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I worked for a company called Roshan in Afghanistan last summer. They're the largest telecom company in the country, as they were the first to risk buying the n
by roymurdock 11y ago
I worked for a company called Roshan in Afghanistan last summer. They're the largest telecom company in the country, as they were the first to risk buying the necessary gov contracts in 2003 after the US ousted in the Taliban.
Roshan's founder, Karim Khoja, was basically sent to build a telecom network in Afghanistan by his religious leader, the Aga Khan. The Aga Khan heads the Ismaili religion, which is a small (~25m) sect of Shia Muslims. He oversees the Aga Khan Development Network [1] which has both a non-profit and a for-profit arm that work together to build up developing economies. I know they're also pretty heavily involved in humanitarian efforts in Syria at the moment.
Roshan was well-managed and very successful. It employed a large number of awesome Afghans, and contributed a lot to an economy that had nothing else going for it besides war, opium, and rugs.
Just one example of an organization that is doing good things out there, especially in the war-torn middle east. Things might change for the worse now that the US/Europe is pulling out of Afghanistan and the Taliban/ISIS are coming back to power. At the end of the day it was the stability brought by the armed forces that allowed expats and investments to flow into the country.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_Fund_for_Economic_Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_Fund_for_Economic_Dev...