One of the most interesting parts of driving around Kabul is noticing the overt security presence outside different buildings. Obviously the embassies and consulates are heavily secured, so I'm not going to mention these here. But here's a look at some of the more interesting places which are heavily secured:
1. Banks: Outside of embassies and consulates, Kabul's few bank branches are some of the most heavily guarded places in the city. A bank branch generally will have at least three armed guards outside, a big gate of the type that sit across the exits to parking garages (although the flimsy piece of metal in the parking garage gates has been replaced with a gigantic, 6-to-8-inch thick metal pole), and three to four security cameras trained on the parking lot. Actually, banks are also distinguished by the mere presence of a parking lot, even though I can probably count on one hand the number of cars I've seen parked in front of banks in my almost three weeks in Kabul.
2. Ex-pat bars and restaurants: The fact that gathering places for foreigners come with heavy security is unsurprising, but I have still been taken a little aback by the sheer number of precautions taken. One bar has four thick iron doors between the street and the interior, each one with at least one armed guard--in addition to security cameras and an exterior guard post with walls reinforced by sandbags (there is also a sort of corridor to the exterior door formed by about two-foot-high sandbag walls). Another restaurant has what must be an 8-inch-thick wooden door into a bizarre and disorienting foyer, which houses armed guards and is separated from the restaurant by another very thick, and extremely narrow--and therefore awkward--wooden door. A third bar has its own maze of iron doors and guards, all of which begin far behind a huge iron gate which is marked only with the logo of a package-delivery company. Physical separation from the street seems to be as important as guns and personnel, which is quite sensible.
3. Government agencies: Extremely heavily guarded and often equally badly marked. The Afghan Attorney General's office sits behind two huge gates, at least one gigantic blast wall (I can't see if there are more behind it), and five or six Kalashnikov-toting ANA soldiers (that's the Afghan National Army, for the Statesiders). The ministry that doles out the foreigner registration cards does not have a sign outside it; if you didn't know it was there, you would never find it, except if you inferred its existence from the presence of five uniformed, armed guards crowded into a doorway only wide enough for two of them. The sign for the Ministry of Hajj and Mosques--I may be mangling the actual title--looks for all the world like it was handwritten over the gate. Its two guards make it the least protected ministry I've seen, presumably because the religious fundamentalist opposition has fewer problems with the mosque ministry than with any of its cohorts in the government.
4. Western-style supermarkets: Another surprising (at least to me) entry on this list. The three main Western-oriented supermarkets in this part of town are interesting enough to warrant their own post, which will appear eventually. But they also all have at least one armed guard in front, and the one across the street from the British Embassy has three or four milling around nearby. These stores also have no parking lots, although they are set back from the street slightly, which to Afghan drivers is the equivalent of a football-stadium-sized sprawl of parking.
5. Entire streets in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood: Wazir Akbar Khan is a small neighborhood of Kabul, no more than seven or eight blocks long and five or six blocks wide. But it happens to be the area where most of the security contractors live and work. This means a few things. First, essentially all of the vehicles you see in WAK are SUVs. Second, the houses are enormous and almost comically fortified, with bales upon bales of concertina wire on top of huge concrete blast walls and gigantic sliding gates for the aforementioned SUVs. Third, almost all of the WAK guards wear sunglasses, while sunglasses are extremely rare elsewhere in Kabul (perhaps a manifestation of some form of Stockholm Syndrome, given whom they're guarding?). Finally, many of the streets in WAK--at least those which empty onto the main thoroughfare going through the neighborhood--have guard posts and big metal gates (the same type as those outside the banks) at the intersections with the main street. You can't even get onto the street without passing a guard inspection. Of course, this is just one of the many absurdities surrounding the life of a security contractor in Kabul...but that's for another time.
**Bonus points if you get the (probably mangled) reference in this post's title.
Monty Python...
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