Pietro;
This was forwarded to me. Here are my comments.
The mission of any expert from anywhere, much less from United State,
should be to get a better understanding of Afghan society; its culture,
social, economic and family values, family and political aspirations,
existing planning practices and policies.

Your briefing of Afghanistan is very good. However, we need a much more
understanding before we can offer solutions. I believe, we should be very
careful of imposing our solutions. We don't have a good history of
Planning in this country. Our strength is organization skills and process.

In my view points we should bring to the attentions of Afghan planners the
results of ill planning in united states, so that they learn from our
mistakes and don't repeat them. They don't need 12 lanes of highways, just
because they may have oil and money resulting from it. The Planning should
support Afghan social and cultural values. Islam has a great history of
planning and architecture. I am from India and have lived in the United
States for 32 years. Indian has great architecture and planning from
islamic era. Going back and forth and travelling to other parts of the
world has given me a better perspective. Today, media has lessened the gap
between India and pakistan. I don't know if that is true for Afghanistan.
I believe, the most important is to help clients (Afghan Community) define
issues and their aspirations (mission statement, the planning jargon).
Planners must learn language of people and converse in it.

Most important, it is the local planner who are the medium of
communication. Without public trust in a foreign culture, one can
accomplish nothing. Even an Afghan who lives in a foreign land for many
years may not easily win the confidence of the people without living with
local people for quiet some time.

In my professional life, I always approach a problem anew as if I am doing
for the first time even though I may have done it many time. This helps
you think out of the box. Hope this is of any help.
Manjeet