Afghanistan: Still a War Zone

In going to Afghanistan, I wanted to do several things, such as: better understand Afghan culture; learn some Dari; and show Afghans that Westerners (and Americans specifically) are capable of visiting other countries in capacities other than in the military. While I did all of these things to at least a certain extent, the thing that sticks out in my mind was how crazy the security situation got the day we arrived.

Security Situation
Before we even got out of Europe, we heard on the news at the airport that two Germans had been kidnapped in central Afghanistan (read: Kabul). This was naturally irksome to the other three travelers with me, as they are all German citizens, and to me as well for more subtle reasons. Afghanis tend to look very favorably on Germans, since Germany has been the biggest financial backer of development and relief work in the country over the last few decades. So, the Taliban’s kidnapping of German relief workers was also a poor sign of the overall situation. I should perhaps note at this point that I had no false optimism about being favorably looked upon as an American. The joke in the group was that if any of them got kidnapped, they wouldn’t need to worry, because the Taliban would trade a German for an American any day of the week.

We flew threw Vienna and Dubai, arriving in Kabul the afternoon of July 20. At this point, the kidnappings were far from our thoughts, and it stayed that way … for about 45 minutes. When we arrived at the compound where we were staying, we were informed that 23 South Korean aid workers had just been kidnapped in Ghazni Province, right next to Kabul. Eleven of the 22 people that were making up our team were South Koreans, so the news hit our group pretty hard.

I could continue a day-by-day narrative of the bad news, but I’ll sum it up by saying that for the next week, we got more bad news every day: hostage shot eight times after having all fingers cut off, South Korean group leader found dead, insurgents increasing attacks in and around Kabul, etc. Since the invasion in 2001, it was the single worst time to be in Kabul, and on day 7 in country, July 27, we got the word that President Karzai had officially restricted travel for all foreigners. We had spent the first week doing our training and getting completely prepared to leave the very next morning for Bamyan, where we were going to do our peace and reconciliation training. If we had left 12 hours earlier, we would have gotten through, but now it was impossible to get through the Kabul checkpoints. So, that was it for Plan A.

Plans B-Z
The Frontiers, the organization in charge of our project, proposed the idea that we all try to make the best of our remaining three weeks by finding other NGOs in Kabul that we could volunteer with. Thus began a four-day venture of futility; 99 percent of NGOs in Kabul wanted nothing to do with random foreigners that they saw largely as security risks. The one exception was Sisters of Charity, the group founded by Mother Theresa, which does work with street children. This was great for the women in our group, but it wasn’t something that men were invited to participate in.

My next plan was so brilliant that it had to work. I would fly out of Kabul to Hirat in western Afghanistan, buy a cheap generic Chinese motorcycle (they’re available all over Afghanistan for as little as $200) and then spend the next three weeks on a great motorcycle trek through Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Eastern Europe, and eventually arrive back to Germany. I was so excited that I couldn’t imagine anything stopping me. As it turned out, though, the Iranians did stop me. They didn’t even want to let me in the front door of their embassy, let alone apply for a visa. “Amereeka, nay, Amereeka, nay,” they told me. I had a very interesting discussion with a whole bunch of different people, but in the end, it was clear that I was not going to be allowed to drive my motorcycle through Iran.

In the end, I just stayed in Kabul until it was time to fly home. I made an extended stop in Dubai and Vienna on the way back, but it certainly wasn’t the motorcycle adventure that I had hoped for. But now on to the truly worth-while information that I gleaned from my trip.


Cultural Insights

Insight 1: Gender Relations Are Crazy Different
This has to be first as it is the starkest cultural difference for someone coming from the West. As a man, I was not to address women, I was not to look at them, and I was most definitely not to touch them, even in the form of a handshake. It’s easy enough once you get used to it, but that’s a really hard thing to get used to. Walking around the city, I had to constantly remind myself about the rules and defend the women in our group against Afghan men who assumed they were prostitutes. Yes, that’s right, Afghan men assume all oriental-looking women are prostitutes, because historically there have been so many Chinese prostitutes in the country. They either smile at me and knowingly nod their heads at the women, or if they’re feeling extra fresh, they’ll come up and try to shake hands with them. A woman who shakes hands with a man is clearly a prostitute, in case you didn’t know that.

It is my personal theory that single Afghan men make up for this lack of inter-gender contact by being especially “friendly” with other single men. I’m not suggesting that they are sexually intimate, but they are definitely hugely affectionate. If they would act that way in the US or Germany, they would immediately be pegged as gay. It starts out with holding hands. My translator was constantly holding my hand as we walked around the market, and not in the hand-in-hand friendship style either. We had our fingers intertwined and everything. And that’s not at all uncommon, although still slightly uncomfortable for me. It then goes even farther when we lounge around at home. Afghan men will put their heads on each other’s shoulders or lie together on the floor; it’s totally kosher. It’s really fascinating.

Insight 2: Driving is Best Avoided
I love to drive, but I would not drive in Afghanistan unless there was some sort of serious emergency requiring me to do so. First of all, they theoretically drive on the right side of the road, but that’s more of a recommendation than a rule. On a two-lane, two-way street in downtown Kabul, it’s not uncommon to be five cars wide (plus the bicycles). Who gets to drive in the middle? Whoever happens to be there at the time. Want to turn left? Great, just start merging into oncoming traffic? Coming up to a traffic circle? Cool, traffic goes both directions around it. At one point I had convinced myself that I didn’t need to worry, because the Afghans driving the vehicles know how it works … and then we ran over a kid on a bike. That’s right. I kid you not. We were going the wrong way around a traffic circle and smacked a kid going perpendicular to us. Somehow the kid was okay, but his bike was definitely done for.

Also of interest is that 90 percent of vehicles on the road are Toyotas, and most of those are Corollas or Hiluxes. Pretty much the only non-Toyotas are the green police vehicles, which are Ford F-150s.

Insight 3: War Zones Bring the Craziest Groups of People Together
Only in a war zone do little old nuns from Mother Theresa’s order celebrate mass right next to four-star generals (Yes I witnessed this myself at the Italian embassy). Only in a war zone do peaceniks, aid workers, UN overseers, and military personnel in full combat gear great each other on the streets in passing. Maybe we believe in completely opposite ways of going about our work, but a familiar face is a familiar face, and it’s really nice to hear your mother language once in a while. The interaction between these groups of people just don’t happen back home. We remove ourselves from such situations.

Insight 4: The Signs of Foreign Influence in Afghanistan Are Everywhere
Like I said, the cultural differences between Afghanistan and the West are huge, but foreigners have been in the country for so long that you can’t help but see their tracks. I was reminded of this everyday at around noon when the ice cream truck came down our street. And what song does it play? “Happy Birthday” of course. And then there are the bus stops, which are denoted by a red circle on a white background. Sometimes there’s nothing left of the bus stop except a burned-out shell of a hutch and this red circle on a white background. As it turns out, the Japanese government paid for all these nice bus stops to be made and designed them so that if bombed and practically destroyed, the Japanese flag symbol would hold up. So that’s why a red circle is now the symbol for bus stops in the capital. And then there are the hospitals and clinics and other public buildings that are all clearly marked as being funded by this or that first-world nation. I had to wonder if these countries would have funded the buildings if their flags wouldn’t appear on every wing and on every doctor’s jacket and every letterhead.

Insight 5: Guns don't mean safety
If guns translated into safety, Afghanistan would be the safest country of all time. Everybody's got a Kalashnikov, including the Afghan guy who insists he's a pacifist and can join our peace team. That's right, he says this with a straight face with an AK-47 strapped over his shoulder. There are gunmen outside the shopping centers, outside every embassy, at every roundabout downtown, in every bank. The newest plan from the US military is to issue M-16s to the Afghan troops that they're training instead of AKs, so that they can actually track how many end up being used by the "bad guys." This is pretty smart, actually, because M16s use the 5.56 mm NATO rounds instead of the 7.62 mm rounds that go in the AK. Now the <insert word of choice here: insurgents/Taliban/Al Qaeda/freedom fighters> will have to steal and stockpile two different kinds of cartridges. The point of this paragraph is just to say that if you go to Afghanistan, you'll be getting used to everyone having automatic weapons.

More insights to come (maybe)...

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