Making every drop count, Coke opens in Afghanistan

The blind cleric's haunting Arabic prayer chant echoed among the sterile plastic rows of Coke and Fanta, seeking Allah's blessing for the only major business to open in Afghanistan in more than a decade.

Coca-Cola, with its distinctive red-and-white logo, has come to Kabul in what is at once a sign of economic progress and a symbol of the failure of major businesses to open up in the five years since the fall of the hardline Islamist Taliban.

President Hamid Karzai opened the $25 million bottling plant in the capital's industrial complex of Bagrami, meaning sweet or fragrant, on Sunday.

Karzai's Western-backed government is desperate to kickstart an economy independent of the $3 billion-a-year illegal drugs trade, but has been unable to lure investors to one of the world's five poorest countries, where violence has hit a high since the 2001 war.