Captain Cat's Diaries

The people in between

 

Collective high-level efforts and strategies to rebuild this broken country seem to be as scattered as the fat dust-filled drops of September rain, which the sky threw down last night and did a good job of almost drowning our mulberry trees. The night’s deluge left wailing roots to wallow helplessly in thick viscous pools of clay mud.

This Indian summer rain has brought with it a freshness and the roses in our garden glistened this morning, grubby petals washed clean in the downpour. For a brief moment, they were given a new lease of life under Kabul’s unforgiving dust skies.

Whilst we endlessly debate whether Karzai is friend or foe or fit to lead, and discuss the possibility of peace deals led by men who will probably never have to answer for their own crimes or for the lives they have destroyed; whilst we avidly read news articles in the half-belief that someone, somewhere must surely make a breakthrough about what must be done, the country’s quiet majority will continue to live with their ghosts, hopes for some kind of justice for past abuses vanquished. Dreams will bow their heads in silent resignation, the world will continue to turn.

Kabul’s traffic will continue to infuriate everyone, kites will be flown from rooftops and local imams will call the devoted to prayer and continue to offer divine guidance to hungry souls. We will buy autumn’s giant fire-coloured pomegranates, now jostling for space in the capital’s fruit stalls, to be snapped open with large knives and served red in blue-green ceramic bowls.

Whilst we continue to be consumed and overwhelmed by a country that is not our own, I wonder at the people in our lives each day, drivers, cooks and cleaners, the unspoken folk who make our days so much more comfortable, whilst their own families probably live in cramped houses on the fringes of town. These are the people who time and again make this ragged, shambolic place feel like home.

Here, thousands of miles from our real homes, hours can turn with alarming speed into days, weeks and finally years. Time with our own tribes is lost and this can carve a hole in the pit of your stomach. Daily interactions with people take on huge importance, perhaps as a result of a longing for human closeness.

Every day, a softly spoken young man in our office, whose name I don’t even know, discreetly feeds a scrawny calico cat, which hangs around by the rubbish bins beside our office dining room. He is the only person who does this and for some reason I find this gesture incredibly touching.

The office gardener, a tall thin man who wears a pakool, tends to the flowers and plants with such care and attention and spends hours pruning and watering. From an almost bare patch of land some months ago, he has gently nurtured this arid plot of land back to life and built the most beautiful empire of green, interspersed with dazzling patches of yellow, pink, orange and red flowers; a garden to rival Eden’s. (Kabul is full of secret gardens. Behind the high barbed walls of this city, there is sure to be a carefully tended yard).

A thimble-sized woman with long black braids, soft around the edges with a face round as an apple and skin soft as a peach, comes to our house each day to wash our clothes and clean our kitchen. She has a glass eye and there are wide gaps between her small front teeth, which look as though they have been filed down with an emery board. I don’t understand her Dari accent, and she talks too quickly for me to keep up. Yet for the miles between us and each other’s words that we don’t understand, she hugs me each morning before I leave the house. I love the sensation of wrapping my arms around this small round woman, gently squeezing her soft fat frame, and I feel loved.

Searching for Buddha on Orange Mountain

 
Children in Khost

I read a while ago that archeologists had found the remnants of a large 5^th century reclining Buddha on a hillside on the outskirts of Kabul. Pieces of Afghanistan’s treasure were slowly being uncovered by excavators so eager, they would come to a country that was still in the ravages of a war.

Soft ivory combs and heavy pendants encrusted with garnets and turquoise have been found in tombs dating back to the 1^st century.  Dragons carved from lapis lazuli have been dug up deep from within northern mines, fat incense-carrying gold birds and rusted daggers uncovered alongside them.

The veil of time is being lifted and dried mud removed from Persian, Scythian, Hellenistic and Chinese inspired riches from the Bronze Age to the Kushan Empire, revealing how a myriad of cultures have helped shape this country through the ages.

One hot day just before autumn, somewhere beyond the mountains, a blue faceless crowd assembles outside a house, clasping bouquets of fake sherbet-pink roses wrapped in plastic. A young man wearing dark shades drives past them on a red scooter and three young girls in rainbow headscarves make their way along the same street, laughing. The sound of their excited chatter runs up a crumbling wall and over the back of a miserable dog looking dispassionately through a pile of rubbish festering in the midday heat. Their laughter is carried down the road to where a man squats with his back to them, and on past a fruit stall on wheels, filled with small browning grapes. Then it evaporates.

Two streets away, the Jalaluddin Haqqani mosque sits basking like a lizard on a rock, its blue dome roof glinting in the sun.

Meanwhile indoors, fragments of lives are being shared over cups of tea, punctuated by loud slurping sounds, dark naswar-induced gobs hitting the bottom of a spittoon being passed around, and a languid bluebottle droning vacuously in the heat.

Some days ago, I set out to meet representatives of some of the major tribes in Khost (a province cradled in green, gently rocked by the cadence of crickets, and still defying the onset of autumn). I had the opportunity to chat to female school teachers and university students as well. Each has generously shared their time and stories.

I could tell you about the all-too familiar grievances, about foreign forces and night raids, and how people are adamant that security will not improve as long as corrupt government officials continue to exact bribes and people’s dignity at police check points or over tables in shabby provincial government offices.  About how insurgents menace people at dusk, threatening them for talking to the government and to the international military.

I could dwell on one man’s story in which his son was shot during a night raid and he and his other sons were beaten in front of their wives and children, about how their hands were bound and they were forced to walk barefoot all the way from Sabari district to the provincial centre, at which point they were handed over to the NDS and later to Bagram. About how his children still wake up screaming at night, haunted by memories from the blast that blew down their door on that cold night, and the nightmare that ensued. As he talked, he thumbed a string of well-worn prayer beads.

But you’ve heard it all before, it’s getting old; this record is well and truly broken. Sadly, those who could do something about this are not hearing these stories loudly enough, and don’t see that things might simply be getting worse because people feel powerless and are reeling from the abuse and humiliation at the hands of their captors (or liberators, it’s all the same).

Yet for all the scratches on this particular record, people are desperate to tell their stories. The stern unsmiling burly man sitting beside me this morning from Sabari, who purposefully sat on my side of the room to avoid having to make eye contact with a woman, softened after he’d told me what had happened and I expressed sympathy and said I was sorry about his son, and thanked me for listening.

It’s such a simple thing, to recognize when you’ve hurt someone and to say sorry, to publicly recognise that sometimes you end up arresting innocent people, wrongfully detaining them for months on end. Let people talk and grieve and recount their stories, let them feel they are being heard. These simple acts can’t bring people back or make up for destroyed families and homes; but I believe they are necessary steps and could have an immeasurable impact.

I read this recently, written shortly after the invasion of Iraq. I think it partly holds true here: “Entire tribes feel embarrassed that they supported the invasion, only to be left out in the cold by the coalition's myopic vision of how Iraq should be run. Never, ever underestimate a people's pride, no matter how broken they might be. It is very easy for Iraqis to hate Saddam and resent America for overstaying. Tap into people's dignity and they will do anything for you. Ignore it, and they won't lift a finger. Which is why, a Pakistani friend tells me, that what the U.S. needs most in Iraq is a strategy of "dehumiliation and re-dignification."  (Thomas Friedman, The Humiliation Factor, NY Times November 2003).

As I type, our little Soviet era helicopter is bumbling clumsily over clouds and rumpled beds of pale brown; these peaks are about to get a lot colder and will soon be covered in snow.

Instead, I want to tell you about some other interesting things I’ve heard this past week. For example, there are people wandering down echoing provincial government corridors with names that aren’t their own. Back during the Soviet-backed regimes, a certain number of children from each village or manteqa had to attend school. Certain more conservative, land-owning tribes were suspicious of this and did not want to expose their children to something they did not trust, which might get in the way of their Islamic instruction. So they asked people from poorer areas who did not own land, to instead send their children under false names to make up these quotas.  The Zadrans used to pay the Tanis and Zazis, for example,  to send their children to school under false, Zadran names. “I wish our fathers had realized the benefits of education”, a Mandozai elder tells me. “If I had got an education, I would be able to have a discussion with you in your own language”.

This also partly explains why certain districts were more pro-Khalq or pro-Parcham than others, which in turn explains why the Tani tribe in Khost, for example, hold more government positions today, and why other more conservative tribes feel marginalized.

The women I met told me that if the Taliban came back to power, they wouldn’t object to their daughters going to school. “Look at the former (mujaheddin) commanders now; before they opposed us going to school, but now they send their own daughters to the Shamshato camp schools set up by the ICRC. The Taliban might do the same and give some chances to women”. They might. They also might not.

I’m finishing this on a crisp evening in Gardez, in my old office. Beside me are the sweetest people in the world, my friends and former colleagues, who welcomed me back to the Southeast like a sister, and whose gentleness and humour I miss almost every day. It is soul-warming beyond words to know that tucked away in a little pocket of this isolated region, these kind people are here.

Exile and the Kingdom*

Girls from Surobi

 

Last week sometime shortly after dawn, I got into an average looking Corolla with a colleague and one of our office guards, left a still sleepy Kabul behind and drove eastwards.

 

Beyond the Jalalabad road, beyond the police check points at the edge of the city, we drove through hills that glowed orange with the rising sun and wound our way down a narrow gorge, past overturned rusted fuel tankers that hadn’t quite made it down in one piece, and old empty buses left for dead halfway down steep slopes. As we left the capital behind us, the air cleared and the sky turned a deep blue, against which mountain faces towered above us, like the resurrected souls of the dead.

 

It was around 6.30 am when we arrived in Surobi’s already lively bazaar. This is Kabul’s easternmost district, some parts of which are almost completely held by the Taliban. But in these remote parts, the distinction between Taliban and local residents becomes increasingly blurred, as many find sympathy for those they deem brave enough to continue the jihad against a foreign occupying force, whose troops are still referred to as kafirs (infidels).

 

My meeting that morning was with a former Hezb-I Islami commander, who had led hundreds of fighters in Hezbi’s struggle against rival factions and who, for a few years, joined ranks with the Taliban during the 1990s and commanded several hundred men. His father had led hundreds of fighters himself in this same district, in a bitter battle against the Russians during the 1980s. Both father and son were arrested shortly after the Taliban’s downfall in 2001 and sent to prison in Bagram and then to Guantanamo for several years (many from the area believe they were wrongfully detained, allegedly stitched up by rival commanders within Jamiat, who received a lot of US backing following 9/11).

 

After breakfast with our local host, the man who had set up the meeting, we drove out of ‘Sarobi City’ (as the orange banner at the entrance of the small district town centre boasts), narrowly avoiding some chickens and a small child lugging a large plastic container filled with water. On a street corner beside several well stocked fruit and vegetable stalls, a group of young dark faced policemen reclined on office chairs, enjoying the morning sun.

 

Some way out of Surobi, we drove across a narrow bridge not meant for cars, over a fast flowing sand coloured river. On the other side, past traditional village houses of mud and straw, fields of tomatoes and aubergines shimmered in the already fierce morning heat.

 

A group of surly looking young men greeted our car, and after it was established that we were who we said we were and that they were expecting us, we got out to walk the rest of the way to the Commander’s house, along narrow paths and more fields. I had been told that the Commander rarely grants meetings to foreigners; that he agreed to meet a woman was almost unheard of. Yet here I was, courtesy of my colleagues after weeks of skilful diplomatic wrangling, pulling my black headscarf tightly around my face.

 

We came to a compound and were led through a door in a high walled garden filled with roses of every colour imaginable, watched by a group of long bearded elders, also waiting to meet our host. We were told to wait in the visitors’ room on burgundy toshaks lining cool white walls and waited, sipping green tea.

 

The Commander walked in, a large burly man in his mid-forties with a long neatly clipped brown beard, wearing a pakool and shalwar kameez. Everyone stood up to greet him, as did I, though I didn’t make eye contact initially. For the first 20 minutes or so of our meeting we did not look directly at each other; instead we inspected each other carefully when the other was talking.

 

After a while, he relaxed. A plate of watermelon was brought in, some people left the room, and he opened up a little more. We talked about development opportunities in the district, about general insecurity and its causes, and about the behaviour of the international military forces, which has improved but you can’t undo past wrongs. He said the French forces in the area needed to carefully monitor who they awarded construction contracts to, and be extremely vigilant with regards to cross checking information prior to carrying out any operation. Nothing could be achieved, he added, with a corrupt government.

 

After some time, I hesitantly asked about his experiences in prison, afraid to pry. At this point, he became more animated. He said the 20 days or so he spent in Bagram prior to his five year sentence in Guantanamo were by far the worst; here he was treated like an animal and tortured. In Guantanamo, at least there were designated areas for prayer. I asked if this time spent in prison had ever been acknowledged or whether he had ever received any form of apology. He turned away and looked outside at the rose garden. He spent his life defending factories and roads and other important sources of income for his country from the ravages of war, he said; yet instead of being rewarded, the present government punished him. He said today was the first time anyone had come to him and asked about his experiences.

 

It struck me that a number of the people the Government is trying to reach out to in its reconciliation progamme, whether they are former factional commanders or Taliban fighters, must be suffering from some form of trauma. There are so many people out there who have known the humiliation of arrest at the hands of people who didn’t understand or respect their culture, whose dignity was ritually stripped from them through torture or any other means. In a country where honour is one of people’s most valued possessions, many are trying to live with memories of shame and mistreatment. A simple gesture by ISAF, by the Afghan Government, a genuine recognition of suffering and past injustices, an apology or two… I believe these could make the world of difference here.

 

After a couple of hours and in what was one of the most heart warming moments of the entire morning, the Commander asked if I would like to meet his father, who was next door. I was rather excited to meet a man who I knew to be hailed as a hero by many and who had led hundreds if not thousands of men against the Russians two decades earlier. I wondered what he might be like, as I was escorted by a young man to the main house.

 

It was a modest unpainted and sparsely furnished building. Women peered at me from inside one of the rooms and giggled as I walked past. I was led to the main reception area, where the mid-morning sun cast a sickly glow through dirty pastel green curtains.

 

In the corner, an old grey bearded man sat on a bed, frail fingers thumbing prayer beads. His face was a mess of lines and he had small bird eyes. I was told he could no longer walk and that I was the first foreign woman he had ever met. We spoke in Dari, though my paltry knowledge of the language and his lack of teeth made for a short lived conversation about my origins, his health and security in the district. He invited me to stay for tea but I had to leave.

 

Back in the rose garden, the Commander thanked me for coming to talk to him and welcomed me back anytime. I’ve come to learn that people here have many pasts, and one person may give you an entirely different account of the same event, seen from the other side of the fence. Whatever people’s backgrounds, everyone deserves a chance to tell their stories.

 *title taken from a novel of the same name by Albert Camus

Hope for a Great Sea-Change

The mulberries are ripening with every passing minute under June's sun, weighing down the big old mulberry tree in our office courtyard. Sometimes they fall on your head, ruining your headscarf. Otherwise they simply splatter and stain the ground with their indelible juice. The patio is strewn with what look like squashed beetles.

I went to Ireland a few weeks ago, invited by a friend I’d made at the Pathways to Peace conference here in Kabul in April. I visited the centre for peace and reconciliation high up in the wild mossy glens on Dublin’s outskirts, where for years  a small number of people have been working hard to heal wounds and bring people together from both sides of a fence dividing Northern Irish communities. Having been caught up in Afghanistan’s war for so long, I’d forgotten that a silent conflict still permeates people’s lives every day so close to home.

 Church in Belfast

The principal issues at stake in this part of the world were the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the relationship between the mainly-Protestant unionist and mainly-Catholic nationalist communities in Northern Ireland. The Belfast 'Good Friday' agreement in 1998 marked a milestone in ending tensions, but the place is far from free from its troubled past.

As my friend patiently drove me through Belfast’s different neighbourhoods, I felt the tension there and was struck with how divided communities are. ‘How’s the craic?’ he asked. ‘Edgy’, I replied.

In this part of Belfast, homes are covered in murals depicting scenes from the conflict or the different factions' emblems

The wall that divides Belfast

A wall is a stark, imposing silent reminder of how bad things can become. Helpless words of hope written in black marker pens cover the wall from one end to the other. Here, a few months ago, some Afghan parliamentarians came to visit. They left their own mark on this wall, expressing their wishes for a peaceful future.

 
This Afghan war is a complicated affair. It wouldn't all seem so insurmountable if it were simply a case of getting the right people into the same room to talk things over. These endless discussions about bringing in the Taliban and coming up with plans to reconcile insurgents are sounding more hollow by the day. As if by embracing this conciliatory approach and understanding how the Taliban think, some unprecedented breakthrough will finally be made.

The whole war has become mired in messy, underhand economics and war profiteering, which in turn have become entangled in the varying shades of outrage due to years of factional fighting, poverty and in some cases ideological differences. Afghan politicians, government employees, foreign contractors, ‘Taliban’ commanders… Some people have become rich and depend on this war today to maintain certain lifestyles. Where is the incentive to end this? It’s going to take a lot more than sitting in a tent sipping tea to break free from this mess.

If it were simply a case of healing wounds, I’d like to think Seamus Heaney’s words could be of comfort to some. My Irish friend read this beautiful poem at the peace conference in April, and as he read these words (and they were translated) I looked at the faces of my turbaned Khosti friends sitting at the front table, and wondered what they thought about all of this.

The Cure at Troy (excerpt)
Seamus Heaney

Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge,
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

 Old cemetery near Glencree

Pathways to Peace*

 Somewhere on the road to Kabul through Logar province

I drove through Logar province on my way back from Gardez a couple of weeks ago, where I had gone to see my old friends and retrieve my cat. It felt like going home, but strangely it wasn’t heartbreaking to leave this second time around as it’s so close and I know I’ll be going back there soon enough.

Between you and me, I do not like Logar one little bit. A foreboding heavy atmosphere permeates the place, particularly the stretch of road past Logar’s bustling provincial capital Pul-e-Alam towards Kabul. Everything goes eerily quiet here, and despite Spring’s efforts to bring new life to the place, with trees suddenly erupting in a sea of pale green against an otherwise brownish landscape, I’ll bet the birds don’t even sing on this particular stretch of road.

This area of the province has always been dodgy and is noticeably more conservative than other areas. Rather sinisterly, road signs with the names of districts written in Roman letters have been vandalized, letters sprayed over with black graffiti. This isn’t Logar’s rebellious youth expressing themselves through street art; rather it symbolizes a darker, more sinister protest against foreign presence in the country, demonstrated all too well in 2008 when a car driving four IRC staff was ambushed and gunned down in Kolandar district, killing the Afghan driver and three female Western aid workers.

Pul-e-Alam, Logar’s capital, is different, at least on the surface. Of particular note as you drive through the town, is the bazaar, which is always bustling with people (men that is. I don’t think I have ever seen a woman in Logar).  Dozens of makeshift carts on wheels jostle side by side, brimming with foaming cauliflowers, pyramids of carrots, radishes, mandarines, onions, peppers, potatoes – you name it, Pul-e-Alam’s vegetable and fruit market seems to have it. As you enter the town from the Tira Pass end in the South (where mountains separate Paktia from Logar), large Ministry of Health billboards depicting women (drawings, not photos) getting vaccinations stand proudly as hopeful reminders of modernization creeping into this somewhat conservative province. Giant Roshan and Etisalat posters tower above the townsfolk, who weave their way through the scores of Corollas buzzing up and down the main road. There is street lighting in the provincial capital and the main road is exceptionally well tarmac-ed. This place has changed a lot since I first drove through here in 2004. Progress is being made.

……

Along with the rest of the international community here it seems, I’ve recently been working on the hot topic of the day, reconciliation and reintegration, two terms being bandied about somewhat interchangeably. The organization I am now working for put together a large jirga in Paktia at the beginning of last week, inviting tribal elders from all over Loya Paktia (Khost, Paktia and Paktika). About 300 people turned up, and although I didn’t attend the jirga myself, my colleagues were able to carry out approximately 40 individual interviews among the participants.

Having now gone through all the interviews, and based on everything I’ve been told by people these past eighteen months or so in the Southeast, I would love to say I’m optimistic about this whole thing; but I’m cynical, because once again people’s expectations are going to be raised and then dashed.

Reconciliation in the Southeast is an elusive idea, another project hastily being pushed on people, sponsored by foreigners in order to expedite their own withdrawal, rather than having any genuine commitment to ensuring a long-term sustainable peace. People in this region have always felt left out of any meaningful political process taking place in the country - and whilst most view the idea of reconciliation as a good and necessary one at this juncture, tangible changes to people’s lives will be negligible. Local government is weak and not seen as a legitimate power-brokering body. If this time around (see failed PTS program) the initiative receives the support, resources and political backing it should have had years ago, the problem remains that government is still corrupt and people are still poor and enduring botched military operations. Why should anyone see next month’s ‘peace jirga’ as anything other than an empty gesture, and one which won’t yield any long-term peace dividends or have a positive impact on their lives or the ever-worsening security situation in the region?

I’m in the middle of a three-day conference at the moment, organized by the National Centre for Policy Research. It’s an excellent initiative and the organizers have brought together some great participants. One of them, Sima Samar from the Independent Human Rights Commission, gave a very lucid talk highlighting the importance of trust between the people and the government, without which, she said, there could be no genuine peace process.

Another participant pointed out that political goals are often short-term ones – yet this is precisely what the Americans are looking for now, a political deal so they can withdraw without losing face. It all sounds pretty hollow from here. A representative from Khost province asked angrily what the point of a national jirga was when it wasn’t being honestly pursued and when the Afghan people hadn’t been consulted.

The last day of the conference is tomorrow, but an observation I will make at this point is that of all the speakers, the most eloquent and outspoken advocates for peace, who have repeatedly emphasized the importance of engaging in an honest process of restorative justice and holding perpetrators of past crimes to account (because without justice there can never be peace in Afghanistan, they say), have been female participants. Hearing Afghan women stand up and speak with such determination and confidence is rather awe-inspiring.

I rarely ever saw any Afghan women in Gardez or Khost; that’s not to say there aren’t brave women there ready to stand up and defend their rights, there are - but they are few and far between. Kabul on the other hand is a vibrant place. You get the impression that real change is possible and is happening. The country’s future is in the hands of a new confident generation, and it’s wonderful to witness. I doubt next month’s jirga will be particularly meaningful, but one day, these young people will lead their own peace process, on their terms.

On an unrelated note, on Friday some friends and I sped out on motorbikes to beautiful Kapisa province, leaving Kabul’s choked and smog filled streets behind:

 

An exhilarating two hours later, we got off our bikes to walk the last leg up a steep pathway to a small village tucked away at the top of a mountain, where we were welcomed by a swarm of smiling children and an old woman with a beautiful complexion and high cheek bones, who greeted us with open arms and gave me a huge hug, planting two fat kisses on my cheeks. We sat on toshaks by a stream under a cool leafy canopy and ate fresh eggs and naan and drank warm sweet milk; donkeys brayed in the background and chickens clucked quietly to themselves in the warmth of the morning sun. We clambered up rocks and went for a long walk in the hills, and scavenged hopefully through streams looking for rubies. We were shown shelters built into rocks, where villagers hid for an entire year when the Taliban took control of their mountain.

We eventually said goodbye and made our way home, stopping only briefly as the sun set behind the mountains to buy some doh from a roadside café. (Doh is a fermented salty milk drink with a few sprigs of fresh mint thrown in, it’s very popular here in Afghanistan, particularly in the summer months. It’s sold by the plastic bag or old water bottle, hung up on string outside little roadside shacks to tempt travelers to come and stop off for a glass of the stuff, best enjoyed with a lovely greasy bulani, deep fried dough filled with spicy potatoes or chives.) Before we knew it we were back in Kabul’s smoggy streets again, along with thousands of other Afghans, reluctantly driving back into town after a day in the countryside.

*the name of the conference organised in Kabul by the National Centre for Policy Research

Of mice and bureaucrats

I retract that last bit about this place ‘not being so bad’. In what is my temporary accommodation (if God wills it), I have rats the size of small ponies galloping along the inside of my roof every night. Audacious overweight mice waddle about the place, fat from food left out. Last night I watched a mouse lazily eyeing a piece of leftover cake, as I sat on somewhat grimy velvet toshaks trying to get the wireless internet to work in our dimly lit living room. Cockroaches scatter from the kitchen when I walk in. 

Mornings are fun though. Having a shower requires walking outside to a small yard and sticking your arm down a deep and dark pothole to feel about for a tap, which, once located, you have to turn on then run to the house next door where turbaned tribal elders (guests of the Afghan NGO I now work for) are already milling around, in order to switch the water pump on. Once this pot-hole-tap-pump ritual has taken place, you have to sprint back to a small bathroom and strategically position yourself somewhere between the toilet and the sink to catch intermittent violent spurts of dusty smelling water, all the while avoiding getting electrocuted by some live open wires poking out of the water boiler’s plug socket.

However what this place lacks in hygiene, it certainly makes up for in other things. I’ll write about those once I’ve found out what they are, but on the whole life is good.

Moving on to life and death issues of a slightly different nature, I was upset to find out yesterday that instead of applauding the fact that a recent news story has shed light on some further atrocities committed by US Special Forces, my former employer down in the Southeast has been berating and bullying another colleague there for accommodating the journalist who wrote this particular story. Here’s why.

A few weeks ago, this journalist (who happens to be a friend) contacted me, asking if I had seen an ISAF press release,which stated that during the course of a night raid in Gardez, a Special Forces team made a ‘gruesome discovery’ when they came across three women who were bound and gagged and already dead. My friend asked if I knew anything about this, or whether I had more information (as I had been based in Gardez for the past year and a half, he felt I was an appropriate person to ask). He soon decided to head down there himself to investigate the incident further. It very soon transpired that this press release was a lie, as the women were in fact shot by the forces entering the house and left to die from their wounds. You can read about the story here and here.

The fact that this story got a lot of attention in the press, which might add to the pressure already on the military to change the way they conduct these operations, is beside the point, apparently. Information supporting this journalist's investigation was supposedly leaked and the rules of the organization were not observed; some interviews were even held on the compound, shock horror.

I find it sad that some individuals working for an organization, which is ostensibly here to serve the Afghan people, are wasting valuable time trying to find someone to blame for not following protocol – when all this story did was to throw light on yet another botched military operation in which two pregnant women were killed, which the military then tried to cover up. It’s sad to observe otherwise good people getting caught up in the bureaucracy of a large organization, blinded by what they perceive to be some kind of authority vested in them, and unable to recognize when to do the right thing.

Bird watching

Every afternoon at around 5.00, I go to my window and look outside because I have been watching something which happens every day around this time, just before the sky turns pink and spirals of sweet smelling smoke start to appear from mud brick homes.

A man stands on a roof and starts waving a long thin red flag, giving short sharp whistles, followed by long ones. Then he waves his flag again, waits for a while and the whistling resumes.

I thought at first he must be corresponding with another person somewhere close by, but as I watched I realized he was communicating with a flock of birds.

Kabul’s pigeons are light brown in colour with bright black eyes. They are actually probably doves. A group of around ten of them suddenly appears and they begin to circle overhead, diving and soaring for a while, then come back to land beside the man on the roof.

After a few moments he shoos them away with his flag and the whole thing starts again in a frenzy of trained wings and synchronized swoops, until dusk falls and the call to prayers sounds out across rooftops in the cold evening air.

I miss my friends in the Southeast but this place isn’t so bad.

 

Southeastern blues and greys (#2)

(she has tried, in her way, to be free)

I left the Southeast today.

This morning I went into the kitchen to say goodbye to our cook. He hugged me and said "I miss you". My words got caught somewhere on their way out so I left quickly.

As the the car pulled out of our barbed compound, my colleagues lined up by the gate to wave me off, and in the background Paktia's mountains gleamed white as cat teeth, sharply standing out against a blue winter sky.

My new Kabul-based job will take me back there on occasion, but it's not the same.

Ghosts before dawn

 
Aerial view of Paktika, January 2010

 

On Wednesday I flew to Urgun in East Paktika to meet with some people at the US military base in order to try to get the other side of the story about this marauding Afghan commander employed by Special Operations Forces (SOF), who is apparently striking terror into the hearts of the local population down in one of Paktika's southern districts.

 

For years I’d heard Urgun was Paktika’s thriving economic hub and the province’s capital city by rights. With all respect, Paktika is the back of beyond - but Urgun was different, I was told, bigger and more vibrant than Sharana.

 

I was excited as our little Soviet-era helicopter bobbed over endless windswept wastes, eyes peeled to the windows of our rickety aircraft (one of these MI8’s tails fell off unexpectedly the other day) (not in mid-air thankfully). I was expecting to see a thriving metropolis emerging from this desolate and lonely landscape, shimmering in the distance like an oasis in a desert.

 

I was somewhat misled. From the air, Urgun looks like a barren wasteland with a few small houses dotted here and there, one high street and a mosque. It seemed only marginally less barren and wasteland-ish than other parts of the province as it's encircled by small mountains, but let's face it, it's still pretty bleak.

 

Urgun from a distance over mountains likely to be 'crawling with insurgents' (though those dark things are actually trees)

 

Over lunch in the FOB’s canteen, I learnt not only that this Afghan commander has a bad reputation even on the FOB, but just how dysfunctional things are. I already knew that SOF operate under a different set of rules and command from ISAF, but hadn’t realized how little interaction there was and that relations between ISAF and SOF can sometimes be a little tense. Whatever strategy ISAF comes up with next to try to redress what is an already pitiful situation here is bound to fail. SOF must also change the way they do things. 

 

During one of my many rants in recent days, I was informed by my smart and level-headed colleague that ‘SOF do actually kill a lot of bad guys’.  Great job, only whose benchmark of success is this? I have an analogy in my mind of a group of avid gardeners dressed in army slacks vigorously chopping down weeds at the stem. Those weeds are going to grow back, and besides, I don’t believe numbers are the issue here.

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, these bearded G.I.Joes need to start considering the cost-benefit relationship between alienating the local population and potentially turning them towards the insurgency, versus the gains made in capturing or killing insurgents who are in many cases easily replaced by others. Any perceived benefit of these operations is being outweighed by mounting tension and resentment, which is slowly rippling across the region in SOF’s wake.

 

Before I boarded our trusty MI8 back to Gardez, I managed to snatch a few words with the busy but receptive battalion commander and impressed upon him the various stories I’d heard about this Afghan commander barging into people's homes in the dead of night. Meanwhile, I’m compiling a detailed list of specific accounts collected from different sources about this young ruffian to give to higher ranking commanders in Salerno.

 

On Thursday afternoon I met with a reconciled former Hezb-I Islami commander. I’ve met him several times before. He’s always been quieter than the others and appears to be more conservative. While some members from his group make eye contact with me and shake hands (sometimes I even get a smile), he never has. He’s rather sinister looking and wears a large black turban and dark sunglasses, even when indoors. I only noticed as I looked at him more closely the other day that this is to cover an empty eye socket. I also noticed he has a slight lisp.

 

 

Over the course of our meeting in the quiet of my office, I started to get that familiar heavy feeling inside me as if something was slowly crumbling, and had to hold back tears. I realize I’m getting far too emotional about all of this, and probably should balance out a bit more what are perhaps sometimes unfair and biased opinions. I am not anti-American and have met a number of well intentioned and compassionate people on these US bases, including among top-ranking officers.

 

However I am in a unique and privileged position at the moment, able to meet with and listen to the local people from this area. I realize that a lot of the people I talk to probably don’t have squeaky clean pasts and their intentions may not always be noble or good, but their stories should be told.

 

Three weeks ago this man’s house was raided by SOF, during which they dug up the floors of his home. “They came first at night and again the next day, and destroyed my home with this digging. They found nothing and then apologized. I said to them “you have insulted me, I cannot forgive you. If you continue to do this, you are pushing me to climb the mountains” (a Pashtu turn of phrase for joining the opposition).

 

He went on, “The ANSF can do these searches better, they know the customs and traditions. Wherever the Special Forces go, not only do the communities hate them, but they also come under pressure from AGEs once they leave the area. They show no respect to the elders or to our religious scholars. Last year they bombarded a house killing everyone inside, as well as 70 sheep”.

 

“They wanted to live in communities to work with the arbakai (tribal police) but the elders rejected this. Then they said ‘ok’. They began forcing elders to provide them with arbakai so they could train them. The elders refused. The Special Forces told them “if you don’t provide us with arbakai, you are supporting the insurgents”.

 

“The Americans will fail here. They won’t be here forever and when they leave, do you think our arbakai are strong enough to fight the AGEs? The AGEs will come to these communities where the Special Forces people were and ask them “why did you support the Americans?” The tribes who provide arbakai to the SF are in grave trouble. The Taliban know who cooperates with the SF. They then intimidate us during the night. It is also really against our customs and traditions to have such people present in our local community”.

 

He talked for a while longer, recounting several more depressing anecdotes. I asked how frequently the military came to his area, he said maybe every ten days to two weeks. He insisted that the sources the SOF relied upon for information needed to be cross-checked.

 

“They need to analyse their reports. Do they realize that there could be issues of personal enmity or a land dispute influencing such reports? People who want revenge for whatever reason sometimes just go to Special Forces and tell them lies about people. The ANSF are sometimes corrupt but at least they know who is who here. They should do these searches. The people here have already been disappointed. We want peace, we want reconstruction. But these Americans are just insulting us”.

 

It was getting dark outside and my guest stood up to leave. I told him I was sorry that he and his family and community members were under so much pressure and prayed things would get better soon, and that I would do my best to ensure these stories were heard. I hoped it didn’t all sound hollow because I meant every word. For the first time he made eye contact with me and put his hand to his chest and smiled.

 

A Letter from the "Eagers of Martydom"

Oh, that’s nice. I just received an e-mail from the Taliban. Slightly disconcerting is the fact that it was sent to my personal e-mail address, I have no idea how they got hold of that.

 

I wasn’t the only recipient, copied on the e-mail were a number of Kabul-based banks and various embassies.

 

For your reading pleasure (this was the English translation of the Pashtun sent alongside it):

 

“Islamic Emmirate of Afghanistan

Al Hamza Estishadi Kandak

 

To all those who scare from the death:

 

May Peace and blessing be on those who accept Guidance!

 

Our Attacks are not ended, Just wait, wait…..and wait

 

All foreign Embassies, Foreign NGOs, Karzai’s Organizations and firms and planners and  Conspirator of these Plots, Conspiracies and hatcheries are our Targets.

 

The breakage point of  Cross and Crusade Stared Here and Soon it will be defeated and vanished. Insha Allah.

 

The Slaves of Cross are in letdown and vanquishable, and watch their Shellacking defeat, Soon they will be Routed and Sink in Cavern and Sinkholes.

 

And Truth is Conqueror and predominant.

Just wait

 

Seven of Chivalrous Youths Reached to their aims and targets, and 13 others are in Lurk fervor awaiting to reach to their targets and destinations. (This I presume is a reference to yesterday's attack in Kabul - CC).

 

From the Eagers of Martyrdom”

 

I don't know about you, but I am somewhat upset by the lack of ‘x’s at the bottom of the missive. I’m also in half a mind as to whether I should write back offering English lessons. Maybe if I put forward a discounted rate the person might accept (though his prose is rather quaint).

 

If all goes quiet, maybe it'll be because one of those lurking chivalrous youths achieved his goal...