Eventually, they got hold of a rickety, old drill that three men would run during the hour a day the electricity was on. It took them two weeks to reach water - 60 feet down.

"Since then, they haven't done any more rebuilding on their home," said Noorzayee, 23, who heard from her Afghan cousins last week. "They can't spend what money they have on rebuilding because there is no sense of stability. They are afraid war is going to break out again."

While much of the world focuses on rebuilding Iraq, what Noorzayee saw of the 17- month-old effort to drag Afghanistan back from the edge of chaos convinced her that the job is moving at about the same pace and technological plane as her cousin's well proj ect.

The country's mounting need drove Noorzayee to work with other college students and Afghan activists to arrange a fund-raiser at the University of California, Irvine, for medicines needed in one of Kabul's shattered hospitals.

During the event Sunday, U.S. Rep. Chris Cox, R-Newport Beach, will detail a plan to build thousands of homes for displaced Afghans.

"There's no question that the people of Afghanistan took a terrible hit during the Cold War," Cox said Friday. "The heroism of the Afghan fighter was one of the causes of the collapse of the Soviet empire."

Legislators said U.S. aid programs are making progress on rebuilding bridges, roads and the national army, but broader reconstruction efforts face challenges:

Government ministers usually don't have telephones.

Surgeons strain beneath single light bulbs to see their patients' wounds.

Families make cloth doors for the collapsed buildings they're using as shelter.

Air quality is so bad that opposing soccer goalies can't see each other across a field.

Masum Azizi, an architect, returned home to Newport Beach in January after persuading Afghan President Hamid Karzai to provide 300 acres in Kabul to build the prototype of a project he believes could rehouse 16 million Afghans.

Cox said he was working to get the $8.5 million needed for Azizi's pilot project.

"We have got to help," said Azizi, 46. "If we don't, Afghanistan will again become a zone for terrorists to force their way in."

Friday, two U.S. soldiers were killed by suspected Taliban fighters along the country's border with Pakistan. Taliban remnants are believed to have linked forces with al-Qaida fugitives and others who have vowed to undermine the Karzai government.

Yet little seems to be getting done toward rebuilding a civil society to withstand such attacks, said Robin Pierson, 50, of Laguna Beach, who returned April 18 from a charitable mission to Afghanistan.

"Kabul is layer upon layer of destruction," Pierson said. "You can't figure out if it was from the Soviet bombing, the factional fighting or the U.S. bombing."

She said she watched each day as people picked through a garbage heap outside her hotel in search of food or something to burn in their fires.

The U.S. Agency for International Development's Web site reports that it has begun work to improve the lives of the Afghan people. Last year, the agency:

Supported the 2002 Back-to-School campaign by printing 15 million textbooks for 2.9 million students, 30 percent of whom were girls.

Trained 3,600 teachers.

Produced and distributed 30,000 teacher instructional kits.

Built or rebuilt 113 primary and secondary schools and teacher training institutes.

Even before Sept. 11, 2001, Afghanistan was among the world's poorest nations, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Since then, things have gotten worse.

More than 9 million Afghans urgently need food, shelter, clothing and health care, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs. Long term, they need roads, water, power, agriculture, elementary schools, restoration of the banking system, and basic civil government.

Experts tally the reconstruction bill at as much as $15 billion over the next decade - about the same amount the U.S. airline industry received after Sept. 11, 2001 - with at least $1.5 billion needed immediately.

Initial pledges from the international community totaled $4.5 billion, including $1.8 billion for the first year of reconstruction. At the end of that year, less than half of the promised funding had materialized, according to the Afghan Reconstruction and Development Center.

Laguna Niguel water engineer Hasan Nouri, one of the most vocal of the 30,000 Southern California Afghans, says he fears the nation will be forgotten again.

"It's not only frustrating, it's depressing," Nouri said. "It's the responsibility of the international community to heal the wounds of war."

He believes aid promised for Afghanistan has not materialized because it is not as politically potent as Iraq - it doesn't have oil or the strategic location that Iraq does.

U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said he doesn't believe the Bush administration will forget. He has called for a committee meeting on Afghanistan next month.

"We defeated the al-Qaida and the Taliban that supported them. Now we need to see that Afghanistan doesn't again become a terrorist den."

Greater progress on reconstruction is stymied, however, by lack of security in the nation, legislators said.