afghan delegation took a keen interest in the solid waste management and slum networking projects being executed successfully in the state. During their visit, they sought help from experts in Gujarat to develop Ghazni as a Heritage City. The UMC is a unit of the International City/Country Management Association (ICMA)’s South Asia chapter that is based in Ahmedabad.