Because we're the fucking United States of . . . um, yeah, whatever.

Goddammit

Quite a bit of action is being sent my way from AntiWar.com. Thanks, tex!

Tex is also the host of UnFairWitness - collecting and reporting still more of the excesses of empire.

Since few people ever check out the archives (and I am as guilty as the next), I'm going to reprint something from March 31, 2003 that just gets more and more relevant.

What Shall It Matter?

The Powell Doctrine (overwhelming force combined with the full support of the homefront) has been talked up in recent days as the woulda, coulda, shoulda panacea for this rapidly congealing quagmire. At least then, when the Iraqis stubbornly fought, we'd be in a position to squash them, so the thinking goes. Or maybe the Iraqis would have really realized that fighting was hopeless. Well, something like one of those. I guarantee you will see many more invocations before this war is done.

But I find myself thinking more and more on the Bush/Baker Doctrine, the doctrine of overwhelming diplomatic force. The Gulf War was won before a shot was fired or a soldier committed to battle because Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was declared to be and understood to be illegitimate by the international community. Clinton used the doctrine as well to great effect in Kosovo and Bosnia, also forging diplomatic consensus for military action and delegitimizing the aggression of unsavory regimes.

The Powell Doctrine, whatever its merits or flaws, has in fact never been tried apart from a solid grounding in international agreement.

Let me repeat and emphasize: In all the places where the application of military force has been successful in the past decade [and more], it has been firmly rooted in a diplomatic consensus that has delegitimized the opposition's regime.

That is the twenty-first century way of war; that is the lesson in all of this. All the second-guessing about field strategy is mere professional territorial pissing between the military and the civilians. Grand strategy, the application of the national interest to the nation's interactions in the world, is where you really win - and lose.

Posted by Martial at March 31, 2003 05:13 PM

Every day, we see the call go out for more soldiers. Professionals and pundits alike tell us that - whatever else we do or don't - more boots on the ground are necessary. They count the squads and divisions, they add up the homesick men and women and then divide by the restless population, they compare the results to Japan, Germany, Bosnia.

But it isn't the number of troops. It isn't the training or weapons or morale or lines of supply. It isn't the soldiers - or generals - at all.

Neither is it a dogged determination to continue in a rigid course, never wavering in certainty no matter the situation, never counting the costs. It isn't will or stubborness or "leadership".

It is what it has always been: the legitimacy of the intervention as agreed to by the international community through some body for collective discussion and decision making.

Without that, it is - and was always bound to be - a disaster.

It is illegal in Afghanistan for Afghans to purchase, possess, transport, pour, or serve alcohol. It is not illegal in Afghanistan for expatriates to do any of these things.

You can, therefore (and contra yesterday - though we did cheer), find liquor rather easily - if you're an expat: most restaurants that cater to the expatriate community have at least a selection of wine and beer, and there are a few bars in Kabul. However, as most of the workers in these places are Afghan, actually ordering a beer forces your waiter to break the law. Not that this consideration stops anybody.

There is a black market in liquor among Afghans, but how large is difficult to assess. Much in the way drug dealers used to whisper in my ear when I was a longhair, I've been offered "wine, whiskey, vodka - anything you want". And I'm told that the musician community acquired a serious taste for vodka during the Communist era, so serious that musicians too young to remember the communists insist on taking part of their payment in it. Is that true? I have no idea. I've now seen Afghan musicians twice and didn't see them drink anything other than tea.

I am also told that if you drive out of the city toward Bagram, there is a store that only allows in expatriates. They apparently stock every kind of liquor and luxury food that dreams of paradise demand. No one who has waxed lyrical to me about this elysium has ever been there though. Perhaps this is the sort of legend lonely, homesick, hungry people need to go on. If I really wanted a taste of home, they say to themselves, I could hop in the car and head to the supermarket . . .

I'm sitting in Kabul swapping anecdotes about our often surreal, often funny, often infuriating daily experiences with a new friend. Let's call him "Bob".

"Bob," I say, "you should start a blog."

"What," he asks me, "is a blog?"

That's how it always starts. Go on over to Kabul Dispatches and say hi to Mullah Bob. He's a hoot!

He probably already has more readers than I do - because he's from New York. Bastard.

. . .

We were in the bazaar and I saw a man with red hair, green eyes, and freckles: he could have been Irish, possibly even from Boston. This Afghan man was hobbling around on rusting crutches because he'd had a foot blown off by a mine.

Afghans can be fair or dark, blond haired to coal black, while staring back at you as you walk around their town are green eyes, blue, all shades of brown, and even gold.

Alexander's armies - and Brezhnev's - carried a wild collection of genes to mix with those of other migrations and invasions. The jumble has given birth to some absolutely stunning people. I keep expecting to find talent (cough) scouts from the modelling agencies, but apparently the hotels haven't quite polished up that fifth star.

I made it all the way home in good order. I even managed to stay awake until 10:00 last night!

And, yes, I am in the office today. What can I say? I love my work.

Despite my being back in Boston, the "Kabul Diary" will continue for a few days as I empty my notebooks.

. . .

We arrive in Dubai in the company of two new friends from the UN. We're waiting for our bags to be unloaded from the UN plane. One UN guy offers everyone gum. Everyone shakes their head. I offer mints. Everyone says no. My colleague points across the baggage claim area to the duty free shop,"How about some whiskey?" Loud and sustained cheering!

I am sure the duty free shop in the baggage claim area is there for just such people as we, who are newly arrived from countries where alcohol is hard to come by.

I am hitting the road in three hours. Abut forty hours give or take after that, I should be home in the arms of my loving wife and in the eye of my adoring dog. And eating rare beef, with a green salad, and drinking wine, with whiskey to follow and goofy tv splashing around its utterly inconsequential images, often obscene in this world of poverty and pain.

I haven't left yet.

I did manage to get some pictures. A friend let me download some of his and I took a few with his camera. I'll post some soon.

Long-time readers know that there is a Bradt Guide to Kabul. You simply cannot be without it - but you also must buy it from one of the street kids who sell it. Of course, such a guide has to maintain an even hand, no praise too effusive, nor any condemnation too rude.

I do not have such restrictions. The best place to stay is the Park Residence in Ansari Square.

Internet in the rooms (installed while I was here). Excellent laundry service. Decent buffet dinner every night. A garden in which to sit. An aviary. Owned by a local so all profits stay in country. Staff whose friendliness cannot be beat and who will do pretty much anything you need.

You can meet interesting people every morning for breakfast or any evening for dinner. Real characters. You'll love 'em!

The neighborhood cannot be beat. There are several decent restaurants in walking distance.

The kids who wait out front to shine your shoes are the most adorable set of junior entrepreneurs ever. I wasn't that cute when I sold lemonade on the street corner. They each make about a half-dollar a day from me. Multiply that by the sixty people at the Park (it is almost always close to full) and divide by more than half because some people feel they have to be curmudgeons in the face of crushing poverty and the kids are still raking in five or ten bucks a day. That is well over the per capita in case you were wondering

The best places to shop are Chicken Street and the bazaar.

At the Park, you'll find yourself a short walk from Chicken Street, the tourist trap and one of the streets you must walk down while in Kabul. If you can dodge the friendly shopkeepers, the pitiful widows, and the hustling street kids without parting with any of your hard earned change, then you may consider yourself at the highest level of urban broken-field

You can also walk from the Park to the bazaar, down by the Kabul River (this is highly recommended, if not exactly on the UN "safe" list; but UN security is a bunch of old ladies and worrywarts and every UN person I've met here breaks the rules on pretty much a daily basis). What can I say about the bazaar? It is colorful, chaotic, and cool. I've got pictures to prove it..

The best place to eat is B's Place.

The food is good, real good. The ambience is amazing, with candles and white tablecloths, dark wood and white paint, tasteful prints on the walls, and the waiters in old t-shirts. In particular, Fahim is brilliant. He begins describing the menu in so deadpan and straight a fashion that you can't tell if he's trying to be funny, but as he continues to discuss the food, he moves from the specials to commenting on styles of cookery, the appetites and waistlines of his patrons, other restaurants he's only heard of, all the while throwing in phrases from five languages - and all the while as though he's a gay waiter from New York. We were on the floor. Quite simply, B's is an experience that should not be missed.

I've always been one of those for whom the word "diet" refers to a religious conference. Still, as a member in good standing of my culture, I know in passing that there are ways in which people fool themselves into eating less.

Tonight's menu, from the buffet at our guest house, included bread, rice, noodle casserole, curried potatoes, and french fries. I watched the staff (all locals) load up their plates with all of these.

I have seen precisely one fat Afghan.

. . .

Some of the meat is wonderful, most of the vegetables are overcooked, oil douses most things: don't come to Afghanistan for the food. The food isn't bad, but it is fattier than what I normally try to eat and you eat the raw vegetables at your peril.

I quite like the bread, especially with a little peanut butter - which, as of 2004 but not before, you can buy in many shops.

I always travel with incomplete notebooks as part of a quest to actually use every square inch of paper which has ever come into my life.

Flipping through one last night, I came across the notes from a peacebuilding conference two years ago. One quote stood out, but unfortunately was unattributed.

" Societies which move from autocracy to democracy see their violence move from structural to overt. "

Kind of makes you think.

There are things you will never see reported in the news - primarily because journalists don't know how to see such things, nor do they know how to report them so that they make sense to their readers and viewers.

The vast majority of non-soldiers in Iraq who have been kidnapped or killed had armed guards (or were themselves guards). Those released quickly did not have armed guards.

I know this because I know how organizations in conflict zones work and I know which organizations don't use armed guards. This may come as a surprise to people but most of the large, experienced NGOs in Iraq do not use armed guards.

Of course, it seems like common sense to have armed guards in a conflict zone. It seems obvious that those without armed guards should be easier targets. Common sense is wrong. In fact, having armed guards often makes you a target, while those organizations who work closely with communities and make security a common goal don't usually have the same worry.

I'm not suggesting that somehow never using armed guards is what makes things hunky-dory, because the guards are not the key element of security. A commitment to not using armed guards forces organizations to develop different strategies to keep themselves, their work, and their beneficiaries safe. A reliance on guards tends to limit the ways organizations think about security. Actually, they often stop thinking about security entirely, assuming that the guards are taking care of it.

There may come a moment in Iraq when NGOs as a group become targets regardless of whatever measures they've taken. That is a danger, and no one in a conflict zone is ever completely safe. But for now, in Iraq, it is safer to be without armed guards.

Why should this be the case? In a conflict zone, people with weapons appear to be part of the conflict in a way that people without do not. The guns send a message about power and security, power and the threat of violence. In Iraq, people are largely in favor of assistance in reconstructing the country. They are deeply suspicious of outsiders who insist on directing the reconstruction. The symbol of armed foreigners speaks to Iraqis as a statement of control.

I recently suggested that a partial solution to Kabul's traffic woes would be to rehabilitate and improve the traffic signal system. To my wondering eyes, a pole beside an intersection we've driven through every day for the past two weeks showed us a glowing red eye! Beneath the red light, the seconds to its change to green were counting down. Ask and you shall you shall be rewarded.

Of course, the only thing actually holding the onrushing cars back were the policemen at the crossroads glowering at us.

when you're dealing with incipient fascists.

The US breaks off negotiations with Muqtada al-Sadr and the military enters Najaf in force. There is bloody resistance. Sistani somehow dies in the fighting.

The US military can whine until they are blue in the face that Sadrists were responsible. They can even produce proof. It won't matter if people believe the proof, because the US advance into Najaf really would have been the proximate cause of the killing.

. . .

Occasionally I think like a brutal "realist". Fortunately, the world seldom lowers itself to those expectations. Al-Sadr is, I think, not quite ready to seize the moment in that way. Iran's agents in Iraq, however . . .

Tim Dunlop wrote one of the best blog posts ever. Unfortunately . . .

Just go read the whole thing.

There are two primary reasons to introduce bus service into Kabul (or anywhere).

One is to reduce the need for cars in the city. There is the hope that the presence of public transportation (in this case, a regulated, structured, and defined public transport as opposed to the entrepreneurial and chaotic) will encourage people to leave their cars behind. This is a vain hope. Cars are pouring into the country and the city and people want to drive. No bus system is going to be more than a drop in the ocean.

The second is to provide transportation for people too poor to afford other modes of transport. This is definitely a valid concern in a country as poor as Afghanistan and a city like Kabul, which is drawing in the poor and jobless from the countryside. But they'll still be stuck in traffic.

If a donor really wants to help Kabul take steps to deal with its traffic, there are better ways than introducing more vehicles onto the roads. First, rehabilitate and expand the system of traffic signals; some intersections have lights, but none of them appear to be functioning. Second, invest in drivers' education. Third, make the licensing process more rigorous (in other words, establish a licensing process in which people actually participate). The municipality is taking steps toward this (they've stopped giving out taxi licenses, for example), but so far there has been no noticeable impact.

Can't wait to see the city in five years.

Kabul, four million strong and growing (well, probably not quite four . . . yet).

The infrastructure was built for a city of 400,000, with hydroelectric dams for electricity and reservoirs for water up in the mountains. The dams and pools have been wrecked over the years of conflict. They haven't been fully repaired.

Kabul is built on a plain, parts of which in years past, years with an ordinary amount of rainfall, flood. Drainage is generally very poor, and, as a local engineer told me this weekend, no study has ever been conducted to determine just how poor and where precisely the ditches should be dug.

There is a lot of building going on in Kabul . . .

The fineness of the weather appears to have prompted Kabuli women to largely eschew the burka. The number of women completely covering their faces is much lower than it was when I was here in January. Perhaps the burka is now worn more for warmth than concealment? A refreshing thought.

In the past, our ignorance was so great, we had no ability to make better choices.

For the future, our knowledge is so complete we do not need to come up with options - even if, you know, just in case.

Right now, shut up!, we can't hear ourselves think.

. . .

Do I need a proximate cause to bang my head against the wall? Ok, then: Israel/Palestine, 9/11 Commission, Iraq, Afghanistan. I'm sure there are domestic issues to be concerned about as well as the national security and foreign policy ones, but that's enough for the heart of any man.

I am woken every morning with the sun by a raucous greeting. The guest house has an aviary full of golden, emerald, and sapphire birds.

The most common cellphone ring in Kabul is from Mozart's 40th symphony.

Every morning I am woken with the sun by Mozart transcribed for parakeet.

. . .

Today is Friday, a free day. We've been invited to a private home.

The most common figure cited for the population of Kabul is two million persons. But when I ask NGO workers, they say more than three million - and then shrug, as if to say "who knows?"

Nobody knows how many people live in Kabul!

Before an election, perhaps a census would be a good idea?

(In case you missed it, the presidential election will now be in September rather than June.)

But just a small one. Last night, I was in the middle of posting an additional piece when everything went down for about twenty seconds before the generator kicked in. This happens a couple of times per day and will be familiar to anybody who has lived in an older neighborhood of Atlanta during the summer.

I had to go meet people for dinner in any case.

Tim over at The Road to Surfdom is sending a few fine folks my way. But you guys aren't leaving any comments! You can even ask questions; that's what I spend my days doing.

What's the one thing you want to know about Afghanistan? Remember, I am a guest in this country. . .

By the way, despite the apparent number on this post, this is number 500 here at De Spectaculis. I'm pleased by that.

The experience of globalization, to me, is that giddy feeling of weightlessness and momentum you feel as the rollercoaster gathers speed. Parts of the world start to blur, lose their distinctness, acquire new characteristics, then are whirled away. Distant objects seem to leap toward you, forcing themselves into focus, before they too melt into the past. You may not even be sure that your stomach is making the trip with the rest of you, as you too seem to slip apart.

Wobbly, you still try to brace yourself because you know for certain that new shocks and shifts are about to occur, you will very soon - and yet again - be thrown for a loop.

In Kabul:
First, Bjork in a taxicab, but then, in a market, piles of bootleg copies of The Passion - right next to a box set of The Simpsons.

I go to Afghanistan and The New Yorker prints a scary article before I've been gone a week. My colleague had a phone call from her parents who suggested that perhaps she ought not to be in such a dangerous place. Just to reassure everybody out there in radioland: Kabul is secure and we're not going anywhere else. Of course, lots of other parts of the country are secure too, but you know journalists, nothing sells like a little displaced fear.

Hersh's article is pretty good, but he doesn't ask some of the questions I'd really love to see asked in public. For example, he has this to say about heroin.

" Heroin is among the most immediate—and the most intractable—social, economic, and political problems. “The problem is too huge for us to be able to face alone,” Hamid Karzai declared last week in Berlin, as he appealed for more aid. “Drugs in Afghanistan are threatening the very existence of the Afghan state.” Drug dealing and associated criminal activity produced about $2.3 billion in revenue last year, according to an annual survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, a sum that was equivalent to half of Afghanistan’s legitimate gross domestic product. “Terrorists take a cut as well,” the U.N. report noted, adding that “the longer this happens, the greater the threat to security within the country.”

The U.N. report, published last fall, found that opium production, which, following a ban imposed by the Taliban, had fallen to a hundred and eighty-five metric tons in 2001, soared last year to three thousand six hundred tons—a twentyfold increase. The report declared the nation to be “at a crossroads: either (i) energetic interdiction measures are taken now . . . or (ii) the drug cancer in Afghanistan will keep spreading and metastasise into corruption, violence and terrorism—within and beyond the country’s borders.” Afghanistan was once again, the U.N. said, producing three-quarters of the world’s illicit opium, with no evidence of a cutback in sight, even though there has been a steady stream of reports from Washington about drug interdictions. The report said that poppy cultivation had continued to spread, and was now reported in twenty-eight of the nation’s thirty-two provinces.

Most alarmingly, according to a U.N. survey, nearly seventy per cent of farmers intend to increase their poppy crops in 2004, most of them by more than half. Only a small percentage of farmers were planning any reduction, despite years of international pressure. Many of the areas that the U.N. report identified as likely to see increased production are in regions where the United States has a major military presence. "

Once there was a farmer. He grew wheat to feed his family. Sometimes he even grew enough to take into market to sell to other people so that they too could feed their families.

Then there was a war. It lasted a long time. Many other farmers ran away from their farms and some were killed or their farms were badly damaged and they could no longer produce very much food. But the farmer we know did not run away. He stayed on his land and continued to grow wheat to feed his family. Sometimes he even grew enough to give some as a present to the local warlord.

Finally, the war ended around our friend's farm because the Taliban conquered the area and imposed a harsh security. At least the fighting had finally stopped. Around the country, though, there were not enough working farms to feed all the people anymore. But the farmer worked hard and he at least continued to feed his own family though times were very tough. Sometimes he even grew enough to tithe to the Taliban.

One day, the Taliban were driven out. The markets opened up again. At last, thought the farmer, I will be able to sell my excess wheat again instead of "giving" it away. He worked harder than ever all that season and, though water was still scarce, he had a very good crop. He took it into town to sell only to find that the price of wheat in the market was half of what it had cost him to grow it!

How could this be?

The United States bought excess wheat from its farmers and donated it to the World Food Programme, who transported the food from America to Afghanistan to give to hungry people.¹

The farmer returned to his farm, burned off the chaff, and planted poppies.

. . .

Serious about drugs? Among other good options, stop the agricultural subsidies to North American and European farmers. Otherwise, you reap what you sow.²

¹ How much do you suppose it costs to buy wheat from American farmers and then to transport that wheat from the heartland of the US to a US port and onto a ship that sails to Karachi in Pakistan where the wheat is loaded onto trucks which drive up and up to Afghanistan? How many people are employed in all the steps along the way and why can't we find something more productive for them to do?

² This appears to be the Biblical metaphor of the week. Farmers who grow drugs are often not entirely rational economic actors. They are - quite often - willing to make somewhat less money than they make selling drugs if they can instead grow food. Strange, but true. Perhaps we should be looking for policies which support farmers, local traders, and merchants rather than policies which support the systems of interdiction. Economic activity generates other opportunities, as well as tax revenue. Additional police and soldiers, on the other hand, consume resources much better spent elsewhere and put nothing back in. But they will buy American made helicopters.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: people who choose to go into a conflict zone are not victims if they succumb to its violence.

I grieve for all the dead and the lost, but I am not ashamed that I grieve a little deeper for the truly innocent, for the ones who had no choice.

My tribe is far too often untimely diminished and each time is sad almost beyond measure, but they are neither lambs to the slaughter, nor soldiers under orders. They chose this life and all of its risks, they were not unaware. They are not victims. Thus I will blame them (when it is warranted) and all others who make this choice without fear of moral stain.

Let me add that my tribe, at least, does not enter a conflict zone with the intentional capacity to inflict violence.

Spring has come to Kabul. The mountains wear a lighter cap of snow than they did when I was here in January. Down in the city green leaves are on all the trees and grass struggles up wherever feet are not constant.

Since I was last here another growth, a most curious mushroom, has sprung up by the roadside all over town. A bar of cream-painted steel, turned into an oval 2m tall, the ends cemented into the earth. The oval contains a blue sign, stenciled in white with the icon of a bus - under a Japanese flag. Yes, they are bus stops, apparently the sequential perches for that species of city bus (among the many which roam the streets) which wears just that plumage of cream of blue. I am assured, however, that the bus system is not yet running.

I find myself thinking that this is very odd, this partial attempt to capture and tame the unruly beast of Kabul traffic by laying some sort of order on a part of it. I marvel at the effort and the determination to plant these signs over the whole of the city in a few short months - and wonder if they (and the money) might have been better spent.

I am disappointed, as I always am all over the world, at the need for the donor nation to put their flag on any work, great or small, paid for by their taxpayers (Afghans surely did the work of planting, and presumably Afghans did the work of planning as well). Now, Kabulis will always know that Japan bought them a bus system. But what else will Kabulis know of Japan? Is this how Japan cements its friendship with Afghanistan and gains the goodwill of Afghans?

"The Japanese? What do I think of them? They like bus stops."

. . .

This is a country with one (poorly trained, poorly paid, and completely unsupplied) teacher for every 150 schoolchildren. But the capital city is getting a brand new bus system!

This is a country where, because of war, 24 of 31 districts either have a minimally functional irrigation system or do not have one at all and no district's irrigation system is operating at even the levels of 1978. But the capital city has bus stops!

I really can't go on. It would just make you cry.

Yesterday I said Afghans love flowers and carry them around in the spring. This is true. But I should not have implied that this is common or that all the flowers are natural. In fact, implying all that was necessary to capture my feelings about Easter, but wasn't a completely accurate representation of the facts on the ground. These "diary" entries may occasionally shade over into the impressionistic when my emotions form a part of the point. This ain't journalism, friend.

. . .

You do see enough people carrying flowers for it to be clearly noticeable and remarkable, but it is probably less than one person, car, or bicycle in one hundred. And most of the flowers I see, but not all, are artificial. However, I did not see people carrying around flowers, artificial or natural in January. And I have seen flower sellers selling natural flowers (seemingly half the flower sellers in Kabul are convinced that I want a lilac sprig).

It's funny, there doesn't seem to be anything special going on.

Ok, not so funny, nor is my rather tired attempt at humor. But every conversation with a European I've had today has ended with an afterthought: "Oh, Happy Easter." That hasn't been my experience when I've spent Easter in Europe.

. . .

Afghans love flowers. I haven't actually seen them growing anywhere (however, I'm told the road to Jalalabad passes through new fields of poppies this year), but people tie boquets to their bicycles or cover the dashboards of their cars or seem to be just carrying around a sprig or a bud.

It isn't a formal "Easter", but the wild flowers of the fields and those from the gardens of men have certainly risen.

Happy Easter! Happy Spring!

There is nothing like flying over very dry land to gather a true appreciation of the impact of water on geography. The flight from Dubai to Kabul passes across parched parts of Iran and Afghanistan, places where the rivers are occasional and water not only doesn't stand, it doesn't even loiter.

A paradox: from a great height such an environment is awash in the evidence of flowing water. The hand of that sculptor is unmistakable.

Paths of a different color from the rest of the landscape wander down hills, but never up them, stepping now left, now right, finding the easiest route to the valley floor. Deltaic fans of white show where a river sometimes empties into the desert and finally dies. Dry gullies in the sides of mountains, a delicate capillary tracery leading to veins and then still wet arteries, humanity clustered on its banks.

And one can also clearly note the impact of water on society. Why a village is where it is - right there! - can be seen clearly from the air. Three narrow streams roll down three shaded valleys to join that village. That town grew up on the banks of what is sometimes a wide river, rather than the poor trickle it now appears to be. Those fields are laid out in that quiltwork pattern there and seem to flow in that direction because so does the water. That farmer is rich and this one poor because the spring rains run that way and not quite so much this.

I am completely absorbed and cannot tell you how long the flight lasts (last time, I slept).

It is said the two sureties of life are its ending and that the State will ask you to buy it lunch. Conversation as well has two sure topics: the weather and traffic.

Every conversation in Kabul includes some variation on the "the traffic is bad today, much worse than it was three/six/nine months ago". I have no reason to doubt - indeed, every reason to believe - that the traffic is getting worse. But most of the NGO people here, including several of the Afghan NGO workers, have worked in other countries. I stand by my earlier assertion that Kabul still has quite a ways to go before it even reaches the first circle of traffic hell.

As for the weather, nearly the first thing said to me upon our arrival was, "this is the best season of the year in Kabul!" Again, I have no reason to doubt it. The temperature has been in the low 20s C, the sun has been hot but not scorching, the mornings and evenings cool, the sunset lingering, and the rain at night.

Hello Dear Ones,

I'm blogging this from an internet cafe in lovely, if dusty downtown Kabul. I'm sitting across from the Park Cinema, heart of the swinging, alcohol-free social life of this bustling city.

Friday is rather like our Sundays used to be: half the shops are closed, people are wearing their Friday best, and families are picnicing in the park, and maybe catching the latest Bollywood blockbuster.

The internet is pretty good here at the cafe, faster than stagnant pond if not quite a mighty river. But Kabulis don't seem to have figured out the "cafe" part: no coffee!

We drove out of the city earlier today, up into the foothills of the mountains, to the site of Kabul's future suburbs. There is a lovely lake for swimming - but still about 7m low from its historical level. There is a beautiful pavilion, high on a ridge overlooking the city some 8 miles distant - but the pavilion is a blasted ruin. Still the children laugh and play and make faces at the foreigners and I was invited to play football.

Wish you were here.

Love.

Or call them "mercenaries" if you prefer.

The farther into the twenty-first century I live, the more it seems the cyberpunk critique of capitalism was the most honest literature of the eighties. In other words, you can't say we weren't warned.

John Shirley wrote about the privatizing of lethal force in Eclipse. He emphasized how such a deal also privatizes those atrocities which we used to call murder - and justifies them in the name of profit and the ideology of security. Further, the ways in which his characters react to limited nuclear war (or talk about their reactions, because we should be perfectly willing to accept that some of them are not being wholly truthful for whatever reasons) mirror many American reactions to the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Bruce Sterling wrote about a united world being "serious" about terrorism in Islands in the Net. That seriousness is all artifice and media relations, a lullaby for good citizens, while politically powerful multinationals consort with dark powers to promote their profits and cripple or coopt government intervention. And there are mercenaries here too, fighting against the "terrorists" and using any means necessary.

Just to mention two that strike me as relevant reading after reading the weekend's papers and pixels.

The Martial household took a bold step this weekend. We got a dog.

We've been working on adopting a dog for some months, and it can take quite a long time if you're trying to be responsible about finding a non-human companion.

Yes, there will be a picture or two as soon as I get home.

Monday, your narrator heads off to Afghanistan again. I'll be there for three weeks, primarily doing some training work with local NGOs. I will also have the chance to meet with some of the UN offices and some government officials. I'd better have interesting things to say . . .

Security in Afghanistan is, of course, still tenuous, though Kabul is largely safe. It is interesting to note, but not entirely unexpected, that security in Kabul has actually improved with the current US offensive along the Pakistan border. The Taliban are under enough pressure that they do not appear to have the capacity to engage in even limited offensive activities.

It is my impression that the Taliban, at long last and two years late, are on their last legs. It is crucial to not let them off the hook this time.

But, as good as that news is, it is important to be prepared for the violence which is likely to break out once the Taliban are known to be broken. Remember, the Taliban gathered their power in opposition to the warlords who were waging a brutal war of all against all. Many of those warlords are still alive and still have their armies - and are still motivated by their own interests and not Afghanistan's. Once the Taliban are done and their threat is finished once and for all, and once the Americans decide to reduce their forces and their role in the country, the warlords may well go back to business as usual. The recent outbreak of violence in Herat, for example, seems to be an indication of this.