The US’s decision may be of debatable utility in turning Afghanistan into a peaceable country but it will be welcomed by the private-security sector whose opportunities had diminished with the falling military presence. “There might be a slight increase,” says Stephen Smith of Separ International, a Kabul-based risk-management consultancy. “But that will be less to do with the surge and more to do with the increased size of the Green Zone. That will mean more mentors and advisers, probably predominantly American.”

Smith says that private security in Afghanistan dropped off in 2011 as US troops withdrew and Afghanistan’s government began directing more of the work once done by foreign ngos to Afghans. Some Afghan security companies have been launched – among them Saladin, Burhan, Seddiqi and Kabora – although Smith notes they often hire foreigners in oversight roles.

There has been some fervid suggestion that the war could be privatised entirely, not least by self-interested Erik Prince, chairman of Frontier Services Group and founder of controversial contractor Blackwater, now known as Academi. This is likely to remain a temptation, especially for a US president who believes himself a businessman. “All over the world,” says Rebecca Zimmerman, a policy researcher at US think-tank Rand Corporation, “tolerance of casualties is dropping among the public – and contractor casualties don’t make the news.”

Joint US-Afghan plans to privatise Nato airports to boost the economy will likely be put on hold in the short-term. But if international donors continue to invest in training an aviation workforce, then Afghanistan will step closer to aviation self-sufficiency. It may, in the next decade, meet International Civil Aviation Organization standards, which would be a boon to the country’s economy.

Where once US forces and diplomats were fed with fruit and vegetables flown in from all over the region, in 2014 Anham – a supplier of meals to US mess halls in Afghanistan – started working with Afghan suppliers and farmers. The modest influx of US troops isn’t going to change livelihoods overnight but supply chains that promote higher-quality produce aid exports.

Corruption is endemic to Afghan logistics, which is a drain on the economy and scuppers supply routes for local security services. But the outlook is shifting as new routes open that divert trade from the overland route to Pakistan. Chabahar Port in Iran is being built by India, creating a corridor to Afghanistan, while the Afghan government is also examining overland routes to Kazakhstan.

Construction boomed during the invasion as Nato and US forces employed contractors to build bases. Facilities were mothballed at withdrawal but Khaled Monawar, an adviser to the Ghani administration’s finance ministry, says greater security with more US troops is giving the government cause to think bigger. “It’s about implementing big projects that have been on hold: railroads, energy projects and dams.”

One of the few positives to emerge from the war has been the creation of a homegrown media industry. From a handful of news outlets at the start of the invasion, and certainly little in the way of independent media, there are now hundreds of press titles, local television and radio stations.

Afghan news networks are now breaking stories themselves – according to Saad Mohseni, the Australian-Afghani founder of Moby Group, the country’s biggest media company – creating a way for the public to let off steam. “If you were to experience a thuggish police officer, the inclination in most other countries would be to ring the prosecutor or the government. But because of frustration with the state, here people tend to ring the media,” he says. “Right across the region Afghanistan stands out in terms of the stuff that we can cover, from the criticism of individuals to our corruption stories.”

The return of troops may give some assurance to consumers that the state isn’t going to collapse but smaller outfits need international support to survive in the absence of traditional advertising models. It remains to be seen what aid and soft-power package will follow in the wake of the US troop influx. It helped buoy the nascent industry: if the Ministry of Health wanted to communicate a vaccination campaign, for example, international aid money often went directly to media spend.

US senator Ben Cardin has called for a “diplomatic surge” in light of the redeploy, while Xenia Wickett of think-tank Chatham House and previously a foreign-affairs specialist in the US state department, says that a shift in funding from diplomacy to defence needs to be addressed. “It has meant that you’ve got a much more robust military doing jobs that would have been taken by diplomats.”

Afghan tradesmen – drivers, carpenters and electricians – found employment from coalition forces during the invasion and the withdrawal has hit average pockets hard. Zemarai makes a living driving 2,000 Afghanis a day from Kabul to Jalalabad. “In the end all we want is an end to the war,” he says. “Peace can only come if Trump does what Bush and Obama didn’t and puts pressure on Pakistan.”