Can you hear me now?

In a country where basically nothing works the way it's supposed to, it's really quite noteworthy when you actually find something functional, let alone actually efficient. Thus, the system that has been set up for selling and distributing cell phone minutes in Afghanistan is really eye-catching. Other reports have been written about this before, but I don't know where they are, and besides, if you're reading this you probably want to hear my take on it anyway.

Anyway. Some context is necessary. Five or six years ago, there were basically no cell phones in Afghanistan. Today, only the most rural districts of the most backwater provinces lack at least some cell service, although the service often doesn't function at night.*

*The Taliban usually pressures providers to turn the cell towers off at night. With no cell phone service, villagers can't alert the local PRT to Taliban movements.

Getting a phone is not too hard. In any market area, there is guaranteed to be at least one person selling Indian or Pakistani knockoff phones. The standard phone is a utilitarian Nokia model, which retails for anywhere from 1200-1600 afghanis ($26-$35), depending on the uprightness of the seller and the degree of illegality of the phone. The phones come with SIM cards from one of the major Afghan cell providers: the three largest ones, at least in the Kabul area, are AWCC (Afghan Wireless Communications Company), Etisalat, and Roshan. I don't know much about the first two, but Roshan was founded by a rich Afghan businessman and has won numerous awards for entrepreneuership and community contributions.

So now you have your phone and SIM card. You will put on an initial balance of money, say 500 afghanis (about $11), at the store. Then you go about using your phone, paying reasonable rates for in-country calling and texting, semi-reasonable rates for international texts, and ungodly rates for international calls (at least to the US; presumably it's pretty cheap to call a Pakistani number). This is all standard. The amazing part is what happens when you need to refill your phone.

On every street corner in Kabul, in every market, in every tiny village, at least one person will be selling phone cards. These cards are used to refill your phone balance, and come in denominations ranging from 25 afghanis (about $0.60) to 1000 afghanis (about $22). Nobody polices these vendors, because if they cheat their customers, people will simply buy from another vendor. The true beauty of it, though, is that there is absolutely no danger of fraud. Each card has a scratch-off box with a code below it. When you get a card, you scratch off that weird gray stuff to reveal the code, which you then dial as if it were a phone number (prefixed by some code to tell the phone what you're doing). Dialing this number adds the amount of money to your SIM card and deactivates the code on the card, preventing anyone from getting a free addition to their phone balance. You throw away the card, and you're on your way.

It's simple. It's elegant. It's fraud-proof. I'm not sure there's anything else in this country that can be described with all three of those adjectives.