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This week John Martinkus of International Dateline returns to war-torn Afghanistan, where the rich get richer and the poor get even poorer.

Meet Farhad Ghafoor, he's not your usual Afghani citizen. He's American educated, well dressed, successful and significantly more well off than the rest of his countrymen.

Running his own IT business in the centre of town, he employs 150 people, enjoys lunchtimes at home with his family and particularly likes showing visitors the city skyline from the rooftop of a nearby four-star shopping centre.

From the rooftop of the four-star shopping centre it’s clear to Martinkus that Kabul is changing. The skyline is filled with cranes and scaffolding – this is a city working hard to rebuild itself – and prosperity may finally bring together those divided by years of war.

On the other side of the tracks, Martinkus meets Nandoy Mama. He lives in a refugee camp after fierce fighting ended his family's farming career in his home province.

Living in a plastic tent, Nandoy struggles to feed and educate his children. He's one of tens of thousands of displaced Afghans living in poverty. He knows little of the outside world, he’s devoutly Islamic and his day is consumed by life-or-death issues like fighting over a water source.

Farhad and Nandoy are the two faces of Kabul, where the rich get richer and the poor simply get even poorer.

“There’s a lot of opportunity here,” Farhad tells Martinkus. “We just need to work on the basic things like security, power. I think Afghan people are very talented, very motivated, very capable and they’re hungry for success.”

“The one big difficulty is water,” counters Nandoy. “Other problems we have are accommodation and schooling...We need a toilet, I need a school I can send my children to. I need them [the government] to give me land to live on.”

Also in this episode, an interview with Tony Blankley about John McCain's campaign for the White House.

About International Dateline 

SBS Dateline, which began in 1984, is Australia's longest-running international current affairs program. It has a well-earned reputation for authoritative and incisive reporting. Dateline has taken the traditional way of producing TV current affairs and turned it on its head. Reporters who used to travel with a cameraperson and sound recordist now travel alone and have the responsibility of both filming and reporting their stories. The reporters became video-journalists, gaining access to people and places that the conventional camera crews cannot.