After a slow morning of lounging around the house we decided to take Nancy Dupree’s tour nr III as presented on the website of the old Kabul International School which turns out to be a treasure trove of information about Kabul, the old Kabul that is. Many sights listed in the five tours are either not accessible to us, destroyed or barricaded, and the entire tour is premised on traffic moving easily, no longer true, although much better than usually on this 3rd day of Eid.

Rabiallah was our driver and Abibullah our guard. The driver spoke English quite well, having worked for the UN mission in Afghanistan, the one that is now under siege; he even worked with the election committee for the previous elections. A good thing he no longer does as this is rather a dangerous form of employment these days.

The guard spoke no English. Thus, armed with two dictionaries we boarded our vehicle and set out for Bagh-i-Bala, a lovely small palace, white washed with a turquoise cupola, perched just below the Intercontinental hotel with views of the city. Steve had told us that in the 70s this was a popular restaurant destination. He did not join us, preferring to keep the lovely memories from then and instead anxious to get to Chicken Street after a forced absence of several days. The shop owners no doubt called him to say that they were open again.

Despite some attempts by the UN and USAID to fix up the grounds of Bagh-e-Bala it looks a bit neglected. You cannot take the car in and so we went on foot with Abibullah by our side, he practicing his English and we our Dari. It is a nice walk and clearly still a destination for some Kabulis, especially young boys and teenagers. A group of small boys followed us, giggling and wanting to practice their English on us, and we happily obliged. Older young men were sitting on carpeted platforms smoking the shisha, drinking tea and eating some form of dal, inviting us to join us.

It was all very peaceful and lovely with plastic chairs tucked away between the now tired looking roses in small seating areas for eating and drinking tea. Small stall sprinkled across the grounds sold cigarettes, rented out shishas and provided tea and snacks. Unfortunately the small palace itself was out of bounds, its gates padlocked. We were told for the holiday only. Such a shame, it would be the only time that many people could visit it.

After our walk we went to the Herat restaurant in Shar-e-Naw, famous for its shish kebab, cooked on long narrow braziers on the street right outside the entrance to the restaurant. We had kebabs, local yoghurt and limp fries followed by green tea sweetened by the toffees that were served along with the tea.

In the middle of our meal several SUVs stopped outside the restaurant and unloaded their passengers: about 35 warriors, some with Kalashnikovs, following their commander for an Eid meal in the same restaurant. I asked the driver whether we should be concerned about the enemies of these people but he told us not to worry and so we continued our meal while watching the exotic collection of men, quietly eating their holiday meal. The men were also stealthily watching us; we were each curiosities to each other.

On our way home we stocked up on fake beer and Italian coffee at one of the international supermarkets, to arrive at a house filled with diesel fumes. I remained nauseous for some time while we opened all the windows to let the cold air in and the fumes out. I am beginning to wonder whether we should switch to wood burning stoves.

Il Rotary Club Roma Palatino con il patrocinio del Presidente della Camera dei Deputati, della Regione Lazio, del Parco Regionale Bracciano-Martignano e del Comune di Trevignano Romano ha organizza il 16° Presepe Subacqueo del Lago di Bracciano, presso il molo di Trevignano Romano alla presenza di un folto gruppo di cittadini.

La manifestazione si è svolta con una Processione Subacquea per deporre da parte di appartenenti del Corpo del Nucleo Carabinieri Subacquei e del Corpo Subacqueo dei Vigili del Fuoco di una Corona in memoria dei Parà caduti a Kabul nelle acque del Lago dove da sedici anni si organizza il presente il Presepe.

Il Presidente della Camera dei deputati, On. Gianfranco Fini, ha disposto l’invio di una medaglia d’argento dono di rappresentanza per la manifestazione “Presepe subacqueo del Lago di Bracciano”.

da sinistra: Piergiorgio Benvenuti (Coordinatore FareAnbiente Lazio) - Antonio Rossi (Responsabile di Fare Ambiente di Bracciano) - Fabio Ficosecco (Responsabile FareAmbiente Giovani Lazio) - Francesco Alaimo (Responsabile Fare Ambiente del XIII' Municipio)

Alla manifestazione hanno partecipato, oltre agli Organizzatori, fra le altre Associazioni, il Movimento Ecologista Europeo FAREAMBIENTE e la Fondazione Italiana per la Legalità e lo Sviluppo “Generale I. Mlillo” con una delegazione guidata dall’On. Piergiorgio Benvenuti, dal Responsabile di Fare Ambiente di Bracciano, Antonio Rossi, dal Responsabile Fare Ambiente Giovani Lazio, Fabio Ficosecco e dal Responsabile Fare Ambiente del XIII’ Municipio, Francesco Alaimo.

Okcana from Uzbekistan cut our hair this afternoon, in the kitchen; first Axel, then me. She has the pale look of a Caucasian. Her parents left Moscow and Belorus to settle in Samarkand. She doesn’t speak Uzbek nor Dari because everyone spoke Russian under the USSR regime.

She came to Afghanistan with her teenage son and worked in a beauty salon. Her son is about to graduate; after that she doesn’t know what will happen. She lives just down the street. We are both pleased with the result. Axel no longer looks like a conductor with wisps of hair flying loose around his face and I have a new look.

For dinner we met the very young and pregnant Bureau Chief for Afghanistan and Pakistan of Time magazine. She and her Afghan American husband are flying to Massachusetts in two months to settle in Rockport and, when the time comes, deliver their first born at the Beverly Birth Center, how wonderfully strange is that? They were pleased to have a firsthand account of what it is like to deliver there. Our memories are still very vivid even though it was 24 years ago.

We met in the Korean restaurant, which was one of the few open on this second day of Eid. It is unmarked from the street and so you have to know; even if you pass the first barricade and heavy outdoor fence you couldn’t tell you were about to get into a restaurant/guesthouse. For a brief and unsettling moment I felt like we were in a trap of the kind that James Bond always gets into, a kind of airlocked sluice with nothing but high and unscalable walls. And then one of the walls opened and we walked into the smells of Korea.

Over a delicious dinner we discussed child bearing, working in male environments, working moms, and life in Kabul that is not dictated by security rules. Our new found friends have a car each, drive around, and mix with the local population in ways we can only dream of.

It’s part of the schizophrenia of living in this place: one the one hand life is very ordinary, with shopping, cooking, working, getting pregnant, antenatal visits, driving around town to get from A to B, while on the other hand we are constantly reminded of the ugliness of war and fighting, by blast walls, men in uniform with guns and armored cars/humvees in camouflage, tons of them.

As if to illustrate this juxtaposition of the ordinary and the dangerous, just this morning a family feud got out of hand near our house as we later found out. Our colleagues reported small arms fire. That’s the problem here – Thanksgiving dinners in the US may also bring out family feuds but at least people usually don’t pull out their guns. The fight here ended badly for one person at least who lost his life (I assume his), and possibly more if the police gets the perpetrators.

We ended the day with a video call to our friends in Charlottesville in Virginia who showed us a chocolate Charlotte, leaving us wishing for a more advanced kind of technology that allows virtual licking of mixing bowls. We showed off our Chinese-Pakistani furniture and the fancy and hideous lamps as well as our new haircuts while peaking into our friends kitchen for other things to drool over. One day I am sure we can beam stuff up and partake in faraway Thanksgiving meals and beverages. For now this remains in the realm of fantasy.

An explosion in a central Kabul neighbourhood on Saturday was caused by a “sound bomb” and appeared to have caused no casualties, an official said.

The blast happened around 10:20 am (0550 GMT) and was immediately followed by the sound of sirens as security forces rushed to the scene.

An official with the interior ministry told AFP that a “sound bomb” had been placed in a garbage skip on a main thoroughfare through the wealthy Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood.

“There are no casualties at all,” spokesman Zamarai Bashary said.

So-called “sound bombs” are aimed at causing noise and confusion, rather than death and injury.

Afghanistan is marking the Eid-al-Adha Muslim festival of sacrifice with a four-day holiday until Tuesday, with most businesses closed and very little traffic on the capital’s usually gridlocked roads.

Afghan police stand guard at a site of a blast in the center of Kabul, on November 28.

Wazir Akbar Khan is the location of the American and British embassies, as well as the residences of their employees. Many foreign firms also have offices in the nighbourhood, which is close to Kabul’s airport.

It is also near the headquarters of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the scene of a massive suicide car bomb attack in mid-August that killed at least three people and wounded dozens more.

The area, like the rest of the Afghan capital, was quiet as most people celebrate the holiday at home with family.

An AFP employee on the site said the explosive device had been put in a large rubbish skip on the roadside, and the blast had resulted in garbage being spread across a wide area.

Kabul, the most heavily-fortified part of war-torn Afghanistan, has been attacked by Taliban-linked insurgents at least five times in recent months with around 100 people killed and 300 injured.

Most have been suicide car bomb attacks that the Taliban have claimed responsibility for.

Most recently, on November 13, a suicide car bomber struck near a US military base in Kabul, Camp Phoenix. No one was killed.

Kabul has been on heightened alert since October 28 when Taliban-linked insurgents stormed a guesthouse occupied by staff of the United Nations, most of whom were in the Afghan capital for work associated with the recent presidential election.

The tragedy at the guesthouse resulted in the deaths of at least five UN workers and two Afghans, and saw the United Nations withdraw up to 600 staff from Afghanistan, many of them to be permanently relocated elsewhere.

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A year has gone by and we have come to the time that keeps many of us awake even now; the time when Mumbai, India’s cosmopolitan city, was turned into a jungle and the residents of the city were hunted out on streets, restaurants and five-star hotels.

It was naked terror that came via the sea and then walked in without the need for any disguise. The man who became the face of the attacks looked ecstatic in a particular picture and later it became known that the crew was on certain drugs that kept them numb, focused and inhuman. With a global audience glued to the TV screens the terrorists achieved what they had come for.

I’ve seen footage of the Scotland Yard in London and that of the New York Police Department (NYPD) on BBC and CNN and I’ve seen what the CCTV at CST showed when the two terrorists were there; if you’ve seen that you understand the point. The action of the local forces in the first few hours was that of total incompetence and it was this period that made all the difference in what could have been a few lives lost and the threat eliminated in a matter of hours to the fact that the trained terrorists got their hideouts with civilian lives as hostages around them and the situation continuing for what seemed like endless 62 hours of agony. It has now been over 365 days of anger, helplessness and embarrassment.

Hardly anything went right that day or the one prior to that and every machinery responsible to ensure the safety of the citizens and that of the country itself from a terror attack failed. The intelligence community defended itself by saying that the intelligence was provided and the enforcing agencies came out saying that it was not actionable. Three of Bombay’s senior police officers, who could have provided leadership, died around Cama Hospital within the first few hours of the attack when they came in the line of fire of two terrorists who were hiding and had a position of advantage.

William Bratton, the recently retired well-known chief of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) who has headed NYPD before once said ‘all terrorism is local because ultimately, when it happens, it’s local. It’s on your shores. The police are the first line of deterrence rather than the last. It’s the police who know the neighbourhoods and there has to be some level of effective local intelligence.’ Bratton is a legend and there are enough stories on the Internet that show how crime rates have dropped significantly wherever he has provided leadership.

IBN Live carried a story last year after speaking to US security expert Alex Alexiev who put the blame squarely on India’s poor grasp of terror dynamics and lack of coordination between various agencies. Thankfully the US security expert just used the word poor grasp and did not actually say something downright demeaning because we should have been better prepared living near what is called by the world as the ‘epicentre of terrorism.’ And we’ve had a history of terror acts pointing towards the ISI with the one prior to Mumbai being that on the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

The TV journalists did not know that the live footage was being used by the terrorist handlers but what about people from operations and from intelligence who are trained and were also listening to the intercepts? They should have barricaded the place and briefed the media and better still used it to their advantage. If intelligence and operations people knew that the handlers were passing information of our channels to their men inside the three places, then how much intelligence did they need to figure out that media would have been a perfect vehicle to foil their operations; and I am quite certain the journalists present would have been extremely happy to help. Instead people not authorised to speak were briefing the media about things not needed and we ended up showing the NSG getting into Nariman House and the handler shouting kill everybody, their forces are coming.

Our machinery is not working despite dozens of terror incidents because corruption and incompetence run riot in our systems and that is what needs to be rooted out. I read that the external intelligence agency R&AW has been destroyed by years of abuse by senior officials in a column and that the morale is at an all time low.

The media is not immune from incompetence and bureaucracy. Just sample this incident: A good exclusive story landed in my lap and I called two senior people in a newspaper and one of them said great story and asked me to go ahead and the other wrote in an e-mail copied to me and sent to the concerned section that for such strong stories we should be flexible. The section head was incompetence personified and kept coming back with idiotic questions and, finally, I had no choice but to answer them; now if the person had any shame and the bare minimum professional ethics I would have received some reply. Instead the newspaper pulled its shutters down.

Neither the two senior people who were copied nor the incompetent section reporter have got back to me for about six months now. And before my answer I was getting a mail about the gaps everyday. And I don’t think these three people would even be aware that what they did was wrong because power is not answerable to anyone; in fact I apologised to some of them thinking that perhaps there is something living inside them and they would realise. No accountability, no competence and complete shamelessness; and then these people would go out and ask for accountability from other institutions. What a charade of lies and hypocrisy.

I saw an interview of GE’s Jack Welch where he spoke about four kinds of employees and what the company should do with them. 1. High on skills and high on values: you value them and try to keep them. 2. Low on skills and low on values: you fire them. 3. Low on skills but high on values: you give them opportunities to learn. 4. High on skills and low on values: this is the dangerous category and companies often persist a bit longer with them to their own detriment.

Our culture needs to realise that competence matters at all levels and that we need to value it in every field and then perhaps the right people will find their rightful place and the intelligence agencies will function; may be even the right politicians and the police officers would come to the fore and you’ll also have journalists who can edit or write a copy.

Otherwise five years will pass and we would still be sitting ducks.

We can no longer see clearly through our windows because winter plastic has been nailed to all of them, except the windows that we want to open – to let fresh air in and diesel fumes out. We can see whether it is nice or not but shapes are a little blurred.

We think it was Eid today but we are still not sure. Many shops were closed but then again, it is Friday, and they would have been anyways. We did go for our customary walk around the school tracks and then stopped for French pastries, for with the coffee, with lunch and after dinner. I spent about half of a low ranking government employee’s monthly salary on pastries. The only redeeming factor about this luxury purchase is that the money goes to educating Hazara kids, aside from tasting really good.

We had Douglas and Paul over for dinner. Paul just returned from France and brought a bottle of wine along, something we think normal back in Manchester, but here such a gesture is an indescribable treat.

Paul has been for ever in Afghanistan and knows about the various tribes, rulers, allegiances and what not; information that is hard to absorb for us newcomers. Everyone is embedded in these old tribal relationships which define one’s alliances, enemies, trustworthiness, etc. I listen to all this while trying to understand opinions I have heard about this one and that one in this new perspective. It is not entirely new because I have been reading about all this, but it is a tangle of names and geographies that are hard to retain.

We sat around the table for hours, making a good dent into the food-for-five-days that was prepared by our cook, as well as the French pastries and of course finishing the wine. For once we did not all sit in our respective rooms watching our computer screens, or the 300 channels of bad TV.

From Wikipedia.

Kabul resta una delle città più minate del mondo.

Over past two years, Pakistanis and entire world has been fed by Pakistani’s secular media that the military operations in northern tribal belt of Pakistan are against CIA and RAW supported elements who have nothing to do with Mujahideen in Afghanistan and Jihad therein.

Pakistani Mujahideen, from time to time, have been denying such allegations as “Lies” and “Defamatory Propaganda” to create support for military’s operations which broadly got planned and executed under American pressure and threats to stop millions of Dollars in aid.

Few days ago, a stunning report was published by Pakistani’s widely circulated newspaper which read:

“Pakistani and Afghan jehadi groups have decided to start “battle of evil and just”, as the Afghan fighters assured Pakistani militants of complete support in their fight against Pak army in South Waziristan.

According to sources, it was decided in a meeting of the commanders of al-Qaeda, Hakmatyar group, Afghan Taliban and Pakistani jehadi organisations, which was held in Afghanistan.

The meeting decided that the Pakistan security forces, which have been helping the American forces, would also be targeted and the Afghan fighters, who have been fighting in Afghanistan for the last eight years, for the first time decided to send manpower to Waziristan in support of Pakistan militants.”

To read full report, click here.

Pakistani soldiers [excluding sold-out high rank officers and their supporters] are our brothers, we believe that they have been misled by a systematic propaganda to convince them that they are NOT fighting America’s war. Being Muslims, we must encourage them to learn truth, refer to basics of Islam and request them to stop following un-Islamic orders of their corrupt officers. Be it Muslims of Pakistani tribes or young soldiers of Pakistan, both are assets of Pakistani nation which Kuffar are destroying through time test formula of “divide and rule”. It is only few corrupt elements in Army who deserve death of Ghaddar.

Over past two years, Pakistanis and entire world has been fed by Pakistani’s secular media that the military operations in northern tribal belt of Pakistan are against CIA and RAW supported elements who have nothing to do with Mujahideen in Afghanistan and Jihad therein.

Pakistani Mujahideen, from time to time, have been denying such allegations as “Lies” and “Defamatory Propaganda” to create support for military’s operations which broadly got planned and executed under American pressure and threats to stop millions of Dollars in aid.

Few days ago, a stunning report was published by Pakistani’s widely circulated newspaper which read:

“Pakistani and Afghan jehadi groups have decided to start “battle of evil and just”, as the Afghan fighters assured Pakistani militants of complete support in their fight against Pak army in South Waziristan.

According to sources, it was decided in a meeting of the commanders of al-Qaeda, Hakmatyar group, Afghan Taliban and Pakistani jehadi organisations, which was held in Afghanistan.

The meeting decided that the Pakistan security forces, which have been helping the American forces, would also be targeted and the Afghan fighters, who have been fighting in Afghanistan for the last eight years, for the first time decided to send manpower to Waziristan in support of Pakistan militants.”

To read full report, click here.

Pakistani soldiers [excluding sold-out high rank officers and their supporters] are our brothers, we believe that they have been misled by a systematic propaganda to convince them that they are NOT fighting America’s war. Being Muslims, we must encourage them to learn truth, refer to basics of Islam and request them to stop following un-Islamic orders of their corrupt officers. Be it Muslims of Pakistani tribes or young soldiers of Pakistan, both are assets of Pakistani nation which Kuffar are destroying through time test formula of “divide and rule”. It is only few corrupt elements in Army who deserve death of Ghaddar.

We celebrated Thanksgiving a little different than we usually do.There was no turkey on our Afghan (Chinese/Pakistani) table this year. The Dari word for turkey is fil (elephant) murkh (chicken). We didn’t even have chicken. Axel stayed home all day while I had lunch with a British-born Australian woman who works in the general directorate for human resources, the poor step child general directorate in the ministry of health.

Her Afghan colleagues have no heat and work under dismal circumstances. After the salaries are paid there is no more money for heat, stationary, and other basic supplies. She goes to work with coat and gloves and never takes them off during the entire winter work days. She’s used to it now but visitors are not and shiver in their suits. She agrees with the concept that there is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.

With two of my colleagues we picked her up in a part of town that is called Parwan and drove to the place where most of the restaurants are. We selected a heavily barricaded Lebanese restaurant for lunch. I ordered too much food: a large selection of warm and cold dishes that are called ‘mezze’ in Lebanon. Only the arak was missing. I had wine instead, my first glass of wine since the we opened the bottle that Axel brought from Dubai, a few weeks ago.

The restaurant rewards its customers with extra dishes, ‘on the house’ as the waiter kept saying each time he put another dish on the table that I did not recollect ordering. At the end of the meal a large chunk of chocolate cake is also offered, once again on the house. The result was that 6 hours later I was still not hungry and since there was no turkey anyways, I skipped dinner.

The best part of Thanksgiving was talking with Tessa first, and then later Sita and Jim via Skype to wish them happy Thanksgiving and look into their living room. Even though it slows down the transmission rate, it is still wonderful to be able to see each other through our computer screens.

We have cable TV now and can access the BBC, Al Jazeera English, Bloomberg, EuroNews, Deutsche Welle and a Flemish Channel in addition to about 200 other channels of junk from all over Europe, the Arab world, Central Asian, Korea, Iran and Russia. We can also access a few hallelujah church channels from the Bible belt in the US and talk shows in any language you can imagine.

Not having a remote we have to sit in front of the box and click our way up or down to get to the desired news channels. Along the way we pass by endless Italian quizzes and movies, Islamic sites that have the camera focused on Mecca and, a few numbers higher or lower, titillating still and moving images of thinly clad ladies enticing the viewer to call a number (for a fee of course). We get all this junk for free, imagine that, suffering through it just to get the news. Until now we only got the local channels which are a bit limited aside from being in a language we can not yet follow.

Ach du Scheiße, dachte ich mir nur. Da lese ich, dass der Afghanistan Einsatz jetzt doch teurer werden soll, als früher mal versprochen. Meine aufkommende Panik legte sich allerdings schnell wieder. So kostet der deutsche Teil der ISAF Mission gerade mal schlappe 785 Millionen Öcken.

Das mag dem Durchschnittsbürger zwar wie eine gehörige Summe vorkommen, doch wer kleine Brötchen backt, sollte lieber die Finger aus der internationalen Politiktorte lassen. Dem Pöbel mag es teuer vorkommen, ja ja, aber eben drum WIRD das Fußvolk regiert und REGIERT nicht. An dieser Passivkonstruktion wird deutlich, wer das sagen hat im Land – und offen gestanden ist das auch gut so.

Während der Hartz-4 Empfänger noch ausrechnet, wie viele Flachbildfernseher er sich für das Geld leisten könnte, denken größere Geister in größeren Dimensionen. Bodenschätze, Großaufträge, Transitrouten. DARUM geht es bei Kriegen nämlich letztendlich – um Investitionen. Nun gut, die Afghanen haben zwar kaum Öl in ihrem Land, aber irgendwelche Rohstoffe wird man der kargen Erde schon entreißen können. Und wenn nicht, kann man die Afghanen immer noch für die europäische Kosmetikindustrie durch den Fleischwolf drehen und als Fettquelle nutzen. Allerdings sollte man wahrscheinlich erstmal ein paar McDonalds Filialen eröffnen, um die drahtigen Wüstenbewohner auf amerikanisches Niveau zu mästen.

Es beruhigt mich, dass zu den Lesern meines Blogs ausschließlich die gehobene Schicht, die Bildungselite Deutschlands, die Speerspitze des Finanzkapitals und der Hochadel gehören. Es tut wirklich gut, offen seine Meinung schreiben zu können.

U.S. flag with Afghan flag in background at Charkh DC.

It was another cool night sleeping in the tent, but knowing we were leaving, nobody really complained about the cold.  Instead, we were like a hive of bees packing up our gear, prepping the MRAPs, mounting the weapons, and getting everything ready for our return ride back to our camp.

Our escort showed up on time and we all lined up in convoy order.  I said goodbye to some new friends and wished them the best.  Our ANA soldiers accidentally left their radios powered on for the past few days, so we had no means to communicate, except for hand signals.   Even when the radios do work, they often ignore us and do what they want to.  Such was the case of taking a shortcut through a

Leaving Charkh DC

Taliban village when we departed the city.

We departed Charkh DC and drove down the main road.  We drove past the point where our other escort was attacked on our first day of arrival.  The insurgents frequently attack at the same point, because this methodology was effective against the Soviet Army, so they

Alas! Back on the hardball.

employ the same tactics against the coalition forces.  But today, nothing happened.

Dusty road leading back to FOB Altimar.

We turned off the hardball and drove down the dirt road leading to FOB Altimar.  The ANP were conducting random checks of vehicles at the

Metal cage surrounds the hull helping to deflect RPGs and other projectiles.

Dabari Bridge.  The big tires on the MRAPs created quite a dust storm, limiting our visibility.  On the way, we passed another convoy; they had the metal cages surrounding their hulls which help to deflect RPGs and other projectiles.

Our convoy made a short halt at FOB Altimar and we picked up our empty trailer.  Then we retraced our route back to FOB Maiwand to pick up a teammate.  This AF SSgt is almost done with his 6 month tour and will be flying back to the United States soon to be with his family and friends.  While there, we discussed some other business with the AF Captain who is the team chief there.

On the road back to the capital city, I observed a tractor that was stuck in the ditch.  This tractor looked identical to those that are donated by

Tractor stuck in ditch.

USAID to the farmers who raise alternative crops instead of a poppy.  A little bit farther down the highway some livestock crossed in front of our vehicle.  As the convoy commander, I radioed the team and cautioned them about the cattle.  But after a second look, these weren’t cattle.  My teammates think they were ugly oxen or perhaps even water

Those don't look like cattle to me.

buffaloes.  Perhaps one of my readers can educate me on what type of animal this is in the picture.

When we arrived on the outskirts of Kabul, the highway became extremely congested with traffic.  A lot of the traffic was big trucks overfilled with firewood.  This is a common sight now and tons of firewood is needed daily to fuel the

Firewood trucks funneling into capital city.

hundreds of thousands homes in the capital city.  Firewood is cheaper than propane and the citizens don’t have the money to convert their heating system over to propane or natural gas.  Instead they rely on firewood to heat their residences.  Unfortunately, this is having a devastating effect on the tiny forests that survive here.  Despite government attempts to save the trees, on a daily basis, 500-1000 trees are being cut illegally.  Due to corruption, enforcement officials are being paid to look the other way.

Thanks to our ANA brothers, they dismounted their vehicles and forced traffic to the side so we could squeeze our armored MRAPs past the congestion.  We arrived back at camp without incident.

Today felt festive, much like the last workday before Christmas. There is excitement as well as dread in the air, again, just like Christmas. For some Eid is too full of family obligations to be enjoyed. Several people are taking the days after Eid off on personal leave, to recover. What is the purpose of such holidays, really? To exhaust us and empty our pockets?

I picked Axel up for a shopping expedition while I went to see my PT at the military hospital, aka the 400-bed hospital. I no longer have to show my patient card, the guards know me. After the busy and well guarded gated entrance to the military hospital you enter an oasis of peace, a funny combination: peacefulness and the army/wounded soldiers. The grounds are well kept and you can tell that the water/pond arrangement was a nice idea, except there is no water and it looks more like an empty swimming pool now.

There is much marble used on the outside of the hospital. It looks expensive and reasonably well maintained, at least from the outside. The Kabul Orthopedic Organization is tucked away in a far corner, not quite as nice from the outside, but functional and simple inside.

The female treatment room was full today. One lady who had had a stroke on her left side, sat in a chair parked in front of a walker. She was assisted by her daughter who kept putting her paralyzed left hand on the walker but it kept falling down. The patient had had a stroke. She looked like she was in her 80s and her daughter about my age. As it turned out she was 66 and her daughter in her forties. The stroke came from hypertension, a common condition that is often not detected until it is too late and the cause of many deaths and disabilities. It is sad that the illness is so easily detected and can be treated for pennies a day.

Another woman, of unknown age (I stopped guessing) and rather obese, was being strapped into a contraption to immobilize her spine because of compression fractures that had happened some months ago. It was a more primitive arrangement of straps and hard plastic than Axel’s plastic corset but, if worn all the time, should work. The problem was that the woman was not wearing it because she couldn’t do housework with it. The PTs had asked her to come to the center and wear the brace while performing typical household tasks like folding blankets, cooking while squatting, etc. It was a clever move from the PT staff as she was cleaning the treatment room while they watched her.

A third woman, accompanied by her 21 year old daughter was working on strengthening her back muscles while rolling up and down a large yellow exercise ball. I could tell it was hard work and not something she’d be easily doing at home. While she was resting from her exercise with a frayed hotpad on her back she asked me how many children I had, the kind of basic chit-chat conversation I can now hold in Dari. She laughed when I said 2 daughters. ‘That’s all?’ she asked in disbelief. I understood her disbelief, as she had 14 and was only 44. That basically means she has been pregnant or nursing all of her adult life and, after her first menses, never menstruated again.

Everywhere I go now I look how people avoid the fumes from their stoves. The PTs had a good solution, they used plaster-casting tape to make the pipes tight and keep them immobilized. Another form of appropriate technology was the wheelchair, constructed from a plastic chair and a metal frame, two things that are easy to come by here, very clever.

I was once again greeted with three kisses by my physical therapist. She told me the swelling in my shoulder had gone down. She massaged the sore shoulder and then administered the gentle electric current to shock the muscles back into service.

After my session was over I visited the on-site nursery for the children of the female staffers where my PT was nursing her 2-month old. It was a brightly decorated room with baby crib bunk beds and a potbelly stove in the middle of the room. Two- and three-year olds toddled around the stove as if it was an innocent piece of furniture. It is hard to imagine such a setup in a workplace nursery back home.

Axel picked me up after an hour of shopping and we did some more. We stocked up for five days without a cook and being at home a lot. We can pretty much get anything we want here, including maple syrup and Girl Scout cookies (Thin Mints) from a very adventurous Girl Scout or Troop. I wonder how they got here. It certainly deserves a special badge.

Venditore di giocattoli, un venerdì a Kabul mr©09

Quando ho ricevuto questo invito dal governo afghano, nonostante si tratti di un’iniziativa di per sè lodevole, non sono riuscito a trattenere un sorriso “amaro” per la carica surreale che portava in sè.

Il primo dicembre, il GMIC (The Government Media Information Center) svolgerà un corso di una giornata per chi lavora in Afghanistan nel mondo dell’informazione ovvero “media personnel (reporters, cameramen/woman and field producers)”. Il corso è intitolato “Hostile Environment Awareness Training”.

The course will cover topics such as Protective Personal Equipment, Mine Awareness, Emergency Medical Treatment and Security Assessment. The training will be conducted by a international s professional security organization in a suitable location in Kabul. Il corso durerà dalle 8.30 alle 16.45 ed il pranzo verà offerto dall’organizzazione, gratuitamente come del resto l’inter iniziativa.

Nascere e crescere in Afghanistan è di per se un corso di sopravvivenza. A primavera gli ospedali sono pieni di bambini che, passato l’inverno, tornano fuori, all’aperto, a giocare e perdono una mano, un occhio, una gamba per colpa di una vecchia mina, oggetti con i quali si comincia da subito a fare i conti, spesso scambiati per giocattoli. Da trent’anni (che in Afghanistan sono due generazioni) gli afghani sono abituati a passeggiare in mezzo ai bombardamenti, agli attacchi con rpg, a maneggiare un Ak-47 e (aggiunta recente) a ritrovarsi vicino un’autobomba o un kamikaze, insomma a dover fare “Security Assessment”. In quanto al Emergency Medical Treatment beh quella è un’altra storia in una paese dove l’acqua potabile è un bene per pochi (non a caso si beve il tè, ovvero acqua bollita e sterilizzata) e la sanita nemmeno esiste. Non parliamo poi dei giornalisti afghani, ognuno di loro è un eroe per quanto si espone e per quanto rischia la vita, molto spesso a beneficio delle grandi testate internazionali i cui giornalisti occidentali (parlo da testimone oculare) è sempre più difficile trovare nelle strade delle città afghane, alle conferenze stampa di Kabul, insomma dove accadono i “fatti” mentre se ne stanno barricati nei loro compound.

Questo corso è una bella idea, peccato che sia così surreale per via di tutto quello che lo circonda. Surreale per surreale agli afghani sarebbe il caso di fare un corso di “vita felice” o di “come godersi la vita”, beh questi sono argomenti su cui di sicuro non sono preparati, per nulla.

Steve and I went to the Indian embassy for our multiple entry visas. Being able to escape to India on short notice is part of our security package. Since the last bombing the Indian officials are requiring foreigners who want a visa to show up in person. We used to send Khalid, the airport gopher for such things. It was people like him who had bad luck at the days that the bombs exploded.

We had to walk passed the barricaded entrance to the Indian embassy, along tall blast walls. Everyone around the entrance to the Indian embassy was very jittery, there was much gesturing and yelling. I don’t blame people for that. It remains a hot piece of property in this part of the world.

Although foreigner visa time is from 10:15 till 12:30 we still weren’t let in by 11:30, strung along by policemen who barked at us to stay away from the entrance. Steve discovered a handicraft store nearby and disappeared while Khalid and I waited in the cold drizzle until we gave up. We returned empty handed, that is, without the visa. We did fill our hands with freshly grilled kebabs from a street vendor and steaming naan straight from the tandoor. It was lunchtime and we wouldn’t be back in time for lunch at the office canteen. It is one of the many treats that makes up for the discomfort of living here (which isn’t all that uncomfortable).

The traffic is intense these days, much like the traffic around shopping malls in the US around Christmas time. Eid is in the air. You see people carrying boxes with cookies and sweets everywhere and the women are cooking up a storm, according to their husbands who are my colleagues. It is like a five day Thanksgiving holiday filled with visits and good food.

The beggars look more desperate than ever, especially now with the cold rain drizzle and the mud everywhere. The worst to watch are the shivering little girls with their outstretched hands. They look exactly like the poor matchstick girl in one of Grimm’s stories. I don’t think I will ever know how to deal with beggar women and children, especially in bad weather.

After a brief interlude at the office it was time to get back in the car and once again across town for our weekly meeting with USAID. I learned about millions of contraceptive pill cycles languishing in our store rooms that we cannot give away because of US government regulations that were created to prevent contraceptives to be forced upon hapless women. Yet many women and agencies here want them, the government is asking for them. The pills are expiring soon and so we are shipping them to Pakistan and Jordan where they want them; this is costly, cumbersome and slow; some pills may expire along the way while unwanted babies get born right here, one after another. Our US colleagues would be held personally liable if any hapless woman forced to contracept would initiate a lawsuit. Maybe I don’t get this, but it makes no sense.

On our way out of the US containers back into the cold I watched with pity the Afghan and Nepali soldiers hired to protect the US compound. My hour wait at the Indian embassy in the drizzle suddenly didn’t seem so bad anymore compared what these guys have to put up with, in full combat gear, for hours on end. The boredom would kill me before the cold.

After another hour and a half ride back to the office a few of us remained to interview an African candidate for a position on our team, by video conference, in Cambridge. It was an interesting conversation – I like these group interviews but with the nine and a half hours difference, it makes for a very long day, fourteen hours nonstop. This was going to be just a quick post before I tumble into bed.

Of all the factors on the table in the current Afghan strategic review, the War on Drugs and its unintended consequences should be front and center. Our 95-year effort to create a Drug Free America by enforcing world-wide prohibition has twisted our foreign policy out of shape all over the globe and the nightmare in Afghanistan is just the latest manifestation.

It seems to be an open secret that President Hamid Karzai’s brother is a player in the heroin trade, and the whole administration in Kabul is said to be riddled with corruption. Unfortunately, the replacement of Karzai, even if that proved possible, would not change the fundamental dynamic. Nearly a tenth of the population relies on the illegal opium industry for their daily bread. Corruption will be the norm as long as the American people are willing to invest limitless resources manning an arbitrary barricade between the sellers and buyers.

Unfortunately narco-corruption, like narcotics themselves, can penetrate any border and there is growing evidence that this cancer has metastasized into every nook and cranny of the known world. Consider, for example, this headline from London: “Corrupt officers exist throughout the UK police service.”

This jarring assessment of the once-pristine Royal Constabulary comes from Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service. According to a document leaked to the Daily Telegraph, the head of the agency warns that “corruption may have reached ‘Level 2′, the situation which occurs in some third world countries.”

The “situation” in the colonies, current and former, is undoubtedly worse. Here’s a two-week random pick from recent U.S. headlines: August 14, a Baton Rouge deputy sheriff is sentenced to 10 years for cocaine distribution. Six days later a Georgia cop goes down on the same charges. The following week a Memphis officer is busted for distributing crack and the next day a U.S. Customs agent in Newark is cuffed for running off with a hundred pounds of cocaine. The day after that a prison guard in Arkansas is nailed for delivering meth to the Pine Bluff maximum security wing, and the head of a Michigan narcotics unit pleads guilty to diverting drugs and cash.

This is a tiny sample of lawmen who were sloppy enough to get caught. But according to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition [LEAP], the virus is everywhere. LEAP co-founder Peter Christ, a retired Police Captain from suburban Buffalo, puts it this way: “You’ve been a police officer four or five years, you’ve seen the wasted energy spent on this drug war, and now you’re standing in a motel room and lying on the bed is a hundred thousand in cash that hasn’t been counted yet. And in your back pocket is a bill from the plumber you can’t pay. And it doesn’t make any difference anyway. So you take your first taste. And then you’re gone.”

In this war as in all wars it’s the foot soldiers who bite the dust. But focus for a second on the staggering amount of cash in play — more than $300 billion a year according to the United Nations — and we would have to be brain dead not to suspect that this corrosion reaches the upper echelons of all governments including our own. As presidents Hamid Karzai, Felipe Calderón, Álvaro Uribe, Michelle Bachelet, Rafael Correa, and others have discovered, with that kind of loot lying around you can’t trust anyone. What’s worse, the exposure to people who are getting fabulously wealthy by ignoring the law inspires a corrosive tolerance for criminality. In Ohio we just uncovered two juvenile court judges who were raking in thousands of dollars a head for every kid they sent to a private for-profit prison. This is a fire alarm sounding for the court system itself.

Even more ominous, the illegal drug trade turns out to be the ultimate crime university and a godsend for terrorists. It provides weapons, training and untraceable cash for operations, and essential technologies like border penetration and money laundering have become an art form in the hands of the drug lords. We have, in effect, created a global mechanism that is in the process of eating our civilization alive.

The drug warriors tell us we have to stay the course or drugs will destroy us but they don’t like to talk about the incalculable damage being done by blind adherence to a failed policy. While abuse of narcotics can be devastating, the tragedy of addiction actually affects only about one person in a hundred. There are humane answers to this problem that don’t require putting the future of the nation at stake. We cut tobacco addiction in half through education and never fired a shot.

International drug prohibition was begun by the United States and we can end it with a simple majority vote in Congress. As for the rest of the world, several of our allies are already ahead of us. Portugal, Holland and Switzerland are successfully experimenting with legalization and three former Latin American presidents are calling for an end to the drug war because the corruption and violence in their countries is spinning out of control.

The prohibitionists insist that legalization would only increase lawlessness, but all the evidence is on the other side of the scale. When we ended alcohol prohibition the U.S. murder rate was cut in half. Then we regulated booze, taxed it heavily, and the state got the money instead of the mob. The prison population shrank and the criminal justice system was freed from the daily grind of processing drunks and their enablers and the huge burden of enforcement was lifted from the taxpayers.

We could repeat that success with the stroke of a pen. And we could cut the funding for terrorists and simultaneously pull the rug out from under the drug lords. And in Afghanistan we would no longer have to explain to the family of the poppy farmer whose livelihood we just torched that we really meant well.

Back in May of 2008, I wrote about the danger of appeasement that the election of a liberal Democrat to the presidency posed.

The trend of American casualties had been increasing, without question, but we have NEVER seen the kind of DOUBLING of fatalities (we’re now at 293 American fatalities, versus 155 last year, with more than a month to go) that we are seeing now under Obama’s leadership.  That’s because the Taliban and the terrorists now know that we have a dithering, indecisive, vacillating and appeasing weakling in the White House whom they will be able to push around.

And apparently their piling on is paying off big as “the leader of the free world” cringes before them.

This story is only coming from a single source in Saudi Arabia, but, if true, it means we’re at Neville Chamberlain’s level of disgusting appeasement in exchange for a psuedo “peace in our time” all over again.

Afghan Source: The U.S. Has Offered the Taliban Control in Return for Quiet

An Afghan source in Kabul reports that U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry is holding secret talks with Taliban elements headed by the movement’s foreign minister, Ahmad Mutawakil, at a secret location in Kabul. According to the source, the U.S. has offered the Taliban control of the Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Kunar and Nuristan provinces in return for a halt to the Taliban missile attacks on U.S. bases.

Source: Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), November 22, 2009

Even going back to April of last year, the Democrat presidential debates displayed a frightening ignorance of history, which would invariably lead to appeasement and – following the pattern, more demanding and stubborn enemies who sensed our weakness -  if their policies were ever implemented:

As a student of history, I remember the abject failure of the Western allies to grasp the growing threat of their enemies throughout the 1930s. I remember the refusal of the liberal governments of the Allied powers to comprehend what are now known to have been fundamental realities of naked aggression and looming war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain abandoned his country’s commitment to Czechoslovakia with a promise from Hitler of peace. The liberal, “anti-war” Chamberlain returned home saying, “I believe it is peace in our time!” Chamberlain saw Britain’s policy as a willingness to compromise and a desire for peace. But Hitler saw only weakness, hesitation, and cowardice, and became emboldened for total war. Again and again, the West had had an opportunity to demonstrate its genuine resolve to Hitler, and again and again the West had failed to stand.

In our present day, the Democratic Party has demonstrated a shocking degree of treachery in regard to Iraq. It is their war as much as it is Republicans’ war – because it should be America’s war.

History repeats itself because we keep putting the same sort of moral cowards in power.

Note that I was referring to Iraq, rather than Afghanistan, in my above warning.  Why?  Because the Democrats were talking tough about Afghanistan, even as they talked about walking away from Iraq.  Who could have known that a Democrat would so violate his own promises and be so shockingly weak in a war that he himself said was a “must win”? I fully believed that Barack Obama would be a weakling and an appeaser in office; but I simply had no idea that he would be as pathetically weak as he has actually revealed himself to be.

Thankfully, George Bush’s surge strategy in Iraq worked – and worked so well that even Obama’s weakness hasn’t been able to turn the success in Iraq around.  Barack Obama opposed that strategy and said it would fail.  And when he was proven wrong, this weakling and coward merely deleted his wrong, deceitful, and malicious prediction from his web site.

Obama’s dithering (and that’s the term Pentagon officials used, rather than merely Dick Cheney, btw), have 1) emboldened the enemy, 2) undermined American troop morale, 3) undermined the confidence of the military that Barack Obama will remain true to his commitment, and 4) weakened the people of Afghanistan’s trust for us all at once.

The last is the worse: the months that Obama has spent cravenly dithering while the resurgent Taliban have spread their control has forced the Afghani people to begin to choose the Taliban – whom will stay the course – over a U.S. under Barack Obama which clearly won’t.  And that means we may have already lost.

And now this?

What do you expect from the president who sold out Poland to Russia on the 70th anniversary of weakling appeasers just like Obama selling out Poland to Russia?

On top of the defeat in Afghanistan, Obama faces a far more significant defeat in Iran.  Obama is desperate to talk; Iran is determined to build nuclear missiles.  Iran will get become a nuclear military power under Obama’s watch, because the only way to prevent them from becoming such a power is to be willing to go to war with them to stop them – and Iran knows that Obama will not take that step.

As the nightmare of a nuclear-armed Iran manifests itself in the form of increased terrorism, sky-high gas prices, and even nuclear war, just remember: we conservatives tried to warn you.

Update, November 23, 2009: Did I say that 293 U.S. soldiers have been killed so far this year?  Make that 297.  Meanwhile, the survivors are hunkering down and beginning to despair that they are in Afghanistan for no apparent reason while their commander-in-chief dithers around for three months more worried about his own political skin than about his soldiers.

Today I saw a 3 year old holding hands with a 4 year old crossing an immensely busy intersection, something like Central Square in Cambridge. I held my breath as I watched them duck traffic and run then this way then that. They made it across, as they probably do most of the time but I am sure some don’t. Knowing the state of the hospitals, I hate to think the drama that would follow such a mishap. If we were to witness something like that in the US the parents would be put in jail probably for negligence. Unfortunately, such a sight is not uncommon. It breaks my heart each time.

I have shiny new pipes connecting my old stove to the hole in the wall and the fumes have now become manageable. This will be it for the winter. Today was a dreary day, wet and with snow at higher altitudes. It will come down here soon as well, people predict. It will be nice at first as it will cover all the ugliness on the streets.

It took us over an hour to make it to the ministry to participate in the planning meeting for the important top level health retreat in February. Many donor reps were added to the group, which included now several expat women. It’s nice for a change to be in a meeting where I am not the only woman. The meeting was led by an Afghan woman and one other participated. It gives a sense of progress, although there is much work to do before women will have real power.

Rumors are still flying around about the new cabinet, and thus new minister of health. But the current one has a good track record and even returned from an international vaccination meeting in Hanoi with four awards for Afghanistan (out of five) – an impressive record about cold chain maintenance and vaccination progress. A photo op was organized this afternoon where awards are passed on to those who made it all possible, both donor and UN agencies and ministry staff. I am sure such things lift spirits amidst all the accusations of corruption.