Videos from Bamyan

The Valley of Bamyan


The Band-e Amir Lakes


Band-e Amir Lakes: 3 Lakes Connected

Hi again

I just realized it's been two weeks since I've written anything here, it's been action-packed. Since I last wrote, I've been working pretty non-stop on a bunch of projects for Trust in Education while in Kabul. Everything from teacher salaries to networking-type meetings (trying to get the TiE name out there) to internal personnel issues to agriculture to river damming. It's thrilling being in this position as project manager, despite the exhaustion sometimes and feeling like there's a hundred pots on the fire to tend to. I've never had such a range of responsibilities all at one time, and it all feels like absolute bonus: being able to learn so much about on-the-ground development work like this in a place that badly needs it.

I have only about two more weeks here, which is also kind of crazy given how invested I feel at this point. I plan to keep pushing through hard for that time, who knows when I'll ever have an opportunity like this again. It's also been fun meeting interesting ex-pats from around the world here. There's a tiny little social scene that I join once or twice a week in the evenings for ultimate frisbee, house parties, or beers and burgers at the few underground ex-pat restaurants around town. Interactions like these are a great relief after a hard day.

It's been really interesting to see from here how focused the American media has been on Afghanistan recently. It seems like Iraq has totally faded from the headlines, and it's all about Afghanistan now. "How to save Afghanistan" is the cover story for Time magazine, and inside (after a pretty good cover article by a guy who does a lot of cultural preservation around the country) McCain and Obama each give little blurbs about what they will each do to help in the effort here. And of course, Obama made his way here a few days ago, it seems like his current foreign-policy trip is all people are hearing about back home. From what I read, he said some pretty astute things, reflecting about the situation here in an interview, and then that big speech he made last week. I especially like the parts about (much) more non-military aid--that's the good long-term-remedy type thinking.

But I really have no idea how the international community and the Afghan government goes about "saving" this place, besides (generally) the right policies being in place for a long, long time. Patience is key; the problem will not be solved in even an eight-year administration of either McCain or Obama (or Nader...well, maybe Nader...) With all the turmoil over the past generation, everyone I talk to here is convinced it will be at least another generation or two before Afghans can resume the kind of relatively normalcy they had here in the "hey-days" of the 1960s and 70s, when the only insurgency concerns were tied to the rapid influx of good ol' American hippies. Man I wish I could have been here to see those times.

Both Obama and McCain talk about big surges of two-three brigades' worth of new troops here, though any injection of troops here has to be balanced so carefully with what we take out of Iraq. Iraq is not "solved" by any means, just because we're not hearing about it in the news as much (or at all). Both the Iraq and Afghan conflicts have the US Military stretched so far, I sincerely hope we can get more US (and other NATO countries') troops here soon. Though I've complained here before about how the media never seems focus on positive news here, there's no question that things are generally going downhill here security-wise. It's going to take a major correction of international policy to right the Afghan ship of state, given the way attacks are pouring in from the tribal lands in Pakistan. I can't believe the Pakistani government made a peace deal with these Taliban clowns up in the north of that country. Since they did so in April, attacks through the eastern border of Afghanistan have increased 40 percent. They thought the Taliban would compromise? Have you read their brochures? Compromise isn't really in the description.

Still, Kabul feels like a relative safe zone, far from the front. Except for the most random things like the Indian Embassy bombing a couple weeks ago, but things like that are so far and few between. This city is so fortified, a major Taliban offensive here isn't even possible. First of all, traffic here is so bad, their convoys would probably get hot and bored just waiting to get around to their targets. Second, the terrain of this city has always made it very hard to invade--it's totally surrounded by the jagged, towering mountains of the Hindu Kush. Third, the Taliban and al-Queda don't have armies, just little platoons of brain-washed individuals that carry out random attacks.

Besides being here working, I've been having a blast travelling all around the country the past couple weeks. That's another reason I haven't written--I've been trying to find a computer that can upload all my pictures of recent trips to Bamyan and Herat, because I've really wanted my pictures to tell the story as opposed to me just talking about these places. In case you're curious, I have yet to find that computer. (Except I have just given the picture files to a friend who has crazy good internet at her high-fallutin', high-budget NGO office. This is where NGO envy kicks in.)

The scenery in a place like Bamyan is indescribable, especially the Band-e Amir Lakes--the most beautiful sight I've seen in this entire country. I'll try to put up some little videos I took there up on this blog, and in a few days I'll put up the picture links to Flickr. We'll see how it works out. "Inshallah," as they say here--or in English, "If God wills it." It's a phrase that applies to a remarkably wide array of situations in Afghanistan, I've found.

Trips to Lalander and Tangi Saidan

Pictures from Lalander and Tangi Saidan

This last one is my favorite picture that I've taken here.

If you go to this set, you can see its companion shot, a more serious version. But I like this one better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157605965176007/

I took this shot last week during a trip to the Char Asiab region, about 5 miles southwest of Kabul city. Trust in Education has a few classes down in there for computer training, literacy and English, and I went down with a few co-workers to check out how things are going. It was great to get out of the city for a day, and really see how this organization carries out its work. Me, Basir, Maiwand and Asma (Maiwand's niece) left at around 6:30 in the morning, because the first class we visited goes from 7am to 9am.

This first class was a literacy class, taught by a truly dedicated lady named Farzana. Farzana has offered up her house as the classroom, as a safe alternative to being at Ministry of Education-sanctioned schools. It's an all-female class of about 30 students, though the students range in age from 8 to over 40. The younger girls come here because their parents won't let them go to the Ministry schools--I think because of tradition, mostly, in that women in Afghanistan don't seem to be allowed to leave the house much at all. (Roughly 90% of the people I see on the street here in Kabul are men, and that's in the capital metropolis. About half of the other 10% that are women are fully covered in the head-to-toe, powder-blue burqa. It's another striking contrast to Western society.) So, coming to a neighbor's house for a literacy course offers a reasonable compromise.

For the older women in the class, Trust in Education is providing them with their first chance to learn to read and write. Given the deep gender inequalities that have existed here, as well as the general historical turbulence in Afghanistan over the past generation, these ladies simply never learned these skills before. For this reason, they seem much hungrier than the younger girls to learn whatever they can. I'll never forget the intense looks in their eyes, dead-set on watching Farzana's mouth move as she taught them basic literacy. It was as if Farzana was finally unveiling some long-kept secret to these women. One of these ladies had lost both of her legs to a land mine years ago; she read us poem about how overjoyed she is that she is now able to take part in a class like this. To say I was floored doesn't really capture the feeling.

We then moved on to Tangi Saidan, a fairly large village further south out of town. The shops of south Kabul city started to peter out as we drove into the countryside, through bone-dry hills and lush green river valleys. We came to a girls' school after about a half hour, where we talked with the headmaster, a forward-thinking and considerate guy. All the girls at this school are fortunate to be coming of age after the fall of the Taliban government, which forbid females from being educated at all. We went into a few classrooms and asked what they're learning about; one was an art class, and they did a kind of free-draw session for us as we introduced ourselves and took pictures for the organization back home.

The malik of Tangi Saidan--like the chief of a tribe, or a local governor--came and met us as we measured out where the headmaster would like a wall around his girls' school (a $16,000 estimate, he explains... Hmmm, did we mention we're an NGO?). The malik took us to his farm, which was richly cultivated and a dramatic contrast to the brown rocky mountains that surround this valley. He showed us where he could use a new retaining wall, to protect his crops from mudslides and the overflowing of a nearby canal. After we discussed figures and measurements, he suddenly clambered up a tree and started kicking branches left and right. Below him, four of his (many) children held out a wide sheet to catch the berries he was shaking off these branches from above. We knew them as mulberries, but the locals called them "toot." He took us back to the main house on his grand estate, where we ate the berries and talked about life in the village. (This is where I got that picture of the grandfather and his grandkids...guys over 70 here get this amazing artistic license to dress like kings. This should be universal.)

The pace was so nice and slow out here, just 5 miles away from chaotic, bustling Kabul. The air was pristine, and we could hear the river rushing by as we walked from place to place. Just two days ago I got a chance to visit the village of Lalander, another place where our organization has programs, but much further out than Tangi Saidan. The landscape there was even more dramatic, with higher jagged peaks, and abundant vegetation along the rivers between them. Maiwand and I spent the whole day there, visiting classes in the morning and discussing river-related development projects with locals in the afternoon. Turns out they need a dam across their river to benefit the village and protect against floods. We told them to make us an estimate, and we'll look into it.

For pictures of just the Lalander trip, check out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157606075432965/

Also, Asma sent me this link to a great feature article on Kabul. It has some hard information on this place, and some great insight through pictures. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/weekinreview/06hicks.html?ex=1216008000&en=fbb058ee500f382b&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Kabul bombing earlier today

Hey, just wanted to let everyone know that I am alive and well. For those who haven't heard, there was a suicide car bombing outside of the Indian Embassy in downtown Kabul today that killed around 40 people. I was out of town at the time, in the small village of Lalander where Trust in Education does a lot of work. Given that Lalander is so far out of the city, I had no cell-phone reception all day and didn't hear about the bombing until about an hour ago, after I got back.

It's very shocking to hear about, it definitely affects any sense of being in a "bubble" here in Kabul, away from large acts of violence. I've been talking to many people here, ex-pats and Afghans, since returning from Lalander just a little while ago; sharing information is the best thing to do at this point I think. It's hard to know what to do besides this, given the random nature of this kind of violence. I know I will continue to be extremely cautious, as I've been when in any majorly-populated areas around town. And just yesterday I moved to an area of town that is farther away from the city center (I had actually been planning to do this for financial reasons), which may also be a good precaution. As I said, it's hard to know exactly how to respond to something like this. It's just incredibly tragic, for the civilians, shopkeepers and diplomatic officials there around the Indian Embassy today. Please keep them in your thoughts.

More city pictures

The gardener of the institute and his son


Trying kebab for the first time


The tomb of Timur Shah


Making a key the old-fashioned way


Here are some recent shots around the city, and here's the link for more.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157605772109508/

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.