Hedayatullah Ahmad Zai slaps his hand against one of the ancient mud brick walls that separate this historic neighbourhood from the rest of Kabul, a bustling city now despite the remnants of war.

"There was garbage up to here," he says, shaking his head. "We hauled it out for weeks. And there were people living in that."

Murad Khane was once a thriving area that played host to Afghan royalty. It had grand houses that people loved to live in and a busy market along the Kabul River.

Through decades of war, the area had fallen far from its glory days.

The landmark buildings were crumbling. Raw sewage ran in the streets. The wells were dry, and the only people who remained were those too poor to have anywhere else to go.

"This area has a story that is 300 years old," says Ahmad Zai, the head of engineering for an ambitious project to rebuild the area.

"The people like living in these houses," he says as he strolls through a maze of alleys and construction sites. "They have been here for generations."

And for generations they had watched as the grand buildings of Murad Khane buckled from neglect and returned to mud.

Like the buildings, the people showed the signs of neglect.

Poor and uneducated, few had the prospect of earning a living. Children worked if they could, and women stayed hidden inside their homes in fear of Taliban reprisals.

Enter Turquoise Mountain.

Born of a meeting between Prince Charles and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in January 2006, the Turquoise Mountain project aims to rebuild Murad Khane one brick at a time.

The neighbourhood's ancient buildings are slowly being restored to their former glory.

There is an embroidery centre where the neighbourhood women earn a stipend for their work, and an elementary school for the children. Eventually, there will be a school for traditional arts and architecture. It will teach subjects ranging from carpentry, tile-making to calligraphy.

Every afternoon, a volunteer doctor runs a medical clinic and health workers visit local families. The well has been restored and proper sewage drains have been dug.

Earlier this month, Canada's International Co-operation Minister Beverley Oda announced $3 million for the project, funded so far by individual donations from philanthropists including Prince Charles and the Crown Prince of Bahrain.

"It is a hard-hit city and one of the ways that it helps people here initially is with instant job creation," says Anna Woodiwiss, spokeswoman for the project, as she strolls through the returning bazaar area.

"Any unemployed man in Murad Khane who wants a job on this project has one - whether it's clearing garbage, doing brick work or restoring these buildings."

The idea is to build a visible symbol of regeneration amid the ruins, one that will draw Afghans from across the country and, eventually, foreign visitors.

Looking at the rocket-pocked landscape of poverty and decay, it is difficult to imagine that one day anyone would come to Afghanistan of their own accord. Many buildings left standing are doing so by the slimmest of margins. Even cherished mosques have fallen into disrepair.

It is easy to forget that this land was once a celebrated stop along the Silk Road between China and Rome. Its history stretches back over thousands of years of civilization.

But Afghanistan has also been plundered throughout history - by Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Ottoman Empire, to name a few.

At one time, the national museum in Kabul hosted the world's richest collection of artifacts from central Asia.

But the museum was bombed in 1993. Then the Taliban sacked the place in 2001, around the time they blew up two giant 5th century Buddha statues in Bamiyan.

What hadn't fallen victim to war or the strict Islam of the Taliban has been looted.

Museum staff tried to preserve what they could, squirrelling away artifacts across the country for safekeeping. But it has been estimated that about 75 per cent of the original collection has been destroyed or stolen and sold off to private collectors around the world.

The museum re-opened in 2004 but most of its collection is still missing.

"We have a lot of work to do," says curator Omar Khan Masoodi. "Our museum was looted and damaged and destroyed."

Some progress is being made.

More than a thousand works taken to the Afghanistan Museum in Exile in Switzerland during the Taliban years have now been returned. Thousands of other pieces have been recovered, and museum staff are busy trying to restore damaged works.

The museum itself still needs much work but with the help of UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, and various foreign governments and museums, "the work is going well," Masoodi says.

Six thousand visitors have come through the doors already this year.

"It's important for us to preserve our ancient civilization, not only for our younger generation, but for the whole world," Masoodi says.

(Courtesy: The Canadian Press)