I played ultimate frisbee today, which was so great. It's been kinda hard to go out and get exercise in the past week, I can't really just go out for a run around the neighborhood like I'm used to. But I met some people today who know how to go about it in a smart way. We met on a big field at a local high school and played for a couple hours, it felt really good to run around despite how hot it was today. It was a pretty interesting grab-bag of people from a bunch of NGOs (by the way, "Non-Governmental Organization") and the UN, most of them people around my age from the US and Europe who have been here a while. I think one person started it up over a year ago, and today there were forty people, so many that we had to split into two games. I met a lot of people who are doing similar stuff to what I'm here for, all with really interesting backstories about what brought them here.
I had met one of these frisbee players at an event early yesterday evening at a beautifully-restored event space in the middle of a huge park in the Old City area (I'll put up pictures of this place soon). An NGO called Turquoise Mountain was hosting an event celebrating the first-annual Afghan Contemporary Art Prize, for young Afghan artists all over the country. What a great idea, and a lot of the art was really surprising and revealing. There were traditional musicians playing, and a few government ministers attending too. The crowd was about half Afghans and half internationals, and there were a huge handful of young people from NGOs.
It was my first night out in Kabul like this, and the sun was going down over this space in the most amazing way. After a generous round of speeches, an eighteen-year-old Afghan girl got the prize for her work--an over-sized check for 100,000 afghanis (about 2,000 dollars). They called her name out as the winner, and everybody clapped loudly as she made her way up to the front. She stood nervously at the mic, and cried while making a short speech full of thank-yous and heartfelt appreciation. It felt great to be part of an event that counts as one of the many good works the international community can do here.
Friday, June 6, 2008
At the Embassy
I had a good talk with a guy working for Blackwater last night, a talk I've been meaning to have with one of those guys for a long time. We were at the US Embassy, a massively fortified compound not too far from the institute where I'm staying. I was invited there that evening by the regional security officer (RSO) at the Embassy--a guy who makes sure that US Government personnel at the Embassy rarely, if ever, leave the Embassy. During the day, I had gone to the Embassy for a security briefing with the RSO, and afterwards he was nice enough to show me around the place and introduce me to a bunch of people.
I'd like to think, at least, that it was one of the few times I've shown up to a place and everybody was definitely not glad to see me. (American citizens aren't really encouraged to be in Afghanistan right now.) But in a funny twist, the folks at the Embassy told me that they are aware there are many NGOs working here, and they really support NGO work being done in Afghanistan because it helps with the whole hearts-and-minds aspect. Anyway, as I left the Embassy, the RSO invited me to a marine's birthday party that night.
I showed up at the Embassy around 8, just as the party was getting going. I usually hate arriving early to parties, or to anything for that matter, but that's when my ride could drop me off and I wasn't about to walk to the Embassy at night from the institute. I walked into the Marine House after going through about five bunkered checkpoints all along the street outside and at the gates of the Embassy itself. I found a half-empty room of people, some of whom I'd met that day--foreign service officers, marines, and a few private security contractors. I started talking to a foreign service officer I'd met earlier, and he introduced me to one of the contractors, this guy working for Blackwater. He says, "This is Matt, he works for an NGO--one of the good ones." I thought to myself, what's a bad one?
While I've got some mixed feelings about our government outsourcing something like military security to a private company, I do think that guys like this are pretty important here, especially at a time when our administration has stretched our usual US Military personnel around the globe to such a drastic degree. We related at first about the Pacific Northwest (he's from north of Seattle), and then inevitably microbrews, and then our mutual love for the India Pale Ale. After establishing this unshakable connection, I decided to ask him about his job. (And by the way, the following is a pretty rough approximation of what was said.)
"So, what's the management structure like for your group?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like, do you have a manager here from Blackwater that evaluates or supervises you?"
"We work for the State Department, but mostly we work for ourselves. We're basically our own individual businesses, subcontracting our skills to the US Government. If they consider me an asset, they offer to keep me on."
"Does the State Department provide you with gear and weapons?"
"They offer some things, but I like to bring my own, it's better."
"Were you a marine before you joined?"
"No, I was in the navy for a couple years, then a cop for twelve years."
"So how long have you worked for Blackwater?"
"I've been here for three contracts...so, three years."
"What brings you back each year?"
(He rubs his fingers together in the international sign for, It pays a lot of money.)
"I don't love this country," he says, in a short, flat way. "I don't even agree with what's going on here."
"Um, what part don't you agree with?"
"Um, have you got two hours?"
He then went on (not for two hours, mercifully) to talk about how he felt it is impossible for the US to export Jeffersonian democracy. How it is impossible for any other country to replicate the developmental experience we as a nation, as a people have had over almost four centuries. The people here, he said, have no frame of reference for what we are trying to establish for/with them. What we can do, he basically said, is good works in the meantime, and who knows what'll happen in the long term. At the end of the day, obviously, this was just one man's opinion.
I agree with him on the first part, though I think I'm more optimistic about the long term, as long as a wide range of nations as well as the US (the governments and their people) are committed to helping over the long term. Whether militarily or not, that commitment has to be there for this to work out. And in the meantime, he's right that there is a lot of great work being done by the international community, together with Afghans at all levels. But I feel like I'm more certain that this work that can lead to a more stable and thriving Afghan society.
I'd like to think, at least, that it was one of the few times I've shown up to a place and everybody was definitely not glad to see me. (American citizens aren't really encouraged to be in Afghanistan right now.) But in a funny twist, the folks at the Embassy told me that they are aware there are many NGOs working here, and they really support NGO work being done in Afghanistan because it helps with the whole hearts-and-minds aspect. Anyway, as I left the Embassy, the RSO invited me to a marine's birthday party that night.
I showed up at the Embassy around 8, just as the party was getting going. I usually hate arriving early to parties, or to anything for that matter, but that's when my ride could drop me off and I wasn't about to walk to the Embassy at night from the institute. I walked into the Marine House after going through about five bunkered checkpoints all along the street outside and at the gates of the Embassy itself. I found a half-empty room of people, some of whom I'd met that day--foreign service officers, marines, and a few private security contractors. I started talking to a foreign service officer I'd met earlier, and he introduced me to one of the contractors, this guy working for Blackwater. He says, "This is Matt, he works for an NGO--one of the good ones." I thought to myself, what's a bad one?
While I've got some mixed feelings about our government outsourcing something like military security to a private company, I do think that guys like this are pretty important here, especially at a time when our administration has stretched our usual US Military personnel around the globe to such a drastic degree. We related at first about the Pacific Northwest (he's from north of Seattle), and then inevitably microbrews, and then our mutual love for the India Pale Ale. After establishing this unshakable connection, I decided to ask him about his job. (And by the way, the following is a pretty rough approximation of what was said.)
"So, what's the management structure like for your group?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like, do you have a manager here from Blackwater that evaluates or supervises you?"
"We work for the State Department, but mostly we work for ourselves. We're basically our own individual businesses, subcontracting our skills to the US Government. If they consider me an asset, they offer to keep me on."
"Does the State Department provide you with gear and weapons?"
"They offer some things, but I like to bring my own, it's better."
"Were you a marine before you joined?"
"No, I was in the navy for a couple years, then a cop for twelve years."
"So how long have you worked for Blackwater?"
"I've been here for three contracts...so, three years."
"What brings you back each year?"
(He rubs his fingers together in the international sign for, It pays a lot of money.)
"I don't love this country," he says, in a short, flat way. "I don't even agree with what's going on here."
"Um, what part don't you agree with?"
"Um, have you got two hours?"
He then went on (not for two hours, mercifully) to talk about how he felt it is impossible for the US to export Jeffersonian democracy. How it is impossible for any other country to replicate the developmental experience we as a nation, as a people have had over almost four centuries. The people here, he said, have no frame of reference for what we are trying to establish for/with them. What we can do, he basically said, is good works in the meantime, and who knows what'll happen in the long term. At the end of the day, obviously, this was just one man's opinion.
I agree with him on the first part, though I think I'm more optimistic about the long term, as long as a wide range of nations as well as the US (the governments and their people) are committed to helping over the long term. Whether militarily or not, that commitment has to be there for this to work out. And in the meantime, he's right that there is a lot of great work being done by the international community, together with Afghans at all levels. But I feel like I'm more certain that this work that can lead to a more stable and thriving Afghan society.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Pictures from the first few days
Here are some shots from the first few days. For the whole set, check out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157605413130455/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157605413130455/
Sunday, June 1, 2008
First post
I got here two days ago, about 9am Friday morning. I knew from the plane, even before landing, that I was in a totally different place. All around the outskirts of town I could see thousands of mud-brick houses. These houses stretch precariously up the mountainside from the busy centers of the city, in a sort of reverse of the usual American formula: here, the poorest houses are nearest the top--lacking any basic services--instead of the richest.
After my plane landed, I was picked up at the airport by an employee of the organization I'm working for here, named Maiwand. Maiwand is Afghan, half Pashtun and half Tajik--the two largest ethnic groups in the country. We drove to the place I'm staying for now, called the American Institute for Afghan Research, located in the relatively safe area of Wazir Akbar Khan. It's a guesthouse funded by the State Department and about 25 American universities, for people doing research work like myself. I'm the only one staying here right now, and I don't mind having the place to myself. Three meals a day, a driver at my disposal, and it's got a nice patio and backyard as well as great security.
Speaking of security, there's a lot of it around here. Guys in uniform with AK-47 rifles line the street I'm staying on; they're paid to protect our place as well as a few other guest houses on this street. These machine-gun-toting security guys, both from the National Police force as well as private contractors, seem pretty standard all around the city. There are bunkered checkpoints on some streets, occasional military helicopters above the city, and sometimes you see groups of military vehicles rumbling down the street towards the airport. But people here seem to sort of tune it all out and go about their daily lives--shopping, walking to school, talking and laughing with friends. I guess after thirty years of the unrelenting waves of conflict this country has seen, the way things are in the city right now seem relatively calm.
Besides the security aspect, the weather and environment remind me a lot of Cairo, Egypt and Phoenix, Arizona. Phoenix for the dry hills, dusty high-desert terrain and the fact that the weather never dips below 80 degrees. But it doesn't get much above 80 degrees, at least not in early summer, and it's been pleasant and sunny both days. Also like Phoenix, the traffic here is pretty bad all over, and the air quality is maybe more like downtown LA--not so great. Kabul's like Cairo (the only other big city in an Islamic country I've been to) in the huge beautiful mosques that dot the city landscape, and the serene calls to prayer you hear five times a day all over the city. But even Cairo doesn't match the extreme poverty I've seen in Kabul over the last two days. For understandable reasons, Afghanistan is the fifth country from the bottom on the UN's human development index.
Yesterday and today, Maiwand and I have been driving all over the city looking for furnishings for the new Trust in Education office in an area of town called Karte Char. Driving here is a bracing experience, definitely an aggressive contact sport with no rules. Everywhere on buildings and posters are large pictures of President Hamid Karzai, who doesn't seem to garner a great deal of respect among a few Afghans I talk to. But there are also huge pictures of the mujahedeen fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud around town--he is held up as the virtual patron saint of Afghanistan. Mixed in with all the cars jockeying for position are many beggars, calling-card salesmen (usually kids), and donkeys pulling carts full of scrap metal and rugs.
Two memorable moments from yesterday; the first, lunch at Maiwand's house. We sat around drinking incredible amounts of tea and talked about the furnishings we want for the office. After drawing up the list, we talked about how he had gone with his family to Pakistan during the Soviet occupation, and had learned to be a computer programmer there. He returned to Afghanistan after 9-11 with his father, who did not want to go anywhere else, despite opportunities to go to Canada, the US or Australia like his brothers and sisters did. My favorite part of our lunch was when I got a chance to ask him about kite running: some of the intricacies of the sport I didn't understand, strategies for winning, things like that. I thought to myself, here I am, in Afghanistan, talking to an Afghan about kite running. Is this for real?
The other moment, not as happy but somehow hilarious. Maiwand and I were (illegally, apparently) parked in front of a shop buying furniture. An Afghan cop came around and started yelling at Maiwand about his parking job. Maiwand waved him off, and we went back to negotiating with the shopkeeper. Then the same Afghan cop came around two minutes later, screamed something in Dari, and stabbed our right back tire three times furiously with a phillips-head screw driver. Maiwand bolts out of the shop, gets in the cops face and starts shouting, but there's not a lot we can do...there's no repercussions here for clearly unbalanced cops like that. By the time we fixed the tire across the street and parked the car elsewhere, the shopkeeper had gone home for the day. Awesome. I just kinda laughed thinking about what would happen if one of those parking cops, who putter around Walnut Creek in their little three-wheeled cars, got out and started violently slashing a tire on some monster SUV parked in front of a Starbucks.
After my plane landed, I was picked up at the airport by an employee of the organization I'm working for here, named Maiwand. Maiwand is Afghan, half Pashtun and half Tajik--the two largest ethnic groups in the country. We drove to the place I'm staying for now, called the American Institute for Afghan Research, located in the relatively safe area of Wazir Akbar Khan. It's a guesthouse funded by the State Department and about 25 American universities, for people doing research work like myself. I'm the only one staying here right now, and I don't mind having the place to myself. Three meals a day, a driver at my disposal, and it's got a nice patio and backyard as well as great security.
Speaking of security, there's a lot of it around here. Guys in uniform with AK-47 rifles line the street I'm staying on; they're paid to protect our place as well as a few other guest houses on this street. These machine-gun-toting security guys, both from the National Police force as well as private contractors, seem pretty standard all around the city. There are bunkered checkpoints on some streets, occasional military helicopters above the city, and sometimes you see groups of military vehicles rumbling down the street towards the airport. But people here seem to sort of tune it all out and go about their daily lives--shopping, walking to school, talking and laughing with friends. I guess after thirty years of the unrelenting waves of conflict this country has seen, the way things are in the city right now seem relatively calm.
Besides the security aspect, the weather and environment remind me a lot of Cairo, Egypt and Phoenix, Arizona. Phoenix for the dry hills, dusty high-desert terrain and the fact that the weather never dips below 80 degrees. But it doesn't get much above 80 degrees, at least not in early summer, and it's been pleasant and sunny both days. Also like Phoenix, the traffic here is pretty bad all over, and the air quality is maybe more like downtown LA--not so great. Kabul's like Cairo (the only other big city in an Islamic country I've been to) in the huge beautiful mosques that dot the city landscape, and the serene calls to prayer you hear five times a day all over the city. But even Cairo doesn't match the extreme poverty I've seen in Kabul over the last two days. For understandable reasons, Afghanistan is the fifth country from the bottom on the UN's human development index.
Yesterday and today, Maiwand and I have been driving all over the city looking for furnishings for the new Trust in Education office in an area of town called Karte Char. Driving here is a bracing experience, definitely an aggressive contact sport with no rules. Everywhere on buildings and posters are large pictures of President Hamid Karzai, who doesn't seem to garner a great deal of respect among a few Afghans I talk to. But there are also huge pictures of the mujahedeen fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud around town--he is held up as the virtual patron saint of Afghanistan. Mixed in with all the cars jockeying for position are many beggars, calling-card salesmen (usually kids), and donkeys pulling carts full of scrap metal and rugs.
Two memorable moments from yesterday; the first, lunch at Maiwand's house. We sat around drinking incredible amounts of tea and talked about the furnishings we want for the office. After drawing up the list, we talked about how he had gone with his family to Pakistan during the Soviet occupation, and had learned to be a computer programmer there. He returned to Afghanistan after 9-11 with his father, who did not want to go anywhere else, despite opportunities to go to Canada, the US or Australia like his brothers and sisters did. My favorite part of our lunch was when I got a chance to ask him about kite running: some of the intricacies of the sport I didn't understand, strategies for winning, things like that. I thought to myself, here I am, in Afghanistan, talking to an Afghan about kite running. Is this for real?
The other moment, not as happy but somehow hilarious. Maiwand and I were (illegally, apparently) parked in front of a shop buying furniture. An Afghan cop came around and started yelling at Maiwand about his parking job. Maiwand waved him off, and we went back to negotiating with the shopkeeper. Then the same Afghan cop came around two minutes later, screamed something in Dari, and stabbed our right back tire three times furiously with a phillips-head screw driver. Maiwand bolts out of the shop, gets in the cops face and starts shouting, but there's not a lot we can do...there's no repercussions here for clearly unbalanced cops like that. By the time we fixed the tire across the street and parked the car elsewhere, the shopkeeper had gone home for the day. Awesome. I just kinda laughed thinking about what would happen if one of those parking cops, who putter around Walnut Creek in their little three-wheeled cars, got out and started violently slashing a tire on some monster SUV parked in front of a Starbucks.
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