“THEY may be Taliban, they may be warlords, who cares?” asks Karim Khoja, rhetorically. “We are apolitical—they are customers.” Nobody could accuse Mr Khoja of being narrow-minded. Indeed, his easy-going approach has allowed him to build a successful mobile-phone business in one of the world's least hospitable markets, war-torn Afghanistan. One legacy of more than two decades of occupation, fighting and terror—and little in the way of economic activity before that—was that Afghanistan did not have much of a traditional fixed-line telecoms infrastructure. This presented achance to leapfrog the old technology and go straight to mobile phones. A mobile-phone network requires a lot of radio masts, however. Whether they remain standing, especially in remote parts of Afghanistan, depends on the goodwill of the locals. Hence Mr Khoja's customer-centric philosophy. “When wego to a village, we talk to the elders and explain how when a mast comes to an area it brings jobs and economic growth,” he says. He adds, not entirely reassuringly, that everybody in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, understands the importance of being able to communicate.
“他们也许是塔利班，也许是军阀，谁会在乎？”凯利姆•库拉（
Karim Khoja
）诘问道。“我们不关心政治——他们都是顾客。”没人能指责他目光短浅。的确，他闲庭信步的方式使他在战火纷飞的阿富汗这个全球最不友好的市场成功经营移动通信业务。如果说持续
20
多年的占领、战争和恐怖主义给阿富汗留下了什么遗产的话——此前在经济活动方面所留无几——那就是阿富汗过去缺乏固定电话基础设施缺乏。这一现实提供了一个机会，从落后的技术直接跃至移动通信业务。但是一个移动电话网络需要很多无线发射塔。它们能否在阿富汗特别是偏远地区继续工作则取决于当地人们是否友好。因此
Khoja
制定了以顾客为中心的理念。“我们深入农村，和长者交谈并解释安装发射塔如何能增加当地就业并促进经济增长，”他说。他补充道，虽然并不完全出于安慰，每个阿富汗人，包括塔利班，都懂得交流的重要性。
To date his firm, Roshan, which means “light” in the country's two most popular languages, has not lost a single radio mast, although a significant proportion of its network is in areas saidto be controlled by the Taliban. An Indian worker employed by a contractor to Roshan was kidnapped and executed in Kandahar last April, but the circumstances of the crime do not indicate any general hostility towards the firm, insists Mr Khoja.
目前，他的罗山（
Roshan
）电信公司（”
Roshan
”在阿富汗最主要的两种语言中的意思是“光”），没有损失一个无线电天线桅，尽管相当大的一部分网络据说是建在塔利班控制的那些地区。一名受雇于罗山某承包商的印度员工曾遭绑架，于去年四月在坎大哈被杀害，但这样猖獗的犯罪并不意味着阿富汗社会对于罗山公司的普遍敌意，库拉说。
Roshan has prospered despite its stated refusal to bribe, a scruple that Mr Khoja hints is not shared by all his competitors. Phones and pre-paid phone cards have become a popular alternative currency in Afghanistan, as in many developing countries, but “we don't hand them out to win favour,” he says. “Unless we start training the Afghan people that baksheesh is wrong, there will always be expectations.”
尽管拒绝行贿，罗山也已经取得成功，库拉暗示，并不是所有竞争对手都坚持这一原则。电话和充值电话卡已经在阿富汗广泛使用，就像在很多发展中国家一样，但是“我们提供服务并不是为了得到特殊优待，”他说。“除非我们开始教阿富汗人小费是不对的，否则总会有人索贿。”
It may help that Roshan is 51% owned by the for-profit arm of the
（
Aga Khan Development Network
）
. (The other owners are Monaco Telecom, now part of Britain's Cable& Wireless, and MCT, an American venture-capital fund.) Although the AgaKhan's Ismaili strand of Islam differs markedly from the Taliban's, his was one of the few international non-governmental organisations allowed to operate in Afghanistan under their rule. Roshan seems to have benefited from the goodwillthis created.
阿迦汗发展组织（
Aga KhanDevelopment Network
）拥有罗山公司
51%
的股份，这也许是罗山业务发展的有利条件。（其他股东现隶属英国大东电报局（
Cable & Wireless
）的摩纳哥电信（
Monaco Telecom
），以及美国风险公司
MCT
。）虽然阿迦汗信奉的伊斯兰教伊斯玛仪派（
Ismaili
）与塔利班的信仰存在明显分歧，他的公司是少有的几个被允许在阿富汗自主运作的国际非政府组织之一。这位罗山提供了有利环境，罗山似乎从中有所收获。
A typically business-minded Ismaili, MrKhoja went to work as an unpaid volunteer at the Aga Khan Foundation in 1998 after “retiring” at the age of 40 from a lucrative career in telecoms that included stints in Canada, Britain, Croatia, Pakistan and Poland. Born in South Africa and educated in England, Mr Khoja has travel in the blood. His retirement did not last long. He started working in Afghanistan in 2002 and became Roshan's paid chief executive after it began operations in 2003 as the first competitor to the government-owned incumbent.
库拉先生是一个典型的具有商业头脑的伊斯玛仪派信徒。先后在加拿大、英国、克罗地亚、巴基斯坦和波兰经营电信业务，功成名就后
40
岁时“退休”。
1998
年他作为义务志愿者加入阿迦汗基金会。生于南非，留学英国，热血中流淌着驰骋四方的雄心。他退休后不久便卷土重来。
2002
年他开始在阿富汗经营，成为
2003
年开始运营的罗山公司的受薪首席执行官，领导国有电信业的首个竞争对手。
Today Roshan has over 1m subscribers, around 55% of a national market that has grown rapidly and will soon be served by five national and two regional operators. All this competition has driven down prices from around $3 per minute to less than 10 cents. That said, roaming charges for foreign visitors are high. The growing number of “extreme tourists” visiting Bamiyan, the site of the Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, “don't care how much they pay for calls,” says Mr Khoja. This has created an unexpectedly profitable market for Roshan.
今天罗山拥有一百万用户，约
55%
的本国市场占有率，且增长迅速，将很快添加五个全国和两个地区运营商。他的竞争活动拉低了话费，从约每分钟
3
美元降低到
10
美分。尽管如此，针对外国游客的漫游话费依然很高。
2001
年巴米扬的一些佛像被毁，现在来巴米扬的“极限游客”越来越多，他们“不在乎电话费”，库拉说。这为罗山带来了出乎意料的赢利市场。
The company is Afghanistan's largest taxpayer, largest investor (over $250m so far, with a further $75m planned this year) and largest employer, claims the ebullient Mr Khoja. As well as its staffof 800, around 20,000 people earn a living either by running “public calloffices” (earning a princely-for-Afghanistan $150 a month) or selling pre-paidphone cards ($50 a month). Some franchises were given to former mujahideen soldiers in return for handing in their Kalashnikovs.
该公司是阿富汗头号纳税企业及最大投资商（目前
2
亿
5000
万美元，今年计划再投资
7
千
500
万美元）
而且是该国最大的雇主，库拉热情洋溢地说。和公司
800
名员工一样，约
2
万人在经营“公用电话”（每月
150
美元，在阿富汗属于高薪）或卖手机充值卡（月收入
50
美元）。圣战老兵如果缴出其卡拉什尼科夫冲锋枪便获得了营业许可。
Mr Khoja is particularly proud of his firm's marketing, which has made Roshan the “brand of brands, bigger than Coca-Cola in Afghanistan”. Its slogan, Nazdik Shodan (“getting closer”) is hugely popular.The firm sponsored the Afghan equivalent of “American Idol”, a television talent contest, though this nearly backfired when Roshan's failure to send atext message confirming the receipt of votes led to a protest outside a callcentre in the losing contestant's town. It ended only when the loser turned upin person to say the result was fair.
