Karzai at the opening of the Coca-Cola plant on Sunday. (Reuters)

Kabul, Sept. 10 (Reuters): 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 big 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, today.

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.

The plant, which Coca-Cola goes out of its way to emphasise will produce only non-alcoholic beverages, is franchised to one of the country’s richest men, Habib Gulzar, and will initially produce Coke, Fanta and Sprite and soon make bottled water.

During the Taliban’s five-year rule, only a pirated version of Coca-Cola was available in the country. “Afghanistan is a country promising a lot of growth opportunity for our company,” Coke’s Pakistan and Afghanistan manager, Rizwan Khan, said.

The ceremony began with the chanting of Qari Barakatullah Salim, Afghanistan’s most famous Quran reciter, who despite being blind has memorised the entire Islamic holy book. Karzai spoke only briefly, and waved off an offer of a glass of Fanta.