ABDUL Bari has been a postal clerk for 40 years in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, but he has just one problem.

There are no letters. "When I started as a clerk at the age of 22 in 1960, there were seven or eight post offices in the city," Bari said on Sunday. "In my sub-office we had three clerks, and we handled about 1 200 letters a day, plus parcels and telegrams."

It wasn't exactly hard work even then. Now they don't even have a post office.

Bari, a fellow clerk and their boss, postmaster Abdul Kadir, are all that is left of the city's Post Office staff - aside from three postmen to deliver the non-existent letters - and they have taken over what used to be a small shop on Kandahar's main street as their makeshift headquarters.

"It's possible to post letters overseas, and to receive mail from foreign countries - it's just that no-one ever does," Kadir says.

In theory at least, foreign post would be handled through Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, according to an agreement with the Pakistani postal authorities.

The absence of letters might also have something to do with the fact that after 24 years of conflict, 80 percent or more of Afghanistan's 20 million people are estimated by the United Nations to be illiterate. - Nampa-Reuters