Afraid to Show Their Faces

So in the meeting with the governor, the subject comes up of the assassination the day before of the deputy governor.  This latest assassination campaign isn't novel.  Five or six years ago, the Taliban went after local religious leaders.  They killed three dozen or so mullahs and members of the Ulema Council in the Kandahar area.  Similarly they (and the Soviets before them) have had an ongoing campaign of killing off village elders.  It's a pretty good way of getting rid of opponents and scaring the bejesus out of the ones left standing.  So in the past year or so, especially within Kandahar city itself, the insurgents have been going after government officials.  They've killed two deputy mayors and the deputy governor (and it's not limited to Kandahar - they killed the governor of Kunduz last fall), but even more intimidating is the fact that they kill police chiefs, policemen, teachers, city clerks - anyone affiliated with official government institutions.  It's the principal reason why the Afghan government has such a hard time convincing bureaucrats to go to regions like Kandahar to work, and somehow, the $40/month "danger pay" doesn't seem to draw a huge crowd.  I don't think anyone knows the real number of assassinations, but it's well over one hundred in the past few months in Kandahar alone.  Anyway, so just before this shura, the governor says, "We are Muslims.  We believe in after death.  The Prophet died; kings and presidents die; all die.  So we go on."  We go on to the meeting room, and there are 30 or so elders like the ones pictured.  And when the cameras come out - clips of this will be shown on Afghan television - nearly half of them pull their turbans or cloaks or shawls or other cloth over their faces, and keep their faces hidden for the entire meeting.  That's a pretty good indicator of whether the insurgents' intimidation campaign is working.  There's a lot of talk that this is a battle of "hearts and minds," and that part of the debate is whether the Taliban or the moderates represent "true Islam," so we have to convince regular Afghans that the insurgents are anti-Islam.  I think that's completely misguided.  I don't believe any but the most deluded Afghans think killing a teacher or blowing up a supermarket is justifiable in the name of Islam.  I think the fundamental propaganda war is over security: the insurgents are in effect saying, We can kill you, and the Americans can't stop us.  They will one day leave, and we will still be here, and if you collaborate with them, we will kill you.  That's their message.  And until and unless we can prove them wrong, we have lost this particular messaging war.  That's what I think.  Now, that said, you've gotta admire the old whitebeards who know they're being filmed meeting with Americans and with the government and know that this makes them targets, and their attitude is a big up-yours to the insurgents.

Finally Some Snow

 On the mountains going south to Kandahar.  It rained the night before we went, so although there was of course no snow in Kandahar itself, at least the sky had been blown clear, and it was a very nice blue for most of the day.  Anyway, this was the most snow I've seen south of Kabul.  It won't be enough for the spring; everyone is predicting that this winter's drought is going to be devastating for crops.  And that also means it's going to be a good year for poppy.  One of the recurring themes I hear is that poppy growing isn't because the farmers are evil opium addicts - it's a crop that grows well even if water is sparse and, most importantly in a country that has only a minimal road network in the best of times, and none at all when violence cuts off access to markets outside the farmer's own district - poppy keeps a long time.  It's a form of investment bank for rural families; you in effect have ready savings if you have a store of opium, and all you have to do is wait for the time to sell.  That's one reason why it's so difficult to eradicate production.  Another, of course, is standard supply and demand - prices soar when production falls, thus incentivizing everyone to grow it some more.  I didn't see any poppy fields on this trip to Kandahar, but of course, it's not poppy season right now.

Kandahar Has Trees

 Not that many, and these were all at the governor's compound.  I think the mountain formation in the background is amazing; the peak on the left is completely by itself and just rises out of nowhere, kind of like the Pao de Azucar in Rio de Janeiro.  I didn't see the Kandahar beach, though.

Sunset in KAF

 Waiting to board the plane back to Kabul as the sun sets over the helicopter park.

The Kandahar - Kansas City Connection

This is the governor of Kandahar province.  He lived in Canada for decades, so his English is excellent.  But that is meaningless trivia.  Look on his desk, right next to his monitor.  The man is a Kansas City Royals fan.  This is not encouraging, because it suggests he is easily resigned to decades of futility and failure and suffering poaching by richer, unprincipled provinces like Yankeestan.

Cloak of the Prophet

 In Kandahar, across from the governor's compound, there is a mosque that is the Shrine of the Cloak of the Prophet.  Supposedly Mohammed's cloak is stored here.  You can say a lot of things about Mullah Omar, but one thing is that you have to recognize that he had a flair for dramatic, and effective, actions that galvanized the people - at least for a while.  During the civil war in the 90s, Omar did something extraordinarily daring.  If it had backfired, he probably would have been torn to pieces in the street by a mob. But he not only showed the cloak to a crowd at the mosque - something never done - he actually put the cloak on, symbolically casting himself as the heir to Mohammed.  The Taliban roared to power through nearly all of Afghanistan soon afterwards.  We didn't have time to actually go to the mosque, and it would have been regarded as an insult, given that we rolled up to the compound in a convoy of MRAPs.  But this mosque past the wall is where the prophet's cloak, which would be almost 1400 years old now, is supposedly kept.

Murals of Street Scenes

 Inside the walls of the Kandahar PRT one of the conference rooms has several murals painted on its walls.  Here are two of them.  I think the one with the bizarrely curving women in burkas, kind of floating in the air in the bazaar, is especially weird.  As the flags in the front of the second one indicate, Kandahar has been the Canadian-led PRT.

Kandahar Keeps Churning Out the News

Seems like that "assassination problem" in Kandahar I mentioned a while back hasn't quite been resolved yet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12314646

Oops

I am fairly certain this is not the preferred manner in which to land a helicopter.  This is what happens when the tail rotor of a helo stops working - in this case, because it flew off.  Turns out that second rotor is handy after all.   Amazingly, no one was hurt in this crash, nor were any live animals harmed in the making of this entry.   The Polish pilot - this is from Ghazni - did an extraordinary job in making the impact relatively innocuous.  So that's good news, and quite heartening, seeing as how I'm going to be on at least three separate helicopters in Kandahar today. 

Pet Adoption

 At least temporarily.  A surprisingly large percentage of the hooches jury-rig some sort of sleeping area for the grossly overfed cats.  What's mildly surprising is that, for all the dozens of cats running around, you don't see that much cat poop.

It's All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

Jewelry, Part Two

 I can't remember the stones in the bracelet at the bottom, but I think it was rubies, sapphires and something else.  It's going into a hope box for our granddaughter, so she won't see it for a while, anyway, and by then I'll either remember what the stones are, or make up something plausible.  Hell, she'll be 12 or something, not a freaking gemologist.
The top one is either orange topaz, which is what I thought the guy said, or orange opal, which is what Jody thought he said, or orange plastic, which isn't what he said but could well be the truth, in which case we were overcharged.  Anyway, it's orange.

Jewelry, Part One

 These are all lapis lazuli; the case is polished bone.

So We Went to a Bazaar

 However, we didn't buy any carpets, partly because we aren't really ready to buy a carpet, and partly because the asking price for the one we liked (not this one) was $850, which is a bit more than my usual walking-around money.  We did, however, get jewelry - photos to come.

Cleanliness is Next to Impossible

 But that doesn't mean you should stop trying.  One of these is one of the Little Winkies; the other looks like progeny of Spot, though all of them have long since stopped being black and white, and now they're just black and dusty.

Most People I Know Come Here for the Atmosphere

It's just like small town America.

More on the Supermarket Bombing

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2045049,00.html

Well, this isn't likely to make it easier for us to go out to eat.

More Booms

A bombing hit a few hours ago in Kabul not far from us and has shut down all travel.  As usual, the early accounts are confusing; maybe it was a suicide bomber, maybe the bomber opened fire with a hand gun before the explosion, maybe there were two explosions, maybe just one....  Already both the Taliban and the Haqqani network, an insurgent -cum- criminal gang, have claimed responsibility.  The attack was at a grocery store called "Finest."  Finest has a branch on the embassy compound, in fact, though we never shop there because it's very expensive, plus we don't really need anything.  But foreigners and wealthier Afghans are the clientele, so pretty clearly that's what the attack was aimed at.  The British Embassy is pretty close to this store.


http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE70R1WA20110128?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

And Now for Something Completely Different

 These are not photos of Afghanistan.  These are of the hotel we're going to for Valentine's Day next month in Mauritius, with any luck.  Mauritius appears to have a bit more greenery and sea than Kabul does.

More Pub News

Some while ago I wrote about the Duck and Cover, the tiny bar on one side of the Embassy compound that is pretty much the only available social site.  A few of you have even received Duck and Cover merchandise from me.  Others of you who have not received such items should probably reflect on how you've wronged me, what you can do to atone for it, and the misfortune of being on my shit list.  Anyway, as I probably mentioned before, the name Duck and Cover comes from a security drill we have to do every so often.  It's meant to prepare people for how to react were the Embassy to be bombed, or if a car bomb were imminent, or a really annoying colleague is about to walk into your office.  The idea is you get down on the floor, maybe under your desk, or somewhere where you're protected from flying shards of glass and concrete and shrapnel.  The Embassy bar occasionally has people on the floor, but almost never for security reasons.  The bar sign is that of a duck, wearing a World War I style helmet, with the Hindu Kush in the backdrop.  Turns out there's some sign-maker in England who is responsible for that.  Here's his story:



http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4306776.Worthing_pub_sign_writer_has_order_from_Kabul/

Dining Options

OK, so since we can't really leave the compound to eat at Kabul restaurants unless we have a really good, plausible excuse, there aren't dining options per se - the DFACs ("dining facilities" - did I mention the military occasionally uses acronyms?) are the same on either side of the Embassy compound.  But you can choose which item to select from the cafeteria line.  I guess you could also choose not to eat.  Theoretically you can choose to cook, if you don't live in a hooch, but since access to ingredients like meat is not easy, that's similar to choosing not to eat.  But back to the DFAC choices.
Breakfast is pretty good.  You can gets eggs made to order; available nearly every day are either grits or oatmeal, sausage (with a little smiling pig label that says 'Include Pork' if it's not made from turkey) or bacon, scrambled eggs, and on an erratic basis fresh fruit, though depending on supply interruptions, not always so fresh, and often canned.  Speaking of supply interruptions, we are currently experiencing one of the most dire kinds of supply interdiction - no wine, no alcohol of any kind, and no prospects for it for at least a week!  Anyway, we don't usually have that with breakfast anyway, so that's not germane.  There is stale bread, usually bagels or muffins, occasionally danishes (almost never Danes, though you do see them in Helmand; their part of the base is called Camp Viking), and cereal, especially Lucky Charms.  There's also banana milk; I'm not sure how it tastes or what it's made of.
Lunch and dinner items are always designated green, yellow or red.  This is supposed to indicate the relative healthiness of the food.  It doesn't seem that reliable - you'll find heavily fried foods occasionally listed as green.  But it's probably right when it has things like cordon bleu (red, or better said, rouge); chili (red), broiled chicken breast (green), fried chicken (red, but without question the most delicious item available), overcooked pasta, tacos, etc.  There is a "Fresh Grill" which, depending on the day, offers hamburgers, turkey burgers, grilled sausages, onion rings or grilled cheese.  Maybe every other week, usually for dinner, there are enormous glazed doughnuts that would make Krispy Kreme envious.  Those probably aren't labeled green. There's an ice cream bar with chocolate shavings, maraschino cherries, and nuts.  On Friday evenings there is surf and turf.  It consists without exception of a tasteless ribeye with a really strange spongelike texture, and some seafood item, rotating among very fishy-tasting fish things, crab legs, breaded shrimp, or more fish things.  This is the stuff we eat, and this is the stuff everyone complains about having to eat.  One of the joys of the R&R trips is that you get to eat whatever you want.  We get to do this in just over two weeks.

Taliban Techniques

There have been rumors all along of various planned attacks, and the insurgents have even pulled off some attacks in Kabul.  Not long ago a suicide motorcyclist killed several Afghan government workers a few blocks from the Embassy, and an IED near a pedestrian bridge also killed and wounded a bunch of civilians.  But there hasn't been a successful large-scale attack since we've been here.  There are actually several insurgencies in Afghanistan: the Taliban themselves, the so-called "ten dollar Taliban," or the ones who plant IEDs for the money; the handful of hardcore foreign fighters, Al Qaeda, and among the criminal thug groups, the most dangerous, the Haqqani network.

According to the news story below, it was Haqqani who was planning attacks in Kabul.  The last time Parliament opened there was an attack; Parliament is due to open tomorrow, so maybe that's no coincidence.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/25/afghanistan.pakistan.arrests/

 Another common insurgent tactic concerns cell phone towers in the south especially.  The insurgents call and threaten cell tower operators if they won't shut down the repeaters after sundown.  And so there are reports of cell phone service outages most nights in places like Kandahar.

Mr. Winkie's Nemesis

To judge by these photos, Mr. Winkie is not the only feline father roaming the compounds.  I have not seen the two in open conflict in a showdown for honor.  And I'm no expert on how cat DNA is transmitted and which chromosome governs the color of the kitten's hair, although in all likelihood neither are you, so I could probably just say I was and you'd be none the wiser.  But to this layman's eyes it seems apparent that Mr. Winkie's girl was stepping out on him on at least one occasion

The Food Pyramid

 Mr. Winkie's children do not have a difficult time gaining their livelihoods.  Besides the ubiquitous bowls of cat food on most hoochsteps, and apart from the frequency of people who share their food with the cats as they (the people, not the cats) come out of the cafeteria, there are the trash cans.  Nominally we recycle here.  That is, there are four humongous trash bins, and two are for food waste, one for plastics, and the last for aluminum cans.  When people first arrive they are usually quite scrupulous about separating their waste.  After the fifth time of seeing how the trash is handled - all four containers are carefully dumped into one larger container, which is then carted off to the place where all the trash is carefully dumped out and burned in an open field, further contributing to the clean air campaign - people sort of lose their enthusiasm.  The cats, however, do NOT lose their enthusiasm for the trash, because they have learned that it's a good place to load up on calories.  In fact, the two most serious threats to an individual's health here, other than the pollution and the bombs and the possibility of getting kidnapped and beheaded, are tripping over a cat as you go to throw away your leftovers, or getting clawed as you dump your food into a trash can in which one of the Little Winkies is scrounging for food.

All Mr. Winkie's Children

 These are some of Mr. Winkie's children.  It gets pretty cold at night, so some of them make do with cardboard boxes.  Some of them, rumor has it, are invited in to hooches by lonely hooch-dwellers.  And every once in a while, one will sneak into the apartment buildings  when a door is left open just a second too long.

Mr. Winkie himself seems to have come down with a bad case of bronchitis or something.  Except for when it snowed, the air this winter has been harsh and gritty and rasping on the lungs; nearly everyone has a cold or a respiratory ailment of some sort.  A few mornings ago Mr. Winkie himself was honking loudly near the coffee shop, looking even grouchier and more miserable and closer to death's door than he usually does.  Life has been hard on Mr. Winkie, so one mustn't begrudge him the occasional fling with the ladies.

"A Disease Vector"

 There is a dispute on the compound over whether the cat population should be tolerated - in which case it's OK to feed them, pet them, give them their shots, etc, because it's good for morale among a community that rarely sees anything other than the inside of their offices or the cramped and dark interiors of their hooches - or abolish them because they are "disease vectors."  The high levels of management would like to get rid of the cats, and their feelings only intensified after Mr. Winkie went on his procreative streak.  The overwhelming majority of individuals are in the former camp, and so outside office and residential hooches alike you'll find bowls of food and water set out for the cats.  Given that no one, officially, has a pet here, the sales of cat food are astronomical.  As you can see in the second photo, Christmas decorations aren't exactly lavish here either, and there's just not much you can do to jazz up a sandbag.

Meeting with a Mullah

I was at a meeting yesterday with Afghan government officials.  It was a preparatory meeting for the Afghan equivalent of a security council.  Anyway, as people filed in, I was noting the place settings at the table.  All the various ministries were represented, along with the "Council of Islamic Studies," which seemed a bit out of place, but I thought, what the hey.  Two British guys next to me were also commenting on the rarity of an Islamic scholar attending such a meeting.  Well, this old guy with a grizzly white beard down to his chest and a turban wrapped up high on his head comes in.  The first Brit whispers, "I think that's the mullah."  The second said sarcastically, "Well spotted, chap!  Did you take the special surveillance course?"

They (the Afghans, not the Brits) talked about a whole range of subjects, but the interesting part was when the mullah intervened.  At one point he observed, "The problem we are having is that things are under the influence of foreign culture.  Every day we hear about alcohol and Tajik dancers and rock concerts.  These give a weapon to the enemy.  But even if the Taliban do not resist us, nature itself will oppose us.  Why shouldn't the Taliban wage jihad, when we have alcohol and foreign movies?," which, if he was referring to headache-inducing pretentious French films, you can hardly blame him.  He then cited what he said was an old Afghan proverb about an empty house being overrun by an elephant, no doubt a foreign and/or drunken one, since elephants aren't indigenous to Afghanistan.

So that was fun.  But the mullah wasn't finished, and that wasn't the only proverb tossed about.  During a bureaucratic turf battle between some of the offices over who had responsibility for what and who was getting in whose way, one of those arguing said wisely, "There is a saying: When there are too many butchers, you cannot slaughter the animal properly."  How true this is, all we all know from experience.  After this had gone on for nearly an hour, someone said, "We've been talking about this topic for months," and it certainly felt that like.  And at one point the mullah started shouting, "We must stop foreign influence!  This is a Muslim country!  The only solution is Islam.  Whoever disputes that, I reject you!  You are trespassing Islam, and you cannot love life.  Be an Afghan!"

I came out of the meeting determined to learn more about Tajik dancers.

Snow in Kabul

It has mostly melted on the compound, but it actually snowed yesterday, big wet flakes that hit the paved ground and melted or hit the grass and lingered for a few hours.  There's a little bit left; now the temperature is dropping below 20 F, -8 to -10 C, but there don't seem to be enough clouds to snow more.  But it was pretty while it was falling.  The lower mountains around Kabul finally have snow on them, and it helped to clean up the air a bit.  The compound cats kept trying to sneak into the apartment buildings - one black one made it into our building, and curled up underneath the stairs.  We'll see if it snows more tomorrow.  I took no pictures in Kandahar on Wednesday, but then, again, I've been there before, and I'm not sure what there was to photograph.  The mountains on the way down had a bit more snow than they've had previously.

The Next Vacation, and a Mr. Winkie Tease

Much of our time here is spent planning the next rest break.  There is an intense marketplace of bartering ideas and experiences for where you've gone or where you're going for your next break.  It's a critical decision, because the flight schedules out of Kabul are so difficult.  I was tempted by Ed from the office, who had just come back on a route through Cambodia, China, Malaysia and Singapore.  But we've just been through the tiring trip to the US.  I want a simple restful vacation.  So we're going to a beach.  I was looking carefully at the Seychelles and Maldives, since they're relatively close.  But they're phenomenally expensive.  So, while I haven't put in the paperwork yet or reserved the hotel, I'm leaning toward Mauritius, or Ile Maurice, off the eastern coast of Africa.  Come late February, I will have photos to post of it.  In the meantime, tomorrow's return trip (this must be my seventh or so) to Kandahar will have to suffice.  Plus, in other upcoming attractions, I still have to give the inventory of toilet paper and toothpaste I promised a few days ago, and I am collecting more photos of the cats on the compound - including one of the elusive Mr. Winkie. 

The VP

Vice President Biden came by the Embassy today and met with a group of Embassy staff in the morning.  His speech was at the exact same moment that the Auburn-Oregon game was in its final minutes.  I know this because I was watching the game on the big screen TV in the office next to ours.  Plus, we figured the reason he was running late was that he was probably watching the game.  I guess he wasn't.  Our office was allocated a certain number of slots, plus one for the head.  I gave up my slot, because I've met VP Biden before.  Heck, I've been in a 9-on-9 meeting with him with the Czech cabinet.  I've been at a lunch roundtable with him.  So I decided, even before I realized the game was on, to give my slot to someone in our office who probably hasn't had a chance to meet him yet.  For the people I nominated I used a simple rule: the people who had served in Afghanistan the longest were the ones who got to attend.  Plus our office management specialist.  Nobody ever includes the OMS in things, so I thought she should be included.  So I have no photos of the VP or of the speech.  I didn't hear what he said.  But I did get to see the last half of the fourth quarter of the game, though.  I thought the one Auburn guy was down with his wrist on the ground and the play should have been stopped on the play that was reviewed.  But no matter; I didn't really care who won.  One guy watching the game next to me said, "Auburn deserved to win.  They're the best team money can buy."

Vehicles

 The jingle trucks are the brightly decorated cargo trucks ubiquitous in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and elsewhere in the region.  This one is carrying gasoline or diesel.  It's pretty tame by the usual standards.  The second photo, I have no idea.  It might have been a school bus taking kids home; for all I know it might have been a bus taking prisoners to the maximum security prison.  All I know is, the dragon and its accompanying logo are a mystery to me.

Kabul Street Scenes

 Usually when I come back from the airport the sun has long set and I can't get any good pictures.  But we were stuck in traffic forever this time, so while you can't exactly roll down the windows in an armored car, you can at least hold the camera steady.  Notice that most people in the street are men, but of the women, many choose not to wear burkas.

Typical Kabul Neighborhood