Women in Ghor

I didn't see any women in burkas in Ghor.  Most women wore this long robe + head scarf that was black with a pattern of white, almost crescent-shaped objects.   The taller women toward the right isn't Afghan; she's with the Japanese development agency.

Housing Opportunities

So if you are interested in buying property in Afghanistan, you should consider Ghor.  You can't beat the location - this is about a five minute drive from downtown Chagcharan.  OK, so technically there aren't any roads to drive over - that's not entirely fair; there is one stretch of two kilometers that has been paved, the first and only paved road in the entire province, which is about 450 kilometers wide and 220 or so tall.  On the other hand, there's not much traffic to deal with.  On this stretch of hilly dirt, people have sketched out rectangles where they will put the walls around their houses, and some of them, as you can see from the heaps of rocks, have even brought from the hills the raw materials for their walls.  Rock walls are fancy; most people just have mud walls.  Anyway, if you're interested, let me know, and I can probably get you a good deal.

Ghor is Not the Manhattan of Central Asia

 Yesterday was Ghor, where we have a small team with the Lithuanians at their PRT in the capital "city" of Chagcharan.  Ghor is probably the most isolated part of Afghanistan, so isolated that even the insurgents don't often go there.  It doesn't have mines, trees, or much vegetation at all, though one of the people there was telling me that the soil is in fact quite fertile, if only there was water.  There's a book called "The Places In Between" that describes Ghor as "one of the only places in the classical world not to be names or recognized by either the Persians or the Greeks."  It is defined by tribal conflicts, and when we asked what tends to cause the tribal conflicts, the answer was, "Someone steals a sheep, and then the tribe retaliates by kidnapping a person."  I didn't see any sheep, probably because they had all been stolen, but I did see one herder driving a group of maybe six devilish-looking goats.  I also saw of flock of four turkeys.

Photos Forthcoming

Probably.  Tomorrow, off to the aptly named Ghor Province.  I've been there before, but with any luck, I'll see things I haven't seen before.  Thursday should be relatively calm, but we'll see if the Friday sermons stoke things up for some more protest demonstrations.  Nothing to do but wait and see.

This Isn't Good

Absolutely Nothing to Report

I would post links to the news reports of ongoing events, but I'm too lazy.  Just Google it.  The demonstrations started on April 1, Friday, just after the weekly Friday prayers.  The violence was worst in Mazar, a city in the north.  There was also a very large demonstration in Herat, but those remained peaceful.  But the violence spread the next day to Kandahar, the protests have cropped up in about half the provinces where we have people, and today in Helmand, apparently unlinked to any demonstration, there were two suicide bombers in the capital city.  So that's been keeping us busy.  I haven't traveled since one trip was canceled due to weather (we haven't been able to fly because of sandstorms in several parts of the country); we'll see if I go on a couple of trips this week.  So I have no new photos.  But I did get a new ring, with lapis.  I'm starting to look like a pimp.

Also Not Good News

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/world/asia/02afghanistan.html?src=me

Yeah, this isn't good.  Large demos in Mazar and Herat, a much smaller one in Kabul.  And somebody needs to slap some sense into that idiot in Florida.