Kandahar

We got rocketed last night around 9:30 or so.  I never saw or heard anything other than the warning siren that forced you to put your boots back on, trudge through the thick sand-dune dust out to the bunker, wait 20 or 30 minutes for the all clear, and then you got to go back into the quarters.  This was among the least uncomfortable aspects of the day.

Mountains on the Way to Kandahar

The striking thing is how extraordinarily narrow the slice of habitation and cultivation is amid the expense of the mountainous barrenness.  Pretty much any direction you fly from Kabul - this time it was southwest - this is what impresses me, and the view is powerful and somehow different every time.  I will have more to say about Kandahar in a moment, because I got stuck there for two days.

Street Views

No need to be profound or verbose here - photos from the car as we were driving around in Mazar.  Note the white burqa of the woman on the motorcycle.  Blue is Kabul and the south, black chador is when you're close to the Iranian border, white is typical of north of the Hindu Kush.

Cracks

It is a very dry land.  Narrow strips with vegetation and a village are swallowed up in vast stretching dry dusty baked landscapes.  And usually even where there is a village, the great cracks in the earth come right up to the houses, sometimes overtaking the houses.  These are not river valleys or ravines or gullies where the rain runoff goes - there isn't any rain here.  These are places where the land is so clay-baked dry that it cracks.

Graffiti

There is graffiti to be found and analyzed.  The first two are pretty much self-explanatory, so I'll just let you read them yourselves.  The third might be confusing unless I explain.  Where it says "Long Live Amireca," the writer meant to spell "America."  The Dari has no misspellings, so no need to clarify. 

Buzkashi

The famous national sport is buzkashi, where the carcass of a goat is dragged around by riders on horseback.  The winner is the guy who finally has the goat carcass.  OK, so there are probably some subtleties I'm missing here.  Story is that this sport is used not only to claim and demonstrate political dominance, but also is a metaphor for Afghan politics through the ages.  Parts of this are probably applicable to U.S. politics as well, though I'm not sure which.  Still, it would be fun to force our leaders to drag a dead goat around all day in the desert sun.  This is a monument to Buzkashi outside Mazar.  My main interest is not this particular match, which by the way was won by the Fighting Irish 27-24 thanks to a debatable late clipping penalty.  Notice the sheep grazing in the first photo (OK, statues of sheep; you get my point).  Perhaps you can't tell, but their rear ends are, well, robust.  This is apparently a breed of sheep particular to parts of Afghanistan.  I've seen the kuchi, the nomadic tribe here, bring herds of goats and fat-bottomed sheep along the creek bed near the airport, and before I knew they were anything other than fat-assed sheep, I saw a bunch of them in Panjshir but didn't bother to take a photo.  Anyway, here's the point: these sheep, thanks to their prominent posteriors, are called by U.S. service members in the countryside "J-Lo's."  I think Jennifer Lopez should be proud of her lasting cultural impact on Afghanistan.  I think I also have hit upon an advertising idea for when I return to the U.S.

Blue Mosque in Mazar-e-Sharif

Mazar is the main city of the north, though centuries ago the most important city north of the Hindu Kush was Balkh.  It's not that big, but it does have an impressive mosque, the Blue Mosque, reputed to be the burial place of Hazrat Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed.  We were there on a Friday, and as the first photo shows, lots of people were going to Friday prayers, or at least hanging around the mosque.  Notice that some of the burkas are white, not blue; white is actually the most common color in the north.