Activities update

Another sunny day here, I'm looking out the window of the Institute at the old city walls high up on the mountain. I've been putting plans together the past couple of days to explore beyond Kabul, both for work with Trust in Education and for my own research here. Things have been very busy with Trust in Education in the past few weeks as we've been putting our new office together across town in Carte Char. It's been labor-intensive, given that we've really been putting it together from the ground up, but gratifying. Here are some pictures of it coming together, it's really more like a big house than a typical city office: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157605560494633/

I feel like I've really been able to dig into the role of project manager here, juggling a bunch of different priorities in a totally new environment. Because it's such a small organization, there's a lot more I'm able to get my hands into, covering all aspects of an up-and-coming outfit like this. Things like carrying out the huge and varied range of programs we've got here (women's empowerment and education, improved irrigation systems for farmers, access to computer classes for kids and young adults), handling teacher salaries, and mediating disputes between co-workers--including occasional disputes between myself and these co-workers. Exhausting as it can be, it's real on-the-ground leadership training, and maybe even diplomacy training. At the end of the day, these aspects have been just as much a part of the thrill of being here as just simply being here, in such an interesting place, after five years of not having been abroad. I feel like the more experience like this that I can squeeze out of these ten weeks, the more rewarding this all is.

Now I'm ready to turn a corner and get into the field more. Plans are coming together today for a big trip to Char Asiab, the region just south of Kabul city where Trust in Education does most of its work. We'll finally be going in a few days, to meet teachers, community leaders, and see the lay-out of the place where Trust in Education has been doing some really substantial rural development for the past four years. It's a trip that takes a considerable amount of coordination, given that security there is generally not what it is around Kabul. So we're going as a good-sized group, and one of my co-workers is actually from there, which helps a lot. I'll also probably be wearing the shalwer kameez, that long robe-shirt I was sporting in the hiking pictures. I may not be mistaken for Hamid Karzai in this thing, but it helps in terms of blending in and paying respect. And hey, I've actually been told by actual Afghans that I could pass for being one of their own; a couple of Afghans even told me they were surprised when they heard me speak English. Awesome. Now if only my beard would fill out like it's supposed to, I could really be incognito.

Besides this, plans are coming together for research trips to Bamiyan and Panjshir, two of the most beautiful (and secure) areas in all of Afghanistan. At this point, these are the two areas I plan to focus on as case-studies for the work of NATO's Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Panjshir's PRT is run by the Americans, while Bamiyan's is run by the New Zealanders; a big part of the study is a comparison of their different methods. Panjshir is a two-three hour drive from here, and is famous as the cradle of Ahmad Shah Massoud's fierce resistance against both the Soviets and the Taliban. Massoud is to Afghanistan what Che Guevara is to Latin America: an ever-present symbol of resistance, more powerful in death than he was alive. I recommend a trip down Wikipedia Lane in honor of this guy, he's got a great story.

And I just found out yesterday that I can get a free flight out to Bamiyan though USAID, probably later this week. This really helps, because Bamiyan would be a long journey by car otherwise. Bamiyan is where Laura Bush visited the remains of the towering Buddha statues before the Paris donors' conference a couple weeks ago, the Buddhas that were ruthlessly blown-up by the Taliban in March 2001. There was a documentary made about this a couple years ago, check this out of you're curious: http://www.giant-buddhas.com/en/synopsis/

Time to start the day. More pictures to come soon.

City Wall Hike

A few days ago I went on a great hike up to the top of one of the highest mountains within the city limits. The mountain's called Sher Darwaza, the ridge goes roughly east-west along the southern edge of downtown. I had been excited to check it out not only for the views from the top, but also because the ridge has the only remaining parts of the original city walls. These city walls, more than ten to fifteen feet thick in parts, were built during at least the 5th century, and maybe even before. I enlisted a couple of friends here to come with me, and also got the director of the institute, Omar, to come along as our all-knowing guide. Omar has an encyclopedic knowledge of Kabul city history, having lived here all his life. He's told stories about having watched events like the 1996 invasion of the city by the Taliban, as well as the first bombings of Operation Enduring Freedom (in October-November 2001), from the very mountain top we were about to hike.

Here's the link to some more pictures of it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157605780035380/

We started at an old historical site called the Bala Hissar, where the British built a humongous fort called the Citadel back in the mid-1800s. The British had three wars with the Afghans during their colonial times, when the Brits tried to expand west and north from India, and there is strong pride around here for having beaten them back soundly each time. There's even greater pride for having 'defeated' the Soviets by 1988, after almost ten years of occupation. While there's no such thing as an ethnically 'Afghan' person, it's military successes like these that have tied the Afghan people together in a collective sense of nationhood. And while some of that feeling broke down during the ethnically-charged civil war of the early 90s, which deeply ingrained the faultlines between Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and the many other ethnicities that make up the Afghan people, I think a big part of the resiliency I see around the city today has to do with people here having gotten back a real sense of identity as an Afghan nation. It seems to tie into a psychological strength that comes from everybody going through all the hard times together, as life slowly rebuilds here.

Back to the hike. We walked from the Citadel up to the ridge where the wall begins, passing the ubiquitous mud-brick mountain homes that crawl up the hillsides. We passed little children carrying huge sacks of grain, lavishly decorated cemeteries, and shepherds guiding their sheep along the road. As we left the residential areas and walked towards the top of the mountain, Omar pointed out two important landmarks: red flags and red-painted rocks. Wherever one of these are, that's where there are mines, as determined by a couple of NGOs here who specialize in this stuff. We saw a few of these going up the trail, way off to the sides, but we saw many more white-painted rocks--where mines have been decommissioned and/or removed. Either way, best not to trail-blaze around here.

We got to the start of the massively thick wall, and walked along its side as we made our way to the peak of Sher Darwaza. The view from the top was just as amazing as I had hoped: the entire city was laid out almost 360 degrees around us, and the view was crystal clear and smog-free because we'd gone early in the morning. Omar pointed out landmark after landmark, many of which (like the presidential palace) we didn't recognize; given the security situation here, there's high walls and razor wire all around almost every major landmark as one drives around town, making it impossible to see on the ground what building is actually behind these walls. The most interesting part for me came as Omar pointed out the divisions between city sections that had existed during the height of the civil war here. The entire city had been cut up like a pie between Ahmad Shah Massoud's Tajik militias, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Pashtuns militias, and Rashid Dostom's Uzbek militias as they each maneuvered their forces, switched alliances, and collectively shelled the city and its people into a pulp.

Seeing the geographical divisions of the city during the civil war made me realize how fresh the wounds are around here. For instance, last summer me and my brother Todd visited about ten American Civil War sites around the mid-Atlantic while I was interning at the State Department. We'd hear tour guides talk about military strategy, battle tactics, and the personalities of different generals, all of it kind of sepia-toned because our Civil War took place almost 150 years ago. For Afghanistan, their Civil War was fifteen years ago. Wow. All of these battles that decimated Kabul just happened, and they just happened in the context of other devastating wars over the past generation. It's perspective like this that also made me realize how the processes of rebuilding and forgiveness are really going to take time, as they did for the United States.

About the recent headlines, and bigger themes

I thought I'd say a bit about the recent "activity" down near Kandahar, that you may have been reading about in the last week or so. I'm taking specifically about the jailbreak that happened last Friday outside of the Kandahar, and the fighting that went on yesterday and today a little northwest of that city. About a thousand prisoners escaped from a prison after a couple of trucks blew up outside the jail's walls, creating huge exit holes; it's estimated about 400 of these were Taliban members. Yesterday and today, NATO and Afghan forces attacked and pushed back a moderate-sized group of Taliban members (some of whom had been in prison until just recently...) in a strategic area to the north of Kandahar called Arghandab. As it stands now, its seems that the Taliban group that was there before has been dispersed, and the military action seems to have largely ended for now.

I'll say first of all that Kandahar is 300 miles from Kabul; I'm nowhere near the action, and I don't plan to be going down there anytime soon. Southern Afghanistan is really like a different country compared to the northern half. Many areas of the south and south-east are considered the historical heartlands of the Taliban, mixed within larger Pashtun village areas; this makes it hard for Taliban centers to be located and rooted out. Most of the headlines we see on the homefront about violence in Afghanistan come from the southern region, where NATO and Afghan Army forces are trying to "hold" areas where Taliban attacks pop up like Bop-a-Moles from time to time.

Meanwhile, so many population centers in the northern half of the country--Herat, Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif--are progressing with real reconstruction efforts over the past six years. Afghans in these areas haven't had this much (relative) stability since the 1970s, and many new development projects have been apparent as I've travelled around Kabul in the past three weeks. This is the kind of progress that is unflashy, gradual, and doesn't grab attention like news of sporadic bombings. Not that it's not important to report about bombings and unfortunate things like that, but, y'know what I mean.

I do have to say that the jailbreak was really unfortunate, though. The way the Taliban seems to operate, they go for big symbolic attacks to undermine support not only among locals, but also among people in NATO-supporting countries like ours. To make people in Europe, Canada and the US say, "Oh man, we're really losing ground over there, we should probably just get out." No doubt there are persistent insurgency problems in the south, given it's wide rural landscapes (the Taliban thrive in more conservative, rural, undeveloped areas). And the jailbreak last week was shrewdly planned, and it feels like a big step back when you let 400 of these guys back into the surrounding villages. But it seems like the military operation against the Taliban today and yesterday went as well as it could have, even though it's just one step in a long-term process. What's also encouraging is that the Afghan National Army--who had a big hand in today's battles--is widely praised as a ready-to-go, tenacious fighting force (the National Police are generally a different matter, though). Afghanistan just needs a lot more of these ANA guys than the 70,000-80,000 they have at this point, and they seem to be building up their numbers steadily.

Besides that, there's all these interesting geo-strategic angles going on too, many of them having to do with the continued influence of a certain neighboring country to the right of here (...). And the biggest theme of all is that of the "Great Game," as it's been called: that Afghanistan is smack-dab in the middle of Asia, and for thousands of years it's been this critical keystone for anybody trying to gain or maintain influence in Asia. The most unfortunate thing, of course, is that it's always been the Afghan people who've had to bear the brunt of this geo-strategic "game" being played by competing powers across the centuries. It just makes the collective pride and resilience I've seen around here that much more fascinating; that people here continue to rebuild and go on with their lives through all the waves of upheaval. I mean, what else can they--or anyone in this kind of situation--really do otherwise?

Find yourself a city

I've been thinking about what makes a city--comparing a place like Kabul to a place like New York, where I spent the fall. On the surface these two places seem almost totally opposite. One's glossed over with wealth and flashy style, the other seems to have just enough worn infrastructure to keep all its parts moving together. But despite all the apparent differences, both are teeming with life and kinetic energy. Walking around Kabul is a dizzying experience, with the constant barrage of activity swarming around you. Fast-moving cars barely missing each other, people desperately trying to get your attention to buy calling cards or ask for money, street cooks flipping kebab on a stick in the hot afternoon sun. After all the strife this city has seen--70% of it destroyed by constant rocket bombardments during the civil war in the '90s--the unrelenting pace of city life finds a way here, through the sheer will of the people.

It's the same force, the same pace, as one can find in New York; it's just that in New York, the cogs and gears of collective activity fit together more smoothly. I remember walking from the subway station at 42nd and 3rd to my office near the UN thinking, How do 8 million people live on top of each other so harmoniously? The simple answer, I think, is that the people want it to work. They have come there from around the country to take part in the wide array of activities and options that only a city of that size can provide. No matter how many people are crammed onto Manhattan island, New York is a marvel in the amazing amount of things that happen there everyday.

In Kabul, it's the same principle of its inhabitants willing, driving everything to work together. As in New York, thousands of Afghans have converged here from around the country to find opportunities that only the capital city has to offer. And it's even more remarkable here, given the layers of obstacles and challenges that present themselves to the average city-dweller, like power-outtages and the general security problems. I went for a hike to the top of a hill near my area a couple days ago, and looked out across the entire city. I've heard over 3 million people live here, but that it really only has the infrastructure to support 300,000 (by who's standards?). Regardless, life rapidly goes on as people move amongst each other, going where they need to go, in a kind of chaotic harmony.

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In other news, I can't believe I found the NBA Finals in Kabul, Afghanistan. For as excited as I've been to dive into a new culture here, to really immerse myself in a new and different place, my heart sank when I found out a week or so ago that the Lakers and the Celtics have made it to the Finals and I wouldn't get to watch it. Having been in Boston this past half-year, I'll admit I jumped on the Celtics bandwagon--they're a lot of fun to watch. Paul Pierce is ferocious, Ray Allen's a silent killer, and Kevin Garnett is literally insane. Like, clinically. He's also an amazing ballplayer.

Anyway, I was at a bar called La Cantina Monday night. Brace yourself, Kabul has a Mexican restaurant. It's owned by Australians, and it's one of a small handful of well-hidden bars around town. Another place is a replicated British pub (with Guinness on tap, I've heard), another is a swankier French joint called L'Atmosphere--affectionately referred to as 'Latmo'--and another is straight-up BBQ called "Red Hot Sizzlin." But so far I've only been to the Cantina. I walked in to meet a few other 'ex-pats' (people out of their native country) for drinks, and found Game 2 of the Finals on satellite ESPN. I parked my backside on a stool with a couple of other Americans and started watching, with a cold beer in hand, taking it all in with a big smile. Sometimes, the little things from home are so much sweeter abroad.

Then I looked around and saw there were only ex-pats at this bar. It was kind of like reverse culture shock, after feeling like the only Westerner when I've been out shopping and cruising around Kabul with Maiwand and Basir (the two Trust in Education employees). I turned to a guy next to me and asked, "Why are there no Afghans in here?" "Cuz they're not allowed," he says. Turns out, it's illegal for Afghans to be in bars in their own country. Now, I had known that alcohol is forbidden for Muslims--but to make it a national law? In asking further, I found out there's actually a Sin & Vice squad that patrols the city enforcing this rule. It's one of those stark cultural differences that kinda hit me all of a sudden. And for a former bartender who appreciates a fine ale from time to time, it's one of the harder ones to imagine, but I understand where I am.

Another interesting cultural difference: the Aussies in the bar couldn't stand how long a basketball game gets in the final two minutes, when the coaches call endless time-outs to stop the clock, huddle up with their teams and plan for some miracle shot. The Aussies were just dying for these guys to finish so they could go back to watching the Euro Cup. It is kind of interesting how little soccer has caught on in the States, given how fanatical the rest of the world is about it. At one point Monday night, there was 33 seconds left on the clock, and Doc Rivers called for yet another time-out--maybe the third in the space of a theoretical minute on the game clock. "Crickey," groans one Aussie in a pained tone. "It'll be another 45 minutes now."

Conversations with John Dixon

Today has been so windy in Kabul. Usually, the days are calm and invariably sunny until around 4 in the afternoon, when the wind starts blowing steadily for the next few hours. For the almost two weeks I've been here, this pattern has been pretty constant. But this afternoon is especially windy, so much so that a lot of the blue sky above the city has turned off-white from all the dust that's being thrown around.

The director of the research institute I'm staying at left on Monday, and it's a little sad. He's a former Foreign Service officer named John Dixon, an older guy (maybe 75), and a real gentleman. Now, besides me, there's a new younger director (who works here but lives across town), two Afghans who do administrative stuff during the day (Ro and Zafar), and an Afghan family who live on the property and do many things like guard, cook, garden, fix things, generally help out the hapless American (that'd be me). They are the sweetest people, and it's a real incentive to learn Dari because I want to talk even basically with them. There is also a part-time driver here named Wali, he takes me around town when he's here and not busy. If he is busy, I take a cab. Tough life, I know.

Anyway, for my first week and a half here in Kabul, me and John would have these great breakfasts out on the back patio. Hazargol (the father of the Afghan family) would put breakfast out on the patio table a little before 7am, and we would meet at 7 and eat and talk for an hour or so each day. The guy has a real wealth and depth of knowledge, he's been here in this area since the 70s. So he's been through all the upheavals--the Soviets, the mujahedeen, the Taliban, the US with the international community, and now the fledgling Afghan government. That's a lot of management turnover in less than 25 years!

We'd talk about a huge range of things--the many layers of Afghan history, the personalities of assorted Afghan warlords (some are now neighbors of mine), cultural differences between Afghanistan and the US, world politics, US politics. I find I usually have a lot to talk about with Foreign Service officers, often we'll have similar perspectives on the world. And power politics is always interesting, especially when you're talking about Afghanistan--it's been pretty dynamic here through the ages, and especially recently. With the calm morning weather, lots of tea, and fresh Afghan bread and mangos, these conversations were part of an almost meditative start to each day. Kind of like my own personal 'Tuesdays with Morrie.' And even when 7am started to feel like it came earlier and earlier, as I've gotten adjusted to the time here, they were always worth getting up for.

Pictures from 6/5/08

Pictures from shopping around town and the Afghan Contemporary Art Prize event.
For more, check out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157605473906714/

Ultimate Frisbee and the Art Prize

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.