I went out to a local restaurant for lunch today with a few of my co-workers, and at one point one of them said to me, "Now we have real democracy in Afghanistan." Surprised by this comment, I asked him what he meant. He told me that he was referring to the very open and public display of Muharram/Ashura paraphernalia by Afghanistan's Shia minority. All around Kabul, large gate-like structures are being erected at major intersections and covered in black cloth, and buildings and cars owned by Shias are festooned with huge, garish flags and banners bearing the name of the martyred Imam Hussain. During the Taliban regime, my co-worker told me, such displays would have been punishable by death--the Taliban, being radical Sunnis, didn't take too kindly to Shiite exuberance.
I've been thinking about my co-worker's comment all afternoon. On the one hand, as someone steeped in the Western political tradition, part of me wanted to tell him that while freedom of religion is indeed an important part of a democratic polity, "real" democracy goes far beyond that. And nobody who lives in, studies, or reads about Afghanistan for more than 30 seconds can possibly conclude that Afghan elections are actual examples of a meaningfully democratic process. Demos kratos--people power--requires that your votes actually count when you cast them, something that is too often absent from Afghan voting booths.
And yet I don't think it would be right of me to lecture my Afghan colleagues and friends about how they are wrong to believe that the freedom to display Imam Hussain's name openly constitutes real democracy, or at least an important step on the road thereto. Because the most meaningful types of power, and the most meaningful ways to exercise power, are not always political. The Taliban's religious beliefs are very different from those of the large majority of Afghans, so between the Communist coup in 1978 and the creation of the Karzai government in 2002, Afghans had to endure 24 years without real religious freedom. That must have been a significant hardship for most Afghans, none more so than the Shia population that was so heavily persecuted by the Taliban. The fact that taqiyya, or concealment of one's religious beliefs in order to avoid being persecuted, is explicitly endorsed within Shia Islam does not make it a desirable way to live one's life.
There is a moral to this story, although I'm not entirely sure what it is. Maybe it is simply that even though we have done a lot of things wrong in Afghanistan, and even though there are a lot of problems with the Karzai government in the short and long terms, there are also ways in which life in Afghanistan is simply and undeniably better than it was ten years ago. And some of those ways are very important to the Afghan people.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Lipstick on a Pig
Disclaimer: Yes, I realize that a pig may not be the most culturally-appropriate animal to choose as a metaphor for Kabul. Blame English's idiom inventory, not me.
Anyway.
Driving through the streets of Kabul the other day on my way from the airport to my guesthouse, the city looked extremely familiar to me. Not that I had expected much to change - I was only gone for a little over five months, after all, and things move slowly in Afghanistan. But I saw many of the same traffic jams, the same sad vegetable carts on the roadsides, the same beaten-down-but-determined-looking Afghans waiting for cabs, and too much of the same crushing poverty.
And then we turned onto the main street near my guesthouse. Now, this street is large enough to have a name, which means it is a relatively important roadway. And it does link one of the more bustling business areas of the city with one of the two or three biggest vehicle arteries in town. But it's really not that important in the scheme of things.
So I was quite surprised to see that the street had been paved in my absence--and not just paved, but paved seemingly quite well! With paint markings separating the lanes (even including solid lines and dashed lines to indicate where you could pass other cars). And real, brick sidewalks. And grates to cover the wialas.* And even crosswalks. I pointed this out to my driver (after three flights and two nights spent on airplanes, the best I could manage was "The street is not broken any more!"), and he commented excitedly that he was very happy about this development.
*Wialas are basically open sewers that run along each side of most of Kabul's streets. Not exactly the city's most endearing feature.
Now, one of the things that my time in Afghanistan has taught me is that it's difficult to overestimate how important a functional transportation infrastructure is to the economic development and prosperity of a country. And I'm sure that the paving of the road and the other tasks involved in the project provided much-needed employment and salary to more than a few needy Afghans.
Still, though, I wonder whether the money mightn't have been better spent on a water treatment plant, or a more reliable electric grid, or better healthcare, or even upgrading the road infrastructure on more important roads. The work done on our street strikes me as an excellent example of cosmetic change implemented mostly to be able to say that something was done.** Which is really not what Afghanistan needs right now.
**The choice of location was undoubtedly also influenced by the fact that there are more than a few international organizations in our area.
Anyway.
Driving through the streets of Kabul the other day on my way from the airport to my guesthouse, the city looked extremely familiar to me. Not that I had expected much to change - I was only gone for a little over five months, after all, and things move slowly in Afghanistan. But I saw many of the same traffic jams, the same sad vegetable carts on the roadsides, the same beaten-down-but-determined-looking Afghans waiting for cabs, and too much of the same crushing poverty.
And then we turned onto the main street near my guesthouse. Now, this street is large enough to have a name, which means it is a relatively important roadway. And it does link one of the more bustling business areas of the city with one of the two or three biggest vehicle arteries in town. But it's really not that important in the scheme of things.
So I was quite surprised to see that the street had been paved in my absence--and not just paved, but paved seemingly quite well! With paint markings separating the lanes (even including solid lines and dashed lines to indicate where you could pass other cars). And real, brick sidewalks. And grates to cover the wialas.* And even crosswalks. I pointed this out to my driver (after three flights and two nights spent on airplanes, the best I could manage was "The street is not broken any more!"), and he commented excitedly that he was very happy about this development.
*Wialas are basically open sewers that run along each side of most of Kabul's streets. Not exactly the city's most endearing feature.
Now, one of the things that my time in Afghanistan has taught me is that it's difficult to overestimate how important a functional transportation infrastructure is to the economic development and prosperity of a country. And I'm sure that the paving of the road and the other tasks involved in the project provided much-needed employment and salary to more than a few needy Afghans.
Still, though, I wonder whether the money mightn't have been better spent on a water treatment plant, or a more reliable electric grid, or better healthcare, or even upgrading the road infrastructure on more important roads. The work done on our street strikes me as an excellent example of cosmetic change implemented mostly to be able to say that something was done.** Which is really not what Afghanistan needs right now.
**The choice of location was undoubtedly also influenced by the fact that there are more than a few international organizations in our area.
Third World Problems
Today is the first day of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival marking Abraham's non-sacrifice of Ismail (you say Ismail, I say Isaac). The major ritual of the festival is the sacrifice of a cow (or lamb, or sheep, or goat, or breakfast cereal, or orangutan, or fruit bat). So our neighbors here, being good Muslims, brought in a cow last night for the sacrifice.
Problem is that this cow is apparently none too happy about this state of affairs, and it intends to let the world know. Very loudly. And very constantly. While the cow didn't wake me up last night with its lamentations, it did wake up some of my housemates.
For all of our sakes, I hope that the sacrifice occurs on the first day of the festival, and not the second or third...
#thirdworldproblems
Problem is that this cow is apparently none too happy about this state of affairs, and it intends to let the world know. Very loudly. And very constantly. While the cow didn't wake me up last night with its lamentations, it did wake up some of my housemates.
For all of our sakes, I hope that the sacrifice occurs on the first day of the festival, and not the second or third...
#thirdworldproblems
Friday, October 7, 2011
Happy Anniversary
5,256,000 minutes
5,256,000 moments so dear
5,256,000 minutes
How do you measure 10 years in the life?
In car bombs, in jailbreaks
In prayer calls and cups of chai
In night raids, in spies and laughter and strife.
5,256,000 minutes
How do you measure 10 years in the life?
Hell if I know.
(for the uninitiated: a hat tip to Jonathan Larson)
5,256,000 moments so dear
5,256,000 minutes
How do you measure 10 years in the life?
In car bombs, in jailbreaks
In prayer calls and cups of chai
In night raids, in spies and laughter and strife.
5,256,000 minutes
How do you measure 10 years in the life?
Hell if I know.
(for the uninitiated: a hat tip to Jonathan Larson)
Friday, August 19, 2011
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Clemons
I, like Dan Smock, am rather appalled by this series of tweets from a journalist named Steve Clemons (really, just go to his twitter feed and read all of them), who just happened to be in Kabul during the attack on the British Council early Friday morning. Dan does a good job of explaining what's wrong with most of Mr. Clemons' tweets, but he nicely overlooked the one that gets me the most, allowing me to take the ball and run with it.
At 11:49am Friday morning Kabul time, before the fighting at the British Council had even finished, we get this lovely tweet from Mr. Clemons: "Despite bombs & bullets, hope Afghans have great holiday today on National Independence Day. Despite drama had excellent trip to #Kabul." Good lord. Let me start by saying that any time you can make the U.S. Embassy look like it has its finger on the pulse of the city, you are doing something spectacularly oblivious.
But really, this doozy of a tweet from Mr. Clemons embodies much of what is most harmful about the way that the West views Afghanistan and its people. Only someone who comes in on what Dan so aptly terms a "whirlwind parachute tour" could write the above sentences. It all comes down to how you view attacks like Friday's and, more relevantly, Afghans' responses to them. Mr. Clemons tweeted this morning about how impressed he was with the resolve, courage, strength, and determination of the Afghans he was with as the attack was unfolding. He wrote about how they stayed cool under fire, while he was cowering in fear (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea). All of these things are true. Afghans who still live in-country have to be all of those things, because these attacks do happen, and you have to figure out how to cope with them.
But Mr. Clemons, like so many Westerners before him, is content to simply dust himself off and move on afterwards. And this is the appalling part. You have just witnessed a terrible event, Mr. Clemons. You have been shot at for doing nothing wrong--stupid, yes, but not wrong--and in so doing, you have gotten a surprisingly good glimpse into the life of far too many Afghans. Innocent Afghans are being targeted and killed by the Taliban with increasing frequency, and most of them weren't even stupid enough to stand on rooftops with bullets flying around them. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Afghans manage to remain friendly and hospitable in spite of this madness might seem amazing...until you consider that, well, it's their homeland, and where else would they go?
But back to Mr. Clemons. Having experienced first-hand how horrifically random the Taliban can be, what is his reaction? A desire to come back and do what he can to make things better? Articulate musings on the terror faced by everyday Afghans? Humility and a promise to reconsider his previous opinions about the war? No, no, and no. Instead, he basically says "have a nice time dodging the bombs, guys, and enjoy your holiday!" While jumping on his plane out of the country. With cool pictures of bullets to prove his bad-ass nature to the folks back home. Sigh.
I don't know what Mr. Clemons' intentions were, and I do not want to make it sound like I expect every first-time visitor to Afghanistan to be able to get their bearings immediately. I've also never been shot at, thankfully, and inshallah I won't ever be in Mr. Clemons' position, so take that for what it is worth, too. But even so, with his series of tweets and pictures, Mr. Clemons has reinforced the perception that Afghanistan is less a real country than some kind of twisted, dystopian safari. You hire your guides, go travel around, maybe get scared by a brush with some big, scary animal, and then find a cool souvenir or take some sweet pictures to show everyone back in the States. You speak glowingly about your guides and the natives while you're over there, particularly their ability to persevere under such awful conditions, and then tell them how much you hope they have good lives on your way up the jetway into your modern plane home.
Well, guess what? Afghanistan is real. The war is real. And it's hell for Kabulis, for Kandaharis, for every Afghan. And they can't escape it. Not like we can.
So no, Mr. Clemons, the Afghans won't just "have a great holiday today." Stay a bit longer next time, and you might even figure out why.
At 11:49am Friday morning Kabul time, before the fighting at the British Council had even finished, we get this lovely tweet from Mr. Clemons: "Despite bombs & bullets, hope Afghans have great holiday today on National Independence Day. Despite drama had excellent trip to #Kabul." Good lord. Let me start by saying that any time you can make the U.S. Embassy look like it has its finger on the pulse of the city, you are doing something spectacularly oblivious.
But really, this doozy of a tweet from Mr. Clemons embodies much of what is most harmful about the way that the West views Afghanistan and its people. Only someone who comes in on what Dan so aptly terms a "whirlwind parachute tour" could write the above sentences. It all comes down to how you view attacks like Friday's and, more relevantly, Afghans' responses to them. Mr. Clemons tweeted this morning about how impressed he was with the resolve, courage, strength, and determination of the Afghans he was with as the attack was unfolding. He wrote about how they stayed cool under fire, while he was cowering in fear (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea). All of these things are true. Afghans who still live in-country have to be all of those things, because these attacks do happen, and you have to figure out how to cope with them.
But Mr. Clemons, like so many Westerners before him, is content to simply dust himself off and move on afterwards. And this is the appalling part. You have just witnessed a terrible event, Mr. Clemons. You have been shot at for doing nothing wrong--stupid, yes, but not wrong--and in so doing, you have gotten a surprisingly good glimpse into the life of far too many Afghans. Innocent Afghans are being targeted and killed by the Taliban with increasing frequency, and most of them weren't even stupid enough to stand on rooftops with bullets flying around them. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Afghans manage to remain friendly and hospitable in spite of this madness might seem amazing...until you consider that, well, it's their homeland, and where else would they go?
But back to Mr. Clemons. Having experienced first-hand how horrifically random the Taliban can be, what is his reaction? A desire to come back and do what he can to make things better? Articulate musings on the terror faced by everyday Afghans? Humility and a promise to reconsider his previous opinions about the war? No, no, and no. Instead, he basically says "have a nice time dodging the bombs, guys, and enjoy your holiday!" While jumping on his plane out of the country. With cool pictures of bullets to prove his bad-ass nature to the folks back home. Sigh.
I don't know what Mr. Clemons' intentions were, and I do not want to make it sound like I expect every first-time visitor to Afghanistan to be able to get their bearings immediately. I've also never been shot at, thankfully, and inshallah I won't ever be in Mr. Clemons' position, so take that for what it is worth, too. But even so, with his series of tweets and pictures, Mr. Clemons has reinforced the perception that Afghanistan is less a real country than some kind of twisted, dystopian safari. You hire your guides, go travel around, maybe get scared by a brush with some big, scary animal, and then find a cool souvenir or take some sweet pictures to show everyone back in the States. You speak glowingly about your guides and the natives while you're over there, particularly their ability to persevere under such awful conditions, and then tell them how much you hope they have good lives on your way up the jetway into your modern plane home.
Well, guess what? Afghanistan is real. The war is real. And it's hell for Kabulis, for Kandaharis, for every Afghan. And they can't escape it. Not like we can.
So no, Mr. Clemons, the Afghans won't just "have a great holiday today." Stay a bit longer next time, and you might even figure out why.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Narchitecture
Kabul, in general, does not have terribly interesting architecture. Most of the buildings are the same shade of gray, because if there is one thing Kabul has a lot of, it is concrete.* The Afghan cultural desire for privacy, coupled with those annoying IEDs, leads just about everyone to build blast/privacy (depending on your point of view) walls in front of their houses, which further obscures most buildings, since Afghans don't usually build much higher than two stories.
And then there are the twin neighborhoods of Sherpur and Wazir Akbar Khan (often referred to jointly as "Wazir"), which are the Kabul equivalents of Central Park West or Beacon Hill. Wazir is where many of the richest people in Kabul (and therefore in Afghanistan) live, which means that many of the houses in the area, regardless of who currently occupies them, have been built by Afghan drug lords, and therefore have earned the moniker "poppy palaces."
Before discussing the downright objectionable design choices that go into these monstrosities, it is worthwhile to say a bit about just how wealthy these...businessmen really are. According to the 2010 UNODC Afghanistan Opium Survey, the national average price for one kilogram of dry opium in 2010 was $169, and the national average yield for opium was about 29.2 kg per hectare.** So an average hectare of land (that's about two and a half acres, for the non-metric folks) produced $4,934.80 in opium revenue for its owner in 2010. In that same year, the per capita GDP in Afghanistan was about $900. A farmer growing opium on a single hectare took in revenue equivalent to over five times the per capita GDP. And the drug lords who live in Wazir are probably bringing in revenue from thousands of hectares each. In a city where locally-grown food costs a few dollars a day, these guys are more or less rolling in cash.
Unfortunately for the eyes of those of us with Western architectural sensibilities, the drug lords seem to be substantially less adept at designing buildings than they are at running drugs. The sense you get driving through Wazir is that the builders of these houses cut out a lot of pictures of Western buildings, stuck them on a wall, and then threw darts at them to pick the different sections of the house. It's like architectural Mad Libs. The only way one could come up with houses like these is if, every time one had to make a design choice, one picked the most incongruous thing one could think of, super-sized it, and then added it.
Unfortunately, I did not bring back pictures of many of my favorite houses--drug lords tend to frown upon people snapping photos of their homes, and most of the time I went by the places I was bouncing around in the back seat of a car anyway. So I cannot bedazzle you with the giant Roman colonnade in front of one house, or the masterful clapboard-shingle-and-poured-concrete siding a few houses down. These pictures, though, give you a pretty good idea of the latest fads in Afghan home-building.
Because, really, when you're the kind of person with a lot of enemies, all of whom probably have large quantities of explosives on hand, there's nothing like a house with huge panes of glass facing the street.
*Some of the many things that Kabul does not have a lot of: wood, stone, marble, or money to buy the previous three things
**Damn you, metric system.
And then there are the twin neighborhoods of Sherpur and Wazir Akbar Khan (often referred to jointly as "Wazir"), which are the Kabul equivalents of Central Park West or Beacon Hill. Wazir is where many of the richest people in Kabul (and therefore in Afghanistan) live, which means that many of the houses in the area, regardless of who currently occupies them, have been built by Afghan drug lords, and therefore have earned the moniker "poppy palaces."
Before discussing the downright objectionable design choices that go into these monstrosities, it is worthwhile to say a bit about just how wealthy these...businessmen really are. According to the 2010 UNODC Afghanistan Opium Survey, the national average price for one kilogram of dry opium in 2010 was $169, and the national average yield for opium was about 29.2 kg per hectare.** So an average hectare of land (that's about two and a half acres, for the non-metric folks) produced $4,934.80 in opium revenue for its owner in 2010. In that same year, the per capita GDP in Afghanistan was about $900. A farmer growing opium on a single hectare took in revenue equivalent to over five times the per capita GDP. And the drug lords who live in Wazir are probably bringing in revenue from thousands of hectares each. In a city where locally-grown food costs a few dollars a day, these guys are more or less rolling in cash.
Unfortunately for the eyes of those of us with Western architectural sensibilities, the drug lords seem to be substantially less adept at designing buildings than they are at running drugs. The sense you get driving through Wazir is that the builders of these houses cut out a lot of pictures of Western buildings, stuck them on a wall, and then threw darts at them to pick the different sections of the house. It's like architectural Mad Libs. The only way one could come up with houses like these is if, every time one had to make a design choice, one picked the most incongruous thing one could think of, super-sized it, and then added it.
Unfortunately, I did not bring back pictures of many of my favorite houses--drug lords tend to frown upon people snapping photos of their homes, and most of the time I went by the places I was bouncing around in the back seat of a car anyway. So I cannot bedazzle you with the giant Roman colonnade in front of one house, or the masterful clapboard-shingle-and-poured-concrete siding a few houses down. These pictures, though, give you a pretty good idea of the latest fads in Afghan home-building.
Because, really, when you're the kind of person with a lot of enemies, all of whom probably have large quantities of explosives on hand, there's nothing like a house with huge panes of glass facing the street.
*Some of the many things that Kabul does not have a lot of: wood, stone, marble, or money to buy the previous three things
**Damn you, metric system.
Monday, August 8, 2011
The Funny-Sounding Germans
(N.B.: I've decided to resume posting here on an as-often-as-I-can basis, despite not being in Afghanistan for the moment. Please try to contain your glee)
Warning: Afghan geography ahead. Please consult this map liberally, and try to ignore the fact that no two people transliterate from Dari or Pashto the same way.
One of the things that has struck me most in the conversations I've had with people in the U.S. since returning from Afghanistan two and a half months ago is the degree to which most people do not understand the composition of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). This is likely because Americans heard (and gave) so much grief about how the Iraq War was America's personal crusade against [fill in the blank] that they have simply assumed that the war in Afghanistan is the same scenario. After all, they both started shortly after September 11, 2001, right? And they are both wars in Muslim countries, right? And we are, to use one of my favorite military/journalistic euphemisms, "bogged down" in both places, right?
Well, yes to all three of those (admittedly rhetorical) questions. But that does not mean that the wars are being fought the same way. Many, if not most, Americans seem to have forgotten that ISAF is a truly multi-national coalition. And despite the fact that ISAF's commander, Gen. John R. Allen, is an American, that does not mean that ISAF is a monolithic, and monolithically American, entity, especially from the point of view of the average Afghan.
For an Afghan, the most visible unit of international military presence in his country is the Provincial Reconstruction Team, or PRT. Most, but not all, of the provinces in Afghanistan have a PRT, which are grouped into sixregional commands (RCs): RC-North in Mazar-e-Sharif Province, RC-West in Herat Province, RC-Southwest in Helmand Province, RC-South in Kandahar Province, RC-East in Kabul Province, and RC-Capital in Kabul city. As the name suggests, the goal of the PRTs is to support reconstruction work in their respective provinces. This being Afghanistan, however, many PRTs in practice function as military command centers just as much as they do city planners. Tellingly, there has traditionally only been one PRT with a civilian commander: the PRT in Panjshir, which is by far the safest province in Afghanistan. More importantly for the average Afghan, the PRT serves as the place where he can communicate with the international military forces active in his province on his own terms. Personnel from the PRT attend meetings of development councils, advise Afghan political assemblies, and coordinate operations with the Afghan police and army. Each PRT has significant latitude to conduct operations within its jurisdiction as it sees fit.
So what kind of faces do Afghans see at these PRTs? Not just Americans, not by any stretch of the imagination. The US does command a dozen or so PRTs, and no other ISAF country commands more than one; we also command the two largest and most strategically important RCs, RC-South and RC-East. But RC-West, for example, is commanded by the Italians (it also serves as the PRT for Herat Province). RC-North, in Kunduz Province, is led by Germans, and RC-Southwest is British territory. On the PRT level, there is even more variety. As a few examples, there are Lithuanians commanding the PRT in Ghor, Spaniards in Badghis, Koreans in Parwan, Turks in Wardak, Kiwis in Bamiyan, and Hungarians in Baghlan.
The major effect of all of this, of course, is that Afghans' experiences with the foreign militaries in their country really do vary dramatically from place to place. They are not always interacting with Americans, nor always even with Europeans, so they cannot paint the troops with such broad brushes. Instead, the catch-all word used is kharijan--"foreigners" (literally, "people from outside"). When Afghans want to be critical of overarching principles or themes of the war, they cannot always point the finger back at America, or at any other single country. The simple fact that Afghans encounter a whole range of nationalities at the various PRTs makes it more difficult for them to cast blame reflexively. Which can only be a good thing, for everyone involved.
Of course, this plethora of different countries also produces some comic moments, one of which produced the post's title. Let me conclude with two of my favorites:
1. The Italian PRT in Herat is said to have some of the best food, and the best atmosphere, of any restaurant in the country. In true Italian style, the Italian PRT contains what very reliable sources say is a spot-on replica of a traditional Italian trattoria, of the sort that would not look out of place in a small Tuscan village. They also are said to import wine and other staples of Italian cuisine directly from Italy on a near-daily basis. You have to love the Italians.
2.While Afghans are generally an extremely savvy and street-smart people, they sometimes have trouble differentiating the various countries of the world. This is apparently a particular problem in Kunduz Province, which has a large detachment of German troops supported by some Belgians (as well as other nations). According to a colleague who has spent significant time in Kunduz, most locals there have a devil of a time differentiating the Germans and the Belgians. Most Afghans actually have a relatively good knowledge of Germany, as Germany contains a sizable Afghan expatriate population. But most rural Afghans have never encountered Belgium, which, inconveniently enough, has a flag that is easily confused with the German flag (most Afghans identify foreign troops by the flags on their vehicles or the flag patches on their uniforms). The confusion was summed up by one resident of Kunduz, who, in a move that would make most of Belgium seethe, told my colleague during an interview that there were two different foreign forces in his area: "the Germans, and the funny-sounding Germans."
Next time: Narc-itecture!
Warning: Afghan geography ahead. Please consult this map liberally, and try to ignore the fact that no two people transliterate from Dari or Pashto the same way.
One of the things that has struck me most in the conversations I've had with people in the U.S. since returning from Afghanistan two and a half months ago is the degree to which most people do not understand the composition of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). This is likely because Americans heard (and gave) so much grief about how the Iraq War was America's personal crusade against [fill in the blank] that they have simply assumed that the war in Afghanistan is the same scenario. After all, they both started shortly after September 11, 2001, right? And they are both wars in Muslim countries, right? And we are, to use one of my favorite military/journalistic euphemisms, "bogged down" in both places, right?
Well, yes to all three of those (admittedly rhetorical) questions. But that does not mean that the wars are being fought the same way. Many, if not most, Americans seem to have forgotten that ISAF is a truly multi-national coalition. And despite the fact that ISAF's commander, Gen. John R. Allen, is an American, that does not mean that ISAF is a monolithic, and monolithically American, entity, especially from the point of view of the average Afghan.
For an Afghan, the most visible unit of international military presence in his country is the Provincial Reconstruction Team, or PRT. Most, but not all, of the provinces in Afghanistan have a PRT, which are grouped into sixregional commands (RCs): RC-North in Mazar-e-Sharif Province, RC-West in Herat Province, RC-Southwest in Helmand Province, RC-South in Kandahar Province, RC-East in Kabul Province, and RC-Capital in Kabul city. As the name suggests, the goal of the PRTs is to support reconstruction work in their respective provinces. This being Afghanistan, however, many PRTs in practice function as military command centers just as much as they do city planners. Tellingly, there has traditionally only been one PRT with a civilian commander: the PRT in Panjshir, which is by far the safest province in Afghanistan. More importantly for the average Afghan, the PRT serves as the place where he can communicate with the international military forces active in his province on his own terms. Personnel from the PRT attend meetings of development councils, advise Afghan political assemblies, and coordinate operations with the Afghan police and army. Each PRT has significant latitude to conduct operations within its jurisdiction as it sees fit.
So what kind of faces do Afghans see at these PRTs? Not just Americans, not by any stretch of the imagination. The US does command a dozen or so PRTs, and no other ISAF country commands more than one; we also command the two largest and most strategically important RCs, RC-South and RC-East. But RC-West, for example, is commanded by the Italians (it also serves as the PRT for Herat Province). RC-North, in Kunduz Province, is led by Germans, and RC-Southwest is British territory. On the PRT level, there is even more variety. As a few examples, there are Lithuanians commanding the PRT in Ghor, Spaniards in Badghis, Koreans in Parwan, Turks in Wardak, Kiwis in Bamiyan, and Hungarians in Baghlan.
The major effect of all of this, of course, is that Afghans' experiences with the foreign militaries in their country really do vary dramatically from place to place. They are not always interacting with Americans, nor always even with Europeans, so they cannot paint the troops with such broad brushes. Instead, the catch-all word used is kharijan--"foreigners" (literally, "people from outside"). When Afghans want to be critical of overarching principles or themes of the war, they cannot always point the finger back at America, or at any other single country. The simple fact that Afghans encounter a whole range of nationalities at the various PRTs makes it more difficult for them to cast blame reflexively. Which can only be a good thing, for everyone involved.
Of course, this plethora of different countries also produces some comic moments, one of which produced the post's title. Let me conclude with two of my favorites:
1. The Italian PRT in Herat is said to have some of the best food, and the best atmosphere, of any restaurant in the country. In true Italian style, the Italian PRT contains what very reliable sources say is a spot-on replica of a traditional Italian trattoria, of the sort that would not look out of place in a small Tuscan village. They also are said to import wine and other staples of Italian cuisine directly from Italy on a near-daily basis. You have to love the Italians.
2.While Afghans are generally an extremely savvy and street-smart people, they sometimes have trouble differentiating the various countries of the world. This is apparently a particular problem in Kunduz Province, which has a large detachment of German troops supported by some Belgians (as well as other nations). According to a colleague who has spent significant time in Kunduz, most locals there have a devil of a time differentiating the Germans and the Belgians. Most Afghans actually have a relatively good knowledge of Germany, as Germany contains a sizable Afghan expatriate population. But most rural Afghans have never encountered Belgium, which, inconveniently enough, has a flag that is easily confused with the German flag (most Afghans identify foreign troops by the flags on their vehicles or the flag patches on their uniforms). The confusion was summed up by one resident of Kunduz, who, in a move that would make most of Belgium seethe, told my colleague during an interview that there were two different foreign forces in his area: "the Germans, and the funny-sounding Germans."
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Next time: Narc-itecture!
Friday, April 22, 2011
It's a Small World After All
Three weeks after the season started, and 27 days before I leave Kabul to head home to Boston, I saw my first live Red Sox action of the 2011 season. The broadcast began at 6:30am Kabul time on the morning of Friday, April 22, although the participants would tell you that the first pitch was thrown in Anaheim, CA, at 7:00pm Pacific Daylight Time on Thursday, April 21. The broadcast came to my TV via a rather grainy feed of the Indian version of ESPN, beamed to the satellite dish atop my guesthouse in Kabul. Indian ESPN apparently buys a local television feed of an MLB game every night, broadcasting it live at 3:30am Kabul time for games on the East Coast, and 6:30am Kabul Time for games on the West Coast. So for about two hours (between 8 and 10am), I got to listen to the Angels' announcers calling the game on some SoCal TV station.
And then I went to the gym with my housemates. And a funny thing happened on the way to (actually ON) the elliptical machine. The gym we were in (which is in the Serena Hotel, far and away the nicest hotel in town) has some exercise machines with built-in TVs. The elliptical I was on was one of these marvelous creations, and to make things even better, it got a(n even grainier) ESPN feed. I left my house with the game tied at 2 in the bottom of the 10th; by the time I turned on the TV on the elliptical, the Sox had taken a 4-2 lead and it was the bottom of the 11th. I proceeded to watch good ol' Jonathan Papelbon get two outs while allowing a runner to reach second base, and then run a 3-2 count on Howie Kendrick...
...and then the power went out in the gym. By the time the power came back 30 seconds later, the game had ended, with your intrepid correspondent having missed the clinching strikeout. But I guess that's the price you pay for watching live baseball on an elliptical machine in Kabul via Indian satellite TV.
And then I went to the gym with my housemates. And a funny thing happened on the way to (actually ON) the elliptical machine. The gym we were in (which is in the Serena Hotel, far and away the nicest hotel in town) has some exercise machines with built-in TVs. The elliptical I was on was one of these marvelous creations, and to make things even better, it got a(n even grainier) ESPN feed. I left my house with the game tied at 2 in the bottom of the 10th; by the time I turned on the TV on the elliptical, the Sox had taken a 4-2 lead and it was the bottom of the 11th. I proceeded to watch good ol' Jonathan Papelbon get two outs while allowing a runner to reach second base, and then run a 3-2 count on Howie Kendrick...
...and then the power went out in the gym. By the time the power came back 30 seconds later, the game had ended, with your intrepid correspondent having missed the clinching strikeout. But I guess that's the price you pay for watching live baseball on an elliptical machine in Kabul via Indian satellite TV.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
India Chronicles, Part 3: In Which Your Intrepid Correspondent Convalesces After His Bout With Food Poisoning
Marine Drive at night strikes me as an excellent microcosm of Mumbai.
Marine Drive is a major road in Mumbai, which runs along the shore of Back Bay, an inlet of the Arabian Sea that is encircled for about 270 degrees by the city. On the ocean side of the road, which is 6 or 8 lanes wide (the "lane" is a pretty flexible concept here) and divided in the middle by a narrow median, there is a wide sidewalk promenade and a concrete bench that hangs out over the "beach."* The place is reasonably well lit, and the person at the front desk of my hotel assured me that it's safe until late into the night.
*It's not really a beach, at least not until the north end of Marine Drive. Everywhere else, these very strange concrete blocks are piled up along the water's edge. Think about the shape created if you start with a ball and then add lines to it out to what would be the vertices of a triangular prism with the ball at its center. That's the shape of these blocks. I'm sure there's a name for this shape, but I have no idea what it is.
The first thing that struck me when I walked out onto Marine Drive about an hour and a half ago was the view. The only other time i had been on the road was in a taxi coming in from the airport yesterday morning, when it was so hazy that very little of anything was visible. Tonight, on the other hand, the lights and billboards of Mumbai's skyline lined the bay all the way around its edge. The sheer number of buildings was less impressive than their height; Mumbai rivals New York in the skyline department (and surpasses it by about 6 million in the population department). This being India, at least two of the buildings were cricket pitches, both of which are within four or five blocks of my hotel, and one of which will host the Cricket World Cup final in a few weeks.
More interesting, though, were the people. The promenade was bustling with Mumbai residents of various persuasions and backgrounds. Girls in miniskirts walked hand-in-hand with boyfriends, as did girls in abayas. Indian twenty-somethings chatted rapid-fire with each other, code-switching easily between English and one of the many Indian languages I don't understand (this being Mumbai, it was most likely Hindi or Marathi, but it's all Greek to me). On the road, ramshackle taxis that look like they were built by the British Raj jostled for position with sleek new Mercedes sedans.
And then the wind shifted, and for a second I was stopped in my tracks by the foul odor of raw sewage. It is, after all, Mumbai.
And then I kept walking, enthralled by the beauty of the scene and the crowds passing me by. It is, after all, Mumbai.
Marine Drive is a major road in Mumbai, which runs along the shore of Back Bay, an inlet of the Arabian Sea that is encircled for about 270 degrees by the city. On the ocean side of the road, which is 6 or 8 lanes wide (the "lane" is a pretty flexible concept here) and divided in the middle by a narrow median, there is a wide sidewalk promenade and a concrete bench that hangs out over the "beach."* The place is reasonably well lit, and the person at the front desk of my hotel assured me that it's safe until late into the night.
*It's not really a beach, at least not until the north end of Marine Drive. Everywhere else, these very strange concrete blocks are piled up along the water's edge. Think about the shape created if you start with a ball and then add lines to it out to what would be the vertices of a triangular prism with the ball at its center. That's the shape of these blocks. I'm sure there's a name for this shape, but I have no idea what it is.
The first thing that struck me when I walked out onto Marine Drive about an hour and a half ago was the view. The only other time i had been on the road was in a taxi coming in from the airport yesterday morning, when it was so hazy that very little of anything was visible. Tonight, on the other hand, the lights and billboards of Mumbai's skyline lined the bay all the way around its edge. The sheer number of buildings was less impressive than their height; Mumbai rivals New York in the skyline department (and surpasses it by about 6 million in the population department). This being India, at least two of the buildings were cricket pitches, both of which are within four or five blocks of my hotel, and one of which will host the Cricket World Cup final in a few weeks.
More interesting, though, were the people. The promenade was bustling with Mumbai residents of various persuasions and backgrounds. Girls in miniskirts walked hand-in-hand with boyfriends, as did girls in abayas. Indian twenty-somethings chatted rapid-fire with each other, code-switching easily between English and one of the many Indian languages I don't understand (this being Mumbai, it was most likely Hindi or Marathi, but it's all Greek to me). On the road, ramshackle taxis that look like they were built by the British Raj jostled for position with sleek new Mercedes sedans.
And then the wind shifted, and for a second I was stopped in my tracks by the foul odor of raw sewage. It is, after all, Mumbai.
And then I kept walking, enthralled by the beauty of the scene and the crowds passing me by. It is, after all, Mumbai.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
The India Chronicles Part 2: Agra and Cricket
I have a little while to wait here in the airport in Delhi* (flight is in about three and a half hours, but the fun should start when the cricket match begins in an hour and a half), so this seems like an excellent time for another installment of the Chronicles...
*I believe I mentioned this in the previous post, but Terminal 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport is quite possibly the pinnacle of airport design, and not just because I didn't have to wait in line at immigration when I landed on Thursday. I'm sitting in the pre-security portion waiting for check-in to begin; this part is one gigantic hall, with three walls made entirely out of windows and skylights in the roof. The only support beams are unobtrusively positioned right next to the check-in desks, meaning that they come off more as divisions between the banks of desks than as huge slabs of stone. The exterior is all curves and diagonals, but perfectly calibrated so as not to seem off-puttingly futuristic. With working Wi-Fi and a few more food outlets (sorry, guys, but I really don't need five different kinds of juice stands - a little more actual food would be a lot more useful), it would be absolutely perfect.
First of all, the Taj Mahal is one of the few places I've ever seen that manages to live up to the enormous hype it receives. It is truly a stunning architectural achievement, a spectacular fusion of (at least) three distinct architectural traditions--Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim--set in a beautiful garden and executed to perfection.** Everything in the building is exquisite, from the inlaid stones on the upper facade that sparkle in the sunlight to the marble latticework on the interior to the minarets. The minarets are worth special mention, not because they are particularly intricate (they're actually quite plain), but because they are intentionally angled nine degrees off of the vertical, tilting slightly, but perceptibly, away from the main building of the Taj. The reason? In case of an earthquake, the minarets will fall outwards, crashing to the ground but sparing the main building. It's all perfectly thought out and brilliantly executed.
**Well, three sides of the building are a beautiful garden, anyway. The fourth side is the Jamuna River, which is one of the foulest rivers I've seen in a long time, in addition to only filling about half of its channel at the moment.
The Taj Mahal was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Unfortunately, on the train ride back from Agra to Delhi, I got to see some of the ugliest things I've ever seen. The train passed by some of the most disgusting slums I've ever seen, particularly on what I believe was the outskirts of Faridabad (although I could be wrong - stops are only announced on the most expensive tier of Indian trains. If you're riding the trains that normal Indians ride, as I was, you're on your own). These slums may well never be fully clean ever again, and maybe never have been fully clean. It's the tail end of the dry season, as evidenced by the state of the Jamuna River in Agra, and yet the dirt tracks in these slums were lakes of water from the drizzles of the previous night; if the drainage is that bad now, what happens in the monsoon season? Trash was piled in expansive heaps, at which surprisingly well-fed cows picked half-heartedly. Next to the trash heaps were the circular cow patties that residents use for fuel, which they had laid out to bake in the sun or piled in conical towers. Men lounged or urinated on walls (although the latter is a common practice here, even on the sides of major roads in Delhi); children in filthy, tattered clothes played cricket with filthy, tattered cricket balls. Not that this scene was unique to the outskirts of Faridabad. This morning, at the main train station in Agra--one of the country's largest tourist hubs and home to at least five 5-star hotels--I walked down the platform too close to the tracks and was physically repulsed by the stench of animal waste (I'd guess a mixture of human and bovine, but I didn't exactly investigate. The platforms in Agra were covered in trash and spilled food, and a shockingly large number of people were sleeping on the ground between the benches even at 7:00 this morning (somehow remaining asleep despite the cacaphonous noise of passengers, PA announcements, and train horns).
Obviously India should work on cleaning up the slums, stations, and other loci of poverty and misery, but, to paraphrase Jay-Z, the country has 99 problems and poverty is just one (albeit a big one). There's also no "white man's burden" here; this is India's problem, not mine, and it's not the job of the West to clean up India's cesspools.*** The extent of the slums and the depth of the poverty therein mean that the problem is neither going to go away nor be solved overnight. For the foreseeable future, anyway, this is part of what India is. I'm just not sure how it affects my opinion of the place yet.
***Although the amount of littering by Westerners here is kind of appalling. Just because it's already a mess, guys, doesn't mean that we can make it worse by tossing stuff out of taxi windows. Seriously.
UPDATE FROM BEHIND SECURITY
First of all, the Indians are incompetent at this whole checking-in thing. Air India "opened" about seven check-in counters at one time, all for flights departing between 4:30 and 5:00. Problem is, they only put someone at two of them initially, and didn't bother to tell anyone that the other counters weren't going to be staffed for a while. Eventually they deigned to tell us this, meaning that the few open counters suddenly had huge lines. Then people slowly started to staff the closed counters sporadically. Except that they all were having IT problems. After about 30 minutes, despite initially being the first person in line at my counter, I finally got through.
Now I'm sitting at, I kid you not, the "Cricket Fan Park" in the domestic departures area. There is a gigantic big-screen TV here broadcasting the India-England cricket match, which is about to start. Unfortunately there seems to be no sound, because, you know, they make flight announcements and stuff. But EVERYONE here is watching the TV, except for the (other) foreigners. Security guards. Airport staff. Cleaning people. Just about every Indian here. Everyone is watching.
It's pretty incredible.
*I believe I mentioned this in the previous post, but Terminal 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport is quite possibly the pinnacle of airport design, and not just because I didn't have to wait in line at immigration when I landed on Thursday. I'm sitting in the pre-security portion waiting for check-in to begin; this part is one gigantic hall, with three walls made entirely out of windows and skylights in the roof. The only support beams are unobtrusively positioned right next to the check-in desks, meaning that they come off more as divisions between the banks of desks than as huge slabs of stone. The exterior is all curves and diagonals, but perfectly calibrated so as not to seem off-puttingly futuristic. With working Wi-Fi and a few more food outlets (sorry, guys, but I really don't need five different kinds of juice stands - a little more actual food would be a lot more useful), it would be absolutely perfect.
First of all, the Taj Mahal is one of the few places I've ever seen that manages to live up to the enormous hype it receives. It is truly a stunning architectural achievement, a spectacular fusion of (at least) three distinct architectural traditions--Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim--set in a beautiful garden and executed to perfection.** Everything in the building is exquisite, from the inlaid stones on the upper facade that sparkle in the sunlight to the marble latticework on the interior to the minarets. The minarets are worth special mention, not because they are particularly intricate (they're actually quite plain), but because they are intentionally angled nine degrees off of the vertical, tilting slightly, but perceptibly, away from the main building of the Taj. The reason? In case of an earthquake, the minarets will fall outwards, crashing to the ground but sparing the main building. It's all perfectly thought out and brilliantly executed.
**Well, three sides of the building are a beautiful garden, anyway. The fourth side is the Jamuna River, which is one of the foulest rivers I've seen in a long time, in addition to only filling about half of its channel at the moment.
The Taj Mahal was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Unfortunately, on the train ride back from Agra to Delhi, I got to see some of the ugliest things I've ever seen. The train passed by some of the most disgusting slums I've ever seen, particularly on what I believe was the outskirts of Faridabad (although I could be wrong - stops are only announced on the most expensive tier of Indian trains. If you're riding the trains that normal Indians ride, as I was, you're on your own). These slums may well never be fully clean ever again, and maybe never have been fully clean. It's the tail end of the dry season, as evidenced by the state of the Jamuna River in Agra, and yet the dirt tracks in these slums were lakes of water from the drizzles of the previous night; if the drainage is that bad now, what happens in the monsoon season? Trash was piled in expansive heaps, at which surprisingly well-fed cows picked half-heartedly. Next to the trash heaps were the circular cow patties that residents use for fuel, which they had laid out to bake in the sun or piled in conical towers. Men lounged or urinated on walls (although the latter is a common practice here, even on the sides of major roads in Delhi); children in filthy, tattered clothes played cricket with filthy, tattered cricket balls. Not that this scene was unique to the outskirts of Faridabad. This morning, at the main train station in Agra--one of the country's largest tourist hubs and home to at least five 5-star hotels--I walked down the platform too close to the tracks and was physically repulsed by the stench of animal waste (I'd guess a mixture of human and bovine, but I didn't exactly investigate. The platforms in Agra were covered in trash and spilled food, and a shockingly large number of people were sleeping on the ground between the benches even at 7:00 this morning (somehow remaining asleep despite the cacaphonous noise of passengers, PA announcements, and train horns).
Obviously India should work on cleaning up the slums, stations, and other loci of poverty and misery, but, to paraphrase Jay-Z, the country has 99 problems and poverty is just one (albeit a big one). There's also no "white man's burden" here; this is India's problem, not mine, and it's not the job of the West to clean up India's cesspools.*** The extent of the slums and the depth of the poverty therein mean that the problem is neither going to go away nor be solved overnight. For the foreseeable future, anyway, this is part of what India is. I'm just not sure how it affects my opinion of the place yet.
***Although the amount of littering by Westerners here is kind of appalling. Just because it's already a mess, guys, doesn't mean that we can make it worse by tossing stuff out of taxi windows. Seriously.
UPDATE FROM BEHIND SECURITY
First of all, the Indians are incompetent at this whole checking-in thing. Air India "opened" about seven check-in counters at one time, all for flights departing between 4:30 and 5:00. Problem is, they only put someone at two of them initially, and didn't bother to tell anyone that the other counters weren't going to be staffed for a while. Eventually they deigned to tell us this, meaning that the few open counters suddenly had huge lines. Then people slowly started to staff the closed counters sporadically. Except that they all were having IT problems. After about 30 minutes, despite initially being the first person in line at my counter, I finally got through.
Now I'm sitting at, I kid you not, the "Cricket Fan Park" in the domestic departures area. There is a gigantic big-screen TV here broadcasting the India-England cricket match, which is about to start. Unfortunately there seems to be no sound, because, you know, they make flight announcements and stuff. But EVERYONE here is watching the TV, except for the (other) foreigners. Security guards. Airport staff. Cleaning people. Just about every Indian here. Everyone is watching.
It's pretty incredible.
Friday, February 25, 2011
The India Chronicles, Day 1: In Which The Chronicles Begin
Greetings from Agra, India! Your correspondent has just begun a nine-day, ten-night vacation in the world's second-largest country, so we will be interrupting our (ir-)regularly scheduled programming to bring you a series of posts chronicling our hero's adventures and exploits in the subcontinent. Part one of the chronicle is as follows:
I readily admit that I seem to have underestimated India. This may well be due to the fact that I spent the three months immediately preceding this trip in Afghanistan, but I have been pleasantly surprised by much of the infrastructure I've seen here. The roads, for example, are beautifully maintained (sample size so far: main roads in and around Delhi, and some of the major thoroughfares connecting Agra's train station with my hotel, Fatehpur Sikri, Sikandra, and the Baby Taj). Cell coverage is excellent, and my Afghan SIM card is even sometimes able to find a network it can play nicely with. Terminal 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi is, in a word, exquisite; it is by far the prettiest airport terminal I've ever seen, in addition to being quite easy to use for tourists.* The sites and monuments are also spectacular. Don't worry, dear readers--there will be a flickr link posted at the end of the trip for those interested ;).
*There was also NOBODY in line at immigration when I got there, which is undoubtedly skewing my perceptions a bit.
But this blog is, at its heart, about the unusual, remarkable, or downright ridiculous things that its author believes provide insight into cultures and peoples. I've been in India for less than 24 hours (damn you, Kabul Int'l Airport, and your 90-minute delays for NO DISCERNIBLE REASON WHATSOEVER), and already there have been several things that fit the above description.
1. The cows. I already knew that Hindus venerate cows as symbols of Brahma, but I hadn't been expecting to see as many of them as I've been seeing. I also didn't know that the Hindi word for cow is pronounced "cow" (don't even think about asking me how it is spelled). Cows are EVERYWHERE in Agra. I didn't see any in Delhi, but it was nighttime and my cab driver was more interested in pointing out the sights than the fauna to me as we drove by (and rightly so). In Agra, however, you can't go more than a hundred yards without seeing at least one cow tied up in front of a store, or roaming freely in the field...or on the median strip...or on the road. There are also dogs everywhere, although apparently dogs are more kosher in Hinduism than in Islam, which probably explains why Agra's dogs look so much better looked after than Kabul's dogs do. Oddly enough, the vast majority of these cows are chained to posts with chains barely long enough to allow the cows to stand up straight, confining them to maybe a one-meter radius around the post. This seems like an odd way to treat a sacred animal, but who am I to judge?
1a. The monkeys. Monkeys are apparently also sacred, and they roam freely in parts of Agra, although they are far less numerous than the cows. Unlike the cows, I had no idea that monkeys were at all sacred. An odd surprise.
2. The trains. Indian trains are amazing things (I can only speak from experience regarding the AC Second Class carriages). First of all, the classification system for the various levels of service is unbelievably byzantine - there are six or seven classes, not all of which exist on every train, and none of which have any explanations on the official website. Furthermore, there is no indication at the stations where exactly your assigned car is. You apparently are simply supposed to know how exactly the twenty-odd carriages of the train are organized, although it's really rather easy in practice.
The trains themselves, though, are really a lot of fun. I had a "side lower" berth on my train from Delhi to Agra, which meant that I had a cot to myself on one side of the carriage. I could draw a curtain across the entire length of my bed for privacy, and I had a window that ran most of the length of my berth. There were multiple mesh holders for water bottles, papers, and the like; an outlet (shaped, like every outlet I've seen here so far, to be able to accomodate Indian, American, British, *and* European plugs); a reading light, and a switch controlling the overhead light in the corridor right above the berth. The train looked a bit dated, but it was clean and left on time, although an unexplained 20-minute halt just outside Agra station did provide some annoyance. Vendors moved up and down the aisles selling snacks and such, although the fact that they only hawked their wares in Hindi made it somewhat difficult (the "biscuit" guy was far and away the easiest to figure out). Also, shortly after the train pulled out of the station, the Delhi area was hit by a lightning storm, which I got to watch from the comfort of my berth. All in all, it was an excellent way to begin my exploration of India.
3. The contrasts. Much of the subsection of Delhi between the airport and my train station (not the main one for the city) was either tree-lined, high-rent residential or well-designed, high-capacity highway. Most of the monument sights I saw today in Agra were well-maintained and securely guarded--apparently the monument guards are from a prestigious special corps drawn from all branches of the Indian military and containing only the best of the best. And yet, while driving around Agra, the desperate poverty of much of the country's roughly 1.2 billion people was unmistakeable. For example, at the foot of the stairs leading to one of the gates of the mosque complex at Fatehpur Sikri--the tallest gate in India, according to my guide, and certainly a stunning piece of architecture--beggars and young children competed for the attention of the foreigners in squalor made all the more startling by its proximity to the lavish architecture of the monuments. India clearly cares greatly about preserving its cultural heritage: roads for some distance around the Taj are closed to automobile traffic in order to try to lessen the impact of automobile exhaust on the building's white marble structure. But it is exactly this care for the monuments that reinforces the surrounding poverty.
I am not out to demonize the world's largest democracy for failing to provide for every person in its multitudinous citizenry, and the government here is clearly doing a lot of things right. Staying on the monument theme, entrance fees for foreigners to major monuments are, at least in Agra, ten times higher than the fees for Indian nationals--at the Taj, for example, it costs me 500 rupees to get in (a little over $11; unlike the afghani-to-dollar exchange rate, which seems to be eternally pegged at 45-to-1 despite not actually being pegged at all, the rupee-to-dollar rate varies from place to place), but it costs an Indian national only 50 rupees (about $1.20). This makes a lot of sense: it places most of the financial burden of the monuments' upkeep on those who have money (the foreigners) rather than those who have comparatively less (many Indians), while simultaneously ensuring that all but the poorest of Indians will be able to experience and learn about their own heritage. Still, though, the sight of such poverty so close to the splendors of past empires was striking--striking enough that even my own guide, whose job it is to show off India to me, expressed his disappointment at the government for allowing such a situation.
It's been a long day, and it's time for me to kick back and see if Ireland can actually manage to pull off the upset against Bangladesh in the cricket World Cup. More to come soon...
I readily admit that I seem to have underestimated India. This may well be due to the fact that I spent the three months immediately preceding this trip in Afghanistan, but I have been pleasantly surprised by much of the infrastructure I've seen here. The roads, for example, are beautifully maintained (sample size so far: main roads in and around Delhi, and some of the major thoroughfares connecting Agra's train station with my hotel, Fatehpur Sikri, Sikandra, and the Baby Taj). Cell coverage is excellent, and my Afghan SIM card is even sometimes able to find a network it can play nicely with. Terminal 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi is, in a word, exquisite; it is by far the prettiest airport terminal I've ever seen, in addition to being quite easy to use for tourists.* The sites and monuments are also spectacular. Don't worry, dear readers--there will be a flickr link posted at the end of the trip for those interested ;).
*There was also NOBODY in line at immigration when I got there, which is undoubtedly skewing my perceptions a bit.
But this blog is, at its heart, about the unusual, remarkable, or downright ridiculous things that its author believes provide insight into cultures and peoples. I've been in India for less than 24 hours (damn you, Kabul Int'l Airport, and your 90-minute delays for NO DISCERNIBLE REASON WHATSOEVER), and already there have been several things that fit the above description.
1. The cows. I already knew that Hindus venerate cows as symbols of Brahma, but I hadn't been expecting to see as many of them as I've been seeing. I also didn't know that the Hindi word for cow is pronounced "cow" (don't even think about asking me how it is spelled). Cows are EVERYWHERE in Agra. I didn't see any in Delhi, but it was nighttime and my cab driver was more interested in pointing out the sights than the fauna to me as we drove by (and rightly so). In Agra, however, you can't go more than a hundred yards without seeing at least one cow tied up in front of a store, or roaming freely in the field...or on the median strip...or on the road. There are also dogs everywhere, although apparently dogs are more kosher in Hinduism than in Islam, which probably explains why Agra's dogs look so much better looked after than Kabul's dogs do. Oddly enough, the vast majority of these cows are chained to posts with chains barely long enough to allow the cows to stand up straight, confining them to maybe a one-meter radius around the post. This seems like an odd way to treat a sacred animal, but who am I to judge?
1a. The monkeys. Monkeys are apparently also sacred, and they roam freely in parts of Agra, although they are far less numerous than the cows. Unlike the cows, I had no idea that monkeys were at all sacred. An odd surprise.
2. The trains. Indian trains are amazing things (I can only speak from experience regarding the AC Second Class carriages). First of all, the classification system for the various levels of service is unbelievably byzantine - there are six or seven classes, not all of which exist on every train, and none of which have any explanations on the official website. Furthermore, there is no indication at the stations where exactly your assigned car is. You apparently are simply supposed to know how exactly the twenty-odd carriages of the train are organized, although it's really rather easy in practice.
The trains themselves, though, are really a lot of fun. I had a "side lower" berth on my train from Delhi to Agra, which meant that I had a cot to myself on one side of the carriage. I could draw a curtain across the entire length of my bed for privacy, and I had a window that ran most of the length of my berth. There were multiple mesh holders for water bottles, papers, and the like; an outlet (shaped, like every outlet I've seen here so far, to be able to accomodate Indian, American, British, *and* European plugs); a reading light, and a switch controlling the overhead light in the corridor right above the berth. The train looked a bit dated, but it was clean and left on time, although an unexplained 20-minute halt just outside Agra station did provide some annoyance. Vendors moved up and down the aisles selling snacks and such, although the fact that they only hawked their wares in Hindi made it somewhat difficult (the "biscuit" guy was far and away the easiest to figure out). Also, shortly after the train pulled out of the station, the Delhi area was hit by a lightning storm, which I got to watch from the comfort of my berth. All in all, it was an excellent way to begin my exploration of India.
3. The contrasts. Much of the subsection of Delhi between the airport and my train station (not the main one for the city) was either tree-lined, high-rent residential or well-designed, high-capacity highway. Most of the monument sights I saw today in Agra were well-maintained and securely guarded--apparently the monument guards are from a prestigious special corps drawn from all branches of the Indian military and containing only the best of the best. And yet, while driving around Agra, the desperate poverty of much of the country's roughly 1.2 billion people was unmistakeable. For example, at the foot of the stairs leading to one of the gates of the mosque complex at Fatehpur Sikri--the tallest gate in India, according to my guide, and certainly a stunning piece of architecture--beggars and young children competed for the attention of the foreigners in squalor made all the more startling by its proximity to the lavish architecture of the monuments. India clearly cares greatly about preserving its cultural heritage: roads for some distance around the Taj are closed to automobile traffic in order to try to lessen the impact of automobile exhaust on the building's white marble structure. But it is exactly this care for the monuments that reinforces the surrounding poverty.
I am not out to demonize the world's largest democracy for failing to provide for every person in its multitudinous citizenry, and the government here is clearly doing a lot of things right. Staying on the monument theme, entrance fees for foreigners to major monuments are, at least in Agra, ten times higher than the fees for Indian nationals--at the Taj, for example, it costs me 500 rupees to get in (a little over $11; unlike the afghani-to-dollar exchange rate, which seems to be eternally pegged at 45-to-1 despite not actually being pegged at all, the rupee-to-dollar rate varies from place to place), but it costs an Indian national only 50 rupees (about $1.20). This makes a lot of sense: it places most of the financial burden of the monuments' upkeep on those who have money (the foreigners) rather than those who have comparatively less (many Indians), while simultaneously ensuring that all but the poorest of Indians will be able to experience and learn about their own heritage. Still, though, the sight of such poverty so close to the splendors of past empires was striking--striking enough that even my own guide, whose job it is to show off India to me, expressed his disappointment at the government for allowing such a situation.
It's been a long day, and it's time for me to kick back and see if Ireland can actually manage to pull off the upset against Bangladesh in the cricket World Cup. More to come soon...
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Kabul, thy name is mud
There are some cities that are nice in the rain. Rome, for instance, has lots of cobblestone streets that get interestingly reflective in a spring evening shower. And if London weren't at least tolerable in the rain, nobody would live there, so I figure it can't be all that bad.
Kabul, suffice it to say, is not one of these cities. Many of the streets of this fine city are dirt roads--or at least they were until two days ago, when it rained for the first time in my almost two and a half months living here. Now said streets are ribbons of mud, punctuated with the occasional (unintentional) speed bump, and pockmarked by puddles of Brobdingnagian proportions. Walking on these streets feels like walking on black ice, because within about 20 feet one's shoe treads get packed full of mud, leaving one to slide around haplessly.
And then there is the fact that what passes for a sewer system in Kabul, called wialas, run alongside most major streets and are open to the air. They don't generally smell as bad as one might think (perhaps because I think most houses actually have septic tanks), but they present particular hazards on the muddy "sidewalks."
In short, I'm not too thrilled by this whole "rainy season" concept here.
P.S. Apologies for the long hiatus in posts: have been working on a huge report--25,000 words--that is just about done at this point. Posting should resume more regularly now or in the near future.
Kabul, suffice it to say, is not one of these cities. Many of the streets of this fine city are dirt roads--or at least they were until two days ago, when it rained for the first time in my almost two and a half months living here. Now said streets are ribbons of mud, punctuated with the occasional (unintentional) speed bump, and pockmarked by puddles of Brobdingnagian proportions. Walking on these streets feels like walking on black ice, because within about 20 feet one's shoe treads get packed full of mud, leaving one to slide around haplessly.
And then there is the fact that what passes for a sewer system in Kabul, called wialas, run alongside most major streets and are open to the air. They don't generally smell as bad as one might think (perhaps because I think most houses actually have septic tanks), but they present particular hazards on the muddy "sidewalks."
In short, I'm not too thrilled by this whole "rainy season" concept here.
P.S. Apologies for the long hiatus in posts: have been working on a huge report--25,000 words--that is just about done at this point. Posting should resume more regularly now or in the near future.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Tirin Kot Part 2: The Journey Is Half The Fun
Flying out of Kabul International Airport (KBL) is an interesting experience. Here's what happens when you drive up to KBL on a frigid January morning for a 7am flight to Tirin Kot:
1. You get out of your car about 500 meters away from the parking lot for the first search. At this checkpoint, you get out of the car for a pat-down by guards, who may or may not also search the car for explosives (it was 5:00 in the morning when we got to this point, so I was neither fully awake nor able to see everything going on, thanks to the lack of streetlights). After the pat-down, you walk up the sidewalk for a rather arbitrary distance until you meet their car again. Meanwhile, your driver (nobody drives by themselves in Kabul) also get out of the car for pat-downs, after which they get back in and drive up to meet you again.
2. Once you, now freezing cold, are reunited with your vehicles, your driver drives on until you reach a bizarre metal structure that looks something like a car wash. At this point, you part ways with your driver and, after another pat-down, you wait in line to enter a rather ramshackle-looking building. Inside the building, you are briefly relieved to see an x-ray machine, until you realize that it is not actually functional. You wait in line to have your bags searched by hand under the pale yellow light of a single, over-taxed light bulb, glorying in the body heat released by your fellow line-mates and calculating how much faster it would have been to do this whole process with the x-ray machine. After your duffel bag (but not your computer bag) has been cursorily searched, you head off to the terminal.
3. On the way to the terminal you enter a waiting area with a few of the sort of shops that you might expect to find in normal, First or Second World airports. Except that in KBL, these shops are tiny and closed when the airport opens. Compounding the indignity of being unable to get a decent (even by Afghan standards) breakfast, you discover that someone, in a flash of unspeakable genius, has decided to open both of the outside doors in this waiting room, such that the temperature inside is the same 25 degrees as it is outside. After scraping together what semblance of a breakfast you can find here, you hurriedly march on over to the main terminal building.
4. In front of the main terminal building, you wait in line to show your ticket to two guards who may or may not be literate, and who also may or may not get a chance to actually take a look at your ticket. Once past them, you are directed to a (functioning!) X-ray machine, where your bags are given the most cursory examination possible. You then find yourself at the domestic ticket counters--all five of them. Each one has a flight and destination listed on a board above it - three to Herat, one to Kandahar, and one to "TII," the IATA code for Tirin Kot, although nowhere is the city's name actually written (perhaps the airport authorities assume that you are either a Wikipedia addict or will just figure things out by process of elimination. Here you discover the most astonishing part of the entire endeavor. All you have to do is show a printout of an e-ticket to receive a boarding pass - YOU DO NOT ACTUALLY NEED TO SHOW AN ID TO GET YOUR BOARDING PASS. IN FACT, YOU ARE NOT ASKED FOR AN ID AT ANY POINT BETWEEN GETTING OUT OF YOUR VEHICLE AND BOARDING THE PLANE. What's more, the boarding pass you do receive is recycled from Kam Air Flight 014 (you are flying on Flight 119), which flies from Delhi to Kabul. You realize that Kam Air could not be bothered with indignities such as actually printing out boarding passes--this might require them to check IDs, after all--and as such, they have just crossed out the bits of information which are annoyingly irrelevant: the flight number, the routing, the date, the time, the gate; in short, just about the entire boarding pass. Shaking your head at the ineptitude on display, you line up for another screening.
5. After waiting in line and being subjected to something actually bearing more than a passing resemblance to a real airport screening, you collect your carry-on bags and head to the domestic gates. Except that you quickly realize that there is only one domestic gate, with only one gate area for people to sit in, despite the fact that there are five or six flights leaving at once.* The place is wall-to-wall people. Footsore from your dystopian oddysey, you ask the experienced Afghan traveling with you if there is a place to sit somewhere else. After arranging with a friend he ran into in the gate area to call you when your flight is announced**, you head up to the international boarding area to sit.
*The majority of the daily flights from KBL are scheduled to leave before 9am, for some reason known only to Allah--and I don't think he's in the revelation business anymore.
**Domestic flight announcements are not made in the international boarding area, providing yet one more piece of evidence that Afghanistan's national anthem really should be "With A Little Help From My Friends."***
***People here really do get by with a little help from their friends, and they do try with a little help from their friends. And they certainly get high with a little help from their friends.
6. Once you have been alerted to the announcement of your flight, you proceed back downstairs to the domestic area and fight your way through the crowd to the sliding glass door that leads out to the tarmac. After telling the guards there which flight you are on (remember, the boarding pass is clearly useless here, given that it says you are in Delhi at the moment), you are directed to an uninspiring bus, which will drive you to your airplane. You stop to wonder why the airplane is parked far enough away from the terminal to require a bus, since KBL is not exactly Heathrow in terms of aircraft movements, but you quickly return from your reverie and head to the bus. The bus ride is actually surprisingly short, but it ends in front of a similarly uninspiring Kam Air AN-24, a Russian-made propellor plane with about 12 rows of seats and, as you will discover to your dismay, an evidently non-functioning heater. But for the moment, you are blissfully ignorant of this fact.
7. And then you step into the plane, which you have been looking forward to all morning, since only the most incompetent of airlines would let a plane sit on the tarmac overnight in 25-degree weather and then not turn on the heater before letting the passengers board. As soon as you set foot in the plane, you reconsider that assertion, if only in the hope of reassuring yourself that the airline in whose hands your life will rest for the next 90 minutes is not really that bad. As you find your (unassigned) seat, you notice that the signs in the cabin are printed in Russian, while the safety card is written only in English; thankfully, you choose an exit row, which means that at least one person who will be responsible for facilitating a hypothetical evacuation is able to read the instructions for what they will have to do (how many Afghans know the word "depressurization"? Probably not many...). You try to put your (small) duffel bag onto the overhead rack (Antonov, the Russian company who brought you the aviation marvel in which you find yourself, apparently had no use for actual bins for carry-ons), only to discover that the space between the rack and the ceiling of the cabin is roughly eight inches, far too small for your bag. Under your seat it goes. The obligatory pre-flight announcement is delivered only in Pashto, but the cabin loudspeaker is so poor that even your Afghan colleague has no idea what was said.****
****When you ask your colleague what the announcement said, he replies that the only part that he understood was that the cruising altitude will be 3,500 meters. You nod and smile, then realize that 3,500 meters is well below the altitude required to clear the mountains that surround Kabul. Oops.
8. After making sure that your seatbelt is fastened and that your seat back is in its full upright and locked position, you sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.
1. You get out of your car about 500 meters away from the parking lot for the first search. At this checkpoint, you get out of the car for a pat-down by guards, who may or may not also search the car for explosives (it was 5:00 in the morning when we got to this point, so I was neither fully awake nor able to see everything going on, thanks to the lack of streetlights). After the pat-down, you walk up the sidewalk for a rather arbitrary distance until you meet their car again. Meanwhile, your driver (nobody drives by themselves in Kabul) also get out of the car for pat-downs, after which they get back in and drive up to meet you again.
2. Once you, now freezing cold, are reunited with your vehicles, your driver drives on until you reach a bizarre metal structure that looks something like a car wash. At this point, you part ways with your driver and, after another pat-down, you wait in line to enter a rather ramshackle-looking building. Inside the building, you are briefly relieved to see an x-ray machine, until you realize that it is not actually functional. You wait in line to have your bags searched by hand under the pale yellow light of a single, over-taxed light bulb, glorying in the body heat released by your fellow line-mates and calculating how much faster it would have been to do this whole process with the x-ray machine. After your duffel bag (but not your computer bag) has been cursorily searched, you head off to the terminal.
3. On the way to the terminal you enter a waiting area with a few of the sort of shops that you might expect to find in normal, First or Second World airports. Except that in KBL, these shops are tiny and closed when the airport opens. Compounding the indignity of being unable to get a decent (even by Afghan standards) breakfast, you discover that someone, in a flash of unspeakable genius, has decided to open both of the outside doors in this waiting room, such that the temperature inside is the same 25 degrees as it is outside. After scraping together what semblance of a breakfast you can find here, you hurriedly march on over to the main terminal building.
4. In front of the main terminal building, you wait in line to show your ticket to two guards who may or may not be literate, and who also may or may not get a chance to actually take a look at your ticket. Once past them, you are directed to a (functioning!) X-ray machine, where your bags are given the most cursory examination possible. You then find yourself at the domestic ticket counters--all five of them. Each one has a flight and destination listed on a board above it - three to Herat, one to Kandahar, and one to "TII," the IATA code for Tirin Kot, although nowhere is the city's name actually written (perhaps the airport authorities assume that you are either a Wikipedia addict or will just figure things out by process of elimination. Here you discover the most astonishing part of the entire endeavor. All you have to do is show a printout of an e-ticket to receive a boarding pass - YOU DO NOT ACTUALLY NEED TO SHOW AN ID TO GET YOUR BOARDING PASS. IN FACT, YOU ARE NOT ASKED FOR AN ID AT ANY POINT BETWEEN GETTING OUT OF YOUR VEHICLE AND BOARDING THE PLANE. What's more, the boarding pass you do receive is recycled from Kam Air Flight 014 (you are flying on Flight 119), which flies from Delhi to Kabul. You realize that Kam Air could not be bothered with indignities such as actually printing out boarding passes--this might require them to check IDs, after all--and as such, they have just crossed out the bits of information which are annoyingly irrelevant: the flight number, the routing, the date, the time, the gate; in short, just about the entire boarding pass. Shaking your head at the ineptitude on display, you line up for another screening.
5. After waiting in line and being subjected to something actually bearing more than a passing resemblance to a real airport screening, you collect your carry-on bags and head to the domestic gates. Except that you quickly realize that there is only one domestic gate, with only one gate area for people to sit in, despite the fact that there are five or six flights leaving at once.* The place is wall-to-wall people. Footsore from your dystopian oddysey, you ask the experienced Afghan traveling with you if there is a place to sit somewhere else. After arranging with a friend he ran into in the gate area to call you when your flight is announced**, you head up to the international boarding area to sit.
*The majority of the daily flights from KBL are scheduled to leave before 9am, for some reason known only to Allah--and I don't think he's in the revelation business anymore.
**Domestic flight announcements are not made in the international boarding area, providing yet one more piece of evidence that Afghanistan's national anthem really should be "With A Little Help From My Friends."***
***People here really do get by with a little help from their friends, and they do try with a little help from their friends. And they certainly get high with a little help from their friends.
6. Once you have been alerted to the announcement of your flight, you proceed back downstairs to the domestic area and fight your way through the crowd to the sliding glass door that leads out to the tarmac. After telling the guards there which flight you are on (remember, the boarding pass is clearly useless here, given that it says you are in Delhi at the moment), you are directed to an uninspiring bus, which will drive you to your airplane. You stop to wonder why the airplane is parked far enough away from the terminal to require a bus, since KBL is not exactly Heathrow in terms of aircraft movements, but you quickly return from your reverie and head to the bus. The bus ride is actually surprisingly short, but it ends in front of a similarly uninspiring Kam Air AN-24, a Russian-made propellor plane with about 12 rows of seats and, as you will discover to your dismay, an evidently non-functioning heater. But for the moment, you are blissfully ignorant of this fact.
7. And then you step into the plane, which you have been looking forward to all morning, since only the most incompetent of airlines would let a plane sit on the tarmac overnight in 25-degree weather and then not turn on the heater before letting the passengers board. As soon as you set foot in the plane, you reconsider that assertion, if only in the hope of reassuring yourself that the airline in whose hands your life will rest for the next 90 minutes is not really that bad. As you find your (unassigned) seat, you notice that the signs in the cabin are printed in Russian, while the safety card is written only in English; thankfully, you choose an exit row, which means that at least one person who will be responsible for facilitating a hypothetical evacuation is able to read the instructions for what they will have to do (how many Afghans know the word "depressurization"? Probably not many...). You try to put your (small) duffel bag onto the overhead rack (Antonov, the Russian company who brought you the aviation marvel in which you find yourself, apparently had no use for actual bins for carry-ons), only to discover that the space between the rack and the ceiling of the cabin is roughly eight inches, far too small for your bag. Under your seat it goes. The obligatory pre-flight announcement is delivered only in Pashto, but the cabin loudspeaker is so poor that even your Afghan colleague has no idea what was said.****
****When you ask your colleague what the announcement said, he replies that the only part that he understood was that the cruising altitude will be 3,500 meters. You nod and smile, then realize that 3,500 meters is well below the altitude required to clear the mountains that surround Kabul. Oops.
8. After making sure that your seatbelt is fastened and that your seat back is in its full upright and locked position, you sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tirin Kot Part 1
This is the first of what will likely be a series of posts about my five days in Tirin Kot (the capital of Uruzgan Province) this week. Given that I'm still there, this post will be short; those that follow will be longer. For the moment, though, I leave you with a list of what I have not seen in my almost 4 days here so far (remember, this is a provincial capital we're talking about):
1. A restaurant
2. A bank
3. A woman
4. People on the streets after 6:00pm
5. A book
6. A person not wearing a shalwar kameez
7. A streetlight (these do exist in Kabul, so I'm not setting my expectations *too* high)
8. Any evidence that there is municipal electricity (when the generator is turned off, the power immediately goes out)
9. Come to think of it, there don't appear to be any municipal services whatsoever. More on that in part 2...
1. A restaurant
2. A bank
3. A woman
4. People on the streets after 6:00pm
5. A book
6. A person not wearing a shalwar kameez
7. A streetlight (these do exist in Kabul, so I'm not setting my expectations *too* high)
8. Any evidence that there is municipal electricity (when the generator is turned off, the power immediately goes out)
9. Come to think of it, there don't appear to be any municipal services whatsoever. More on that in part 2...
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