This gentleman works for the Education Ministry. We met him at the airport on the day when we finally got out and headed back to Kabul. So we asked him his story. Turns out, he's supposed to take the teachers' pay, three months worth of it, to the Murghab district. Murghab is extremely isolated; we met another group of people who had been stranded there for 21 days. They couldn't take a land route out because the last convoy took, literally, 18 days (it's less than a hundred km) and at least 3 trucks were destroyed by the insurgents. Anyway, like most places outside the major cities, Murghab has no banks, much less electronic banking, so teachers and everybody else get paid, when they get paid, in cash. In his bags he is carrying several million afghanis. This was his 25th consecutive day at the airport, waiting for a flight to Murghab. Every day he goes there, and is told there are no seats available for him (even though there are flights), and he's told to come back again tomorrow. He didn't get out yesterday either, so I assume he's there again today, waiting to see if his luck will change, or if the coalition will realize that not paying teachers is not a good way to build support for the government to counter the insurgency, and so maybe they should give the man a ride.
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