'There was a lot of scepticism in the beginning,' said Ratish Nanda, a conservation architect from India and an Aga Khan trust consultant on the restoration project to resurrect the 400-year-old Mogul gardens 'It was a huge challenge, and we succeeded due to the personal interest of the Aga Khan.'

The project is close to completion, and an official opening is slated for next year. From being emblematic of all that had gone wrong in the past 25 years, the rehabilitated Bagh-e Babur gardens have become symbolic of the joint Afghan-international effort to reconstruct a war-ravaged land.

The gardens were founded by Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, a Central Asian prince who invaded Afghanistan and India in the 16th century and founded South Asia's Mogul dynasty.

Besides being a brilliant and ruthless soldier, Babur was also a poet, aesthete and naturalist who established beautiful gardens wherever he went.

Babur is acknowledged as the only founder of a royal dynasty who kept a journal, known as the 'Baburnama', describing his conquests and detailing the flora and fauna of the territories he conquered. He was especially fond of Kabul. 'It has a very pleasant climate,' he wrote. 'If the world has another so pleasant, it is not known.'

Not surprisingly, the first Great Mogul expressed the desire 'to lie under the open Kabul sky' after his death. He died in India in 1530, and his remains were brought to Afghanistan 10 years later and reburied in a simple grave in his favourite terraced garden full of fruit and flowering trees extending from a rugged hill down to the banks of the Kabul River.

Babur, it was believed, had died after taking upon himself a fatal fever afflicting his son, so his grave soon became a place of pilgrimage.

Successive generations of Moguls, followed by Afghan kings, erected new structures around the royal grave - a decorated marble lattice enclosure; a pearl-white marble mosque; a pavilion; a caravanserai and a royal harem, known as the Queen's Palace. Finally, a communist mayor added a municipal swimming pool in the middle of the garden in the 1970s.

But in 1993, not long after the communists were ousted by the US-backed mujahedeen, the Babur gardens were on the frontline in the bloody, relentless fighting between rival Afghan warlords. The garden was devastated, the trees chopped for firewood, and the structures looted and ruined.

From being the pride of Kabul, the historic garden became a symbol of the city's ruin. The civil war also forced many residents to flee, making the neighbourhood desolate and ghostly.

'The Aga Khan saw the restoration of the Babur gardens not only as an opportunity for Afghans to reclaim their history, but also as a means to restore civic pride, revive traditional skills, and economically regenerate the neighbourhood,' Aga Khan trust programme manager Jolyon Leslie said.

Four years after the project was initiated, most of the work has been completed. The two dozen varieties of trees and plants mentioned in the 'Baburnama' have been planted, including chinar, Judas, almond, walnut, apricot, pomegranate, peach, mulberry, black cherry, fig, Russian olive, and the fragrant 'watani' Afghan rose.

The central cascading marble water channel so typical of a Mogul garden has been reconstructed, the pavilion and the pearl mosque have been restored, and the swimming pool has been relocated outside the garden's fortress-like perimeter wall, which has been rebuilt with US$1 million in German aid.

But the centrepiece remains the Great Mogul's grave. It has been lovingly restored, with the original marble plaque proclaiming: 'Paradise is forever Emperor Babur's abode.' The grave is now enclosed once again within a magnificent lattice screen enclosure, newly created by Indian craftsmen in Delhi using white marble from the same Rajasthan quarries that supplied the Taj Mahal.

The Queen's Palace is being restored, the caravanserai is under reconstruction and the reborn Babur gardens complex is due to be formally inaugurated next year.

'After all the initial doubts, thousands of people now flock to the Babur gardens,' said Mr Nanda. 'But for me, the best part of the project has been the involvement of some young Afghan architects.'

Hamid Abdul Hameed lists all that he and other young architects learned. 'First, we learned to speak English,' he said.

'Then we learned how to study and document historic structures; how to restore and conserve; how to use material; how to organise work; how to teach masons; and how to revive ancient building techniques, such as lime plaster, sun-dried brick arches, and dry-stone construction.'

More than 150 people from neighbouring communities have found employment in the project. Lal Marjan was without work for more than a year after returning to Kabul until he was hired as a labour supervisor at Babur gardens on US$6 a day, a handsome wage in a country where government officials are paid US$50 a month. 'This project is good not just for the community, but for the whole nation,' he said.

Farida Durrani, a schoolteacher who likes to visit the garden with her family, said: 'For a while we thought we had lost everything, but now we feel something historic has been recovered.'

The Aga Khan trust has also launched an area development initiative in the hillside community surrounding the gardens, upgrading water supply, improving drainage and constructing stepped cement pathways. There are also efforts to assist in community development by supporting small-scale economic activities.

But the chinar trees are hardly three metres tall as dark clouds have again begun to form over Afghanistan.

'I was very happy the first four years [after the ousting of the Taleban], but now everyone is uncertain and apprehensive,' said Mr Hameed, whose family lives in a province south of Kabul.

'The resurgence of the Taleban during the past nine months, the renewed fighting and the suicide bombings, has everybody worried. The other thing bothering people is the uncontrolled corruption in the government.'

Even though President Hamid Karzai is seen as an honest and sincere leader, he is increasingly criticised as indecisive, encircled by warlords and corrupt politicians and officials.

'The new Afghan parliament constituted eight months ago was the last hope but there is more corruption here than in some government ministries,' said Ramazan Bashardost, MP and popular anti-corruption campaigner. 'It is a disaster for the people.'

The revival of the country's education system, after the depredations of war and the Taleban, is the most significant achievement of the past 41/2 years, with more than seven million boys and girls enrolled in schools. But last month the education minister warned that schools in 27 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces were under threat.

Nearly 150 schools have been attacked so far, and around 50 teachers killed. 'The Taleban has even put a price on teachers' heads - 50,000 Afghanis (HK$7,790) for women, 20,000 Afghanis (HK$3,116) for men,' Ms Durrani said.

'We feel helpless, we're really worried about what will happen next. This is something we didn't expect after all the hope and optimism of the early years.'

The international community has finally woken up to the growing threat from the Taleban, with Nato and Afghan forces launching a major military campaign six weeks ago in the southern districts bordering Pakistan.

But the more Taleban are killed, the more members seem to materialise in the countryside, where another crisis continues unchecked - widespread poppy cultivation and a boom in opium production, making Afghanistan the world's biggest illegal drugs supplier.

'Security and governance are the two critical issues that need to be addressed, and it's still not too late to rescue Afghanistan,' German analyst Thomas Ruttig said. 'But the problem is - nobody seems to have a clear strategy yet on how to tackle the Taleban.'

Meanwhile, even as Kabul continues to suffer from an acute power shortage, the mood in Babur's favourite city has clearly turned gloomy and pessimistic.

'If you compare with how it was under the Taleban, then we're much better off today,' Ms Durrani said.

'But if you see our current situation in relation to the expectations aroused after the ouster of the Taleban, then it's very, very disappointing. Many people who returned to the country want to leave again. Even I want to leave.'