Recommended

Lazy has begun adding the occasional new post, again.... realgem endures, yet...

But there is other work to be done... In the meantime, may I leave you with documentary-maker Adam Curtis's wonderful blog, The Medium and the Message, and its epic and unusual history of foreign involvement in the country of Afghanistan, Kabul: City Number One, rich with unknown history, supplemented by clips of rare footage from the depths of the BBC's archives.

(It occurs to me that Afghanistan, appropriately enough somehow for a country which in many ways occupies a different historical era from most of the readers of this blog, has its very own time zone at +4h30 GMT.)

job description

stationed behind a protective sangaar of empty beer bottles

or a lone whiskey glass standing sentry

in the bar over the valley, nestled between the two peaks. un sitio muy defendable, cuando llega el apocalipsis.

church bell begins as soon as i start to write. maybe sounds more like a gong, or someone banging a piece of scrap metal with a hammer.

-reasonable knowledge of matters afghanistan linguistic, political, historical, social and military


-plausible written expression in english


-no objection to ocasionally smuggling small quantities of illegal materials or incriminating documents through dubai airport or illegal amounts of currency through london or european airports


-willingness to risk life, limb or liberty for the chance of travel, possibly adventure and a near-nominal remuneration. generous expenses account, on the other hand.


-knowledge of farsi, pashtu, urdu desirable

Back again and then

[panic stalks even the bare hills here
it never quite leaves me]

Lazy never continued the story he began with 'The Return', below...

It was tapped out in the freezing cold glorious glittering sun and crystal sky Kabul dawn (preternaturally clear, for one morning the smog and smoke has blown away and the far high mountains are visible clad in snow) shivering in the office, twisted and drunk and two days and nights sleepless through three countries.

The dynamics of the situation are...

Well.

Stay tuned. Maintain radio contact. Keep a low profile. Practise all relevant anti-surveillance techniques. Stay calm, and never admit to anything. Don't worry, we will meet again.

"خانه دوست كجاست؟" در فلق بود كه پرسيد سوار.
آسمان مكثي كرد.
رهگذر شاخه نوري كه به لب داشت به تاريكي شن‌ها بخشيد
و به انگشت نشان داد سپيداري و گفت:


"نرسيده به درخت،
كوچه باغي است كه از خواب خدا سبزتر است
و در آن عشق به اندازه پرهاي صداقت آبي است
مي‌روي تا ته آن كوچه كه از پشت بلوغ، سر به در مي‌آرد،
پس به سمت گل تنهايي مي‌پيچي،
دو قدم مانده به گل،
پاي فواره جاويد اساطير زمين مي‌ماني
و تو را ترسي شفاف فرا مي‌گيرد.
در صميميت سيال فضا، خش‌خشي مي‌شنوي:
كودكي مي‌بيني
رفته از كاج بلندي بالا، جوجه بردارد از لانه نور
و از او مي‌پرسي
خانه دوست كجاست."

“Where is the friend’s house?” asked the horseman just at dawn.
The heavens paused.
A wayfarer took the bright branch from his lips,
conferred it on the darkness of the sands,
pointed with his finger to a poplar tree and said,
“Just before that tree
there is a garden path greener than God’s dreams.
In it there is love as wide as the blue wings of true friendship.
You go on to the end of the path that takes up again
just beyond maturity,
then turn toward the flower of loneliness.
Two steps before the flower,
stop at the eternal fountain of earthly myth.
There a transparent terror will seize you,
and in the sincerity of the streaming heavens
you will hear a rustling.
High up in a pine tree,
you will see a child
who will lift a chick out of a nest of light.
Ask him,
“Where is the friend’s house?”

today, I met a librarian of jihad

Talking to the Taliban

I haven't seen anything else like this at all... who are the modern Tlbn's line soldiers? Report from Kandahar province: compilation of video footage and text on Globe and Mail's net, Talking to the Taliban

See the unedited interviews of the 42 fighters, take a look at a few... (Here are your 'international terrorists' you government twats...)

Half of them complain the government or the foreign troops have destroyed their opium fields, 80 per cent say they grow poppy... more than a quarter say family or friends have died in foreign air strikes...

(Obligatory photo of young Afghan with intense eyes and RPG)

(c)cf

Meanwhile the bigger picture; peace negotiations. Jason Burke has some idea over at Guardian. Some details he has wrong - or wait... actually he has no details at all... But it takes a certain audacity to write a non-story like that...

They deny everything, of course. But yes, people have been talking...

happy nowroz, y'all

slowly coming back to life

WELL, we have got around to adding a few photos here and there to the month's earlier posts. You will also notice we have abandoned our usual immaculately proper capitalisation and punctuation. Something may be done about this as well.

"what are you here for?" they ask me.

"what, right here? drinking beer. or did you mean more generally in Kabul or Afghanistan?"

"yeah that's what I meant. what are you doing in Afghanistan?"

my standard answer eventually became to deliberate a bit, look at them, cock my head to one side and say: "tourism?"

"like fuck you are" they say.

The death of the king

The old king passed away today. There is no return to those days of enlightened monarchy, now, and there never was. This present democratic project, I give it about two years at most... Still sustained by some measure of hope and optimism and foreign support... After the elections 18 months from now when people see that even if they have gained and are ready to use the right to replace the government they elected, business carries on as usual, situation normal all fucked-up...

from South Asia News:

Mohammad Zahir Shah - the last king of Afghanistan, who ushered in a 1964 constitution that brought democracy to Afghanistan before a coup forced him into exile - died on Monday morning at the age of 92.

Crowned in 1933 at 19 after witnessing the assassination of his father, Zahir Shah put into effect a constitution that made Afghanistan a constitutional monarchy with free elections and universal suffrage, a parliament and the emancipation of women.

He kept Afghanistan neutral through World War II and the Cold War before a coup led by a cousin deposed him after 40 years on the throne, ending a 226-year Pashtun dynasty. As his country descended into violence in the following decades, Zahir Shah lived quietly in a villa outside Rome.

He only returned to Afghanistan in 2002 after a US-led invasion ousted the country's fundamentalist Islamic Taliban regime. His reign was remembered with nostalgia by many Afghans as a long period of peace. Monarchists called for his restoration to the throne, but he refused.

Instead, a postwar 'loya jirga,' a traditional council of tribal elders, declared him the 'Father of the Nation,' but he said a title given to him by the people was his favourite.

'They call me 'Baba', which means grandfather or father.' he said. 'That is the title I like best.'

Dar-ul-Aman ["place of peace"] Palace
It is very peaceful, like a graveyard. No one comes here, and the sandbagged observation emplacements in the palace ruins are abandoned by the soldiers who spend the days drinking tea in the shade of the nearest chaikhana

What used to be the gardens are now a desolate sun-baked rubble-strewn waste, strewn with old shell casings and empty ampoules of morphine

Layers of Russian, English and Dari tags plus impact scar

Coolest kid ever

... the "dinosaurs rule" t-shirt, his own juice stall that sells beers, the threatening grimaces and throat-cutting gestures at the fruit sellers who try to park themselves too near his stall and hog the shadow of the tree

Here be scorpion-smokers

[--> amazon.com]

The three largest markets in the world by dollar volume, so it is said, are the trades in arms, oil and drugs. In Afghanistan these three intertwine with chaotic and unpredictable geopolitical, economic and chemical / psychopharmacological consequences that are felt far far away - in the boardrooms of global energy concerns, in the warm rush in a junkie's veins in London, in the weapon markets of the Bulgarian Black Sea.

The petroleum and natural gas factor in the civil war is explored in Ahmed Rashid's definitive Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

And for the most comprehensive overview of the drugs connection we now have a strong contender. Look, it even clicks through to Amazon... go ahead and buy a copy... Until we get around to publishing the realgem overview of the Afghan drug scene, this book is thorough and may I say even scholarly without being dry. David MacDonald (formerly of the Afghan Interim Government Counter-Narcotics Directorate) tries to sort the scorpion tales from the truth while searching for the elusive smokers of scorpion tails.

These latter which you can find, scorpion smokers that is. As to hard and fast facts about the Afghan-global heroin trade, the international 'official' statistics and facts (UN, US Govt, UK FCO, international drug-enforcement agencies, intelligence organisations, consultancies and think-tanks) as far as the heroin / opium economy are concerned are all made up. All of them. It wouldn't gall me as much if I knew I couldn't make up even better statistics myself, and for half the money.

This being so, anecdotal evidence is worth more than any quantitative statistical evidence in this particular field, and here we have an overview presented by someone with obvious extensive personal experience of this complex subject...

(Ah, I do have to mention though, AREU have done some solid research on the opium economy focusing on the farmers themselves.)




(zippedy-doo-dah, zippedy-deh...)


(pretty poppies in badakshan)

Russians

'come in, come in! this is igor, he is colonel in soviet... no i mean russian army, and assistant military attache. the attache is also coming soon. and here is freddie. he is a german colonialist.' handshakes all around; the chinese woman off to the side in the tight shimmery top is being paid to be here for decoration, looks on impassively and says nothing. 'here, i present you mikey, he is here representing the queen of great britain. have some vodka.'

and so we are drinking like russians do, standing for toasts and then downing gloopy ice-cold raw vodka. no one else on earth drinks like this. the russian military attache is an avuncular old fellow with a very colonial english-looking ginger moustache. as i have been involuntarily promoted to unofficial emissary of hm the queen for the evening, he immediately sits down next to me and earnestly hand on my knee begins explaining how britain and russia are both countries of great history, culture and destiny, and how it is vital that the two nations cooperate and strengthen their friendship at this critical time. i gravely agree and promise to do my best. he bemoans criminals like berezovsky who emigrate to london to smear the good name of russia. there is a toast to putin.

'putin? what was putin? he was a nothing, a clerk, a paper-shuffler. he was a colonel in the kgb. but really this is nothing special in the kgb, to be a colonel.'

'no, he was in the foreign intelligence directorate.... he was active agent in the west, in bonn...'

'ha, the only special thing about him is he came back...' says the east german lt-col. 'anyway, who is your military attache to berlin now?'

'what, is not zhukov?' the russians laugh.

'but this berezovsky, he is an incredibly intelligent man. you must know this. he was graduate of the special forestry institute,' breaks in the colonel.

'ah, the special forestry institute,' we all nod.

'yes, this is the top secret school of the space intelligence programme. anyone who studies there has to be a genius. there is no question of this, the man has the mind of a genius.'

our host is the german lt-col, also a military attache, fluent in russian and from the east. 'you must have started your officer's career before reunification. how did they assimilate the GDR army into the bundeswehr at reunification?' i am curious.

'they got rid of all the top officers. very few were left. but the only ones they kept were ones who had studied in the soviet union.'

more vodka is poured and the russian attache starts to mumble out yet another toast about british-russian friendship.

'but why is britain so tied to america?' demands freddie the german colonialist, who is also a full colonel in the bundeswehr. 'britain needs to come closer to germany. if britain supported europe more we could build a superpower.'

'yes, it's a humiliating situation,' i agree. 'but we need the turks for greater europe. we can't do it without the turks, and we can't do it without the british.'

freddie thrusts his hand at me, we shake hands. 'yes! you are right! this man understands!' he stands up to proclaim to everyone and promptly falls over.

the russian colonel keeps describing his country as soviet, and then correcting himself to russia.

'it is good to be shuravi ['soviet' dari/pashtu] in afghanistan now. when you say you are shuravi they like very much. it is better than to be american. they say we and you, we fought eye to eye... it was war, it was war with... how you say? honour. yes, it is good to be shuravi now.'

someone helps freddie off in search of a woman. it is only us$100 to rent a submissive chinese chick for 24 hours but i have taken 3 xanax as well as the litre of stolichnaya and don't even remember passing out. it is the smoothest gentlest entry into unconsciousness i have ever piloted.

why the fuck are you wearing your press ID on that silly strap around your neck when it's 10pm and we're all here trying to relax, in the bar drinking? oh, it's just like the security contractors who like going out drinking with a gun on their hip. they think the chicks dig it. another question then. why the FUCKING HELL are you wearing a Dubai t-shirt? Dubai is a fucking aberration. if I had just one wish, one atomic bomb to use, i would nuke dubai. why? god, haven't you ever walked around there? anyway, it terrifies me. it's the sort of place that if you just happened to have walked past someone smoking a joint, the microscopic residue the smoke left on your arm would be enough to get you ten years inside. yeah, that is one fucking ugly t-shirt advertising a fucking ugly town. what, you're not listening? you seem to be zoning out a bit. confused, eyes anxiously flicking around the room to find someone more important to talk to, and futile.

good things here

one truly beautiful thing for one who has escaped the dog-loving country of the brits is that people take it as a matter of course that you viciously kick an annoying dog, even if it's someone's pet.

another is the afghan scarf, multi-use checkered piece of cloth, which sort of makes me think of the hitchhikers' guide towel. you can wrap it around your neck. you can drape it over your head to keep the sun off. you can wrap it around your head like a turban. you can wrap it around your face in order to keep the dust out of your nose and mouth. you can casually drape it over your shoulders and use it as a handkerchief. you can put it over your face or lie down on it when taking a nap. you can tie it around your face and walk around looking like a palestinian terrorist and no one will spare you a second glance. it is good to have an afghan scarf, like when hailing a cab at night.

'oh you're foreign. i thought you were panjshiri until i heard you talking now,' taxi driver says. but by that time we have already agreed the fare and no one is quoting me ridiculous inflated price in dollars. 'so what are you doing in afghanistan?'

i look at them a bit and then give an exaggerated 'i have no fucking idea, believe me' shrug and they laugh.

'anyway, you're speaking farsi well. where are you from?'

'actually i don't really understand farsi, i only just started with it. do you speak urdu?'

taxi drivers almost always understand urdu and then i can start explaining today's made-up story of where i'm from.

multi-lingual company is great. you can play silly linguistic games like chinese telephones, whereby someone says something to the next person in, say, persian, which the second person translates on into english, thence the third into urdu and so on, and thence into finnish... and so "these are indeed the tallest sunflowers i have ever seen in my life" becomes "fuck me what a big flower".