We've been here just over a week now.

One can access the internet in Kabul with relative ease. It is slow, of course, but most hotels offer service and there are internet cafes scattered around the city. However, with only about one free hour every day to check our e-mail, well, work comes before blog.

I have been keeping notes and I will group some of my observations thematically. I'll post them as I have the opportunity.

Kabul is poor. Oh, god, is it poor.

I have never been to a poorer city. And this is Kabul on the upswing, on the rebound from depths of which most Americans or Europeans simply cannot conceive.

Today someone said to me, with some irony but also in all seriousness, "Even the communists were better than this."

“Kabul has one of the most beautiful natural locations of any city in the world. . . Nestled in the Kabul River valley almost 1800m (5,900ft) above sea level, it has an enviable climate and four distinct and equally charming seasons. . . In winter the breathtaking mountains surrounding the city are covered in snow.” Kabul (The Bradt Mini Guide)

Kabul is set on a plateau inside a bowl of mountains. This landscape is perfect for holding in pollution. The only reason the air isn’t nearly unbreatheable is that Kabul doesn’t have enough industry or enough cars – yet.

The UN plane came in fast, barely giving us a chance to see the city’s crumpled chessboard. The sun hid behind a haze of dust and cooking smoke. I got in the slow line through passport control and was the last person but one through. The colleague I’m traveling with had already made friends with our driver by the time I made my way to the exit. He had also grabbed my suitcase on the way out - saving me the need to refuse the persistent and often grabby offers of assistance - even though I had both of our baggage claim tickets.

Kabul is dusty. A fine mist of dust and smoke hangs in the air at all hours. It coats my throat, making the planned participatory nature of our training sessions also necessary. While the participants talk, wrangle, and do the exercises we’ve devised, we swig down water and tea, preparing to introduce the next element.

. . .

It snowed overnight, about an inch. Wet and sticky, it spun the trees and barbed wire into confections and churned the ground into mud. At least the snow pulled the dust down out of the air.

As in most poor countries, people drive to get where they’re going, though Kabulis are even more intense. It doesn’t matter so much what is in between points A and B. Right-of-way is unknown and the side of the road upon which one should strive to stay (the right) is regarded as an at times wholly arbitrary convention.

Everyone complains about the traffic jams, but they aren’t that bad. They don’t touch Atlanta, much less the platonic ideal that is Jakarta. They aren’t even as bad as Katmandu, to consider a similar, if not exact, poverty level.

Why aren’t the jams too difficult? As with the relative deficiency in world class pollution, Kabul doesn’t yet have the number of cars it needs for truly epic, hour and soul wasting gridlock.

Parts of the city look like nothing so much as the former Yugoslavia. Soviet style apartment blocks riddled with bullet holes.

But West Kabul is a crime. Once, there was a city there. Teeming, crowded, bustling, joy, sorrow, life. Now, just flattened. They say fifty thousand died.

Massoud, the architect of this particular horror, is also a national hero. He fought the Taliban tooth and nail and forged the Northern Alliance which played a crucial role in taking Afgahistan back from those, other, monsters. He was killed just before September 11th and, at the time, his death was considered a great blow to Afghan freedom.

Massoud's heirs now rule the country and exploit a memory now growing golden. You see Massoud's picture on billboards, over doorways, on the side of supermarkets, hanging from the rear-view mirrors of taxicabs - all over the city he destroyed.

There are no unambiguous heroes.

Kabul is largely flat and China is a neighbor: I expected more bicycles.

That isn’t to say there aren’t a lot of bicycles (and all of them Chinese made), just not as many as I would expect given the perfect conditions for bicycling and the poverty. Bicycles are often an opportunity for commerce as much as they are transportation. The relative lack of bicycles is another indicator of the extreme depth of the poverty.

There also aren’t as many mopeds or motorcycles as I expected. Again, you do see them, but not nearly in the numbers you see in Katmandu, for example.

The one thing I’ve seen more of is police directing traffic. I have never seen this many, not in any city, not even in Germany (it is the Germans who are funding the hiring and training of the police here). At least some people are being employed.

The police do share the drivers’ sense of the traffic rules though. Their directions aren’t always, um, clear.

I haven’t seen a full chador on any woman yet, though every local woman covers at least her hair.

Many women (perhaps half, but it varies from neighborhood to neighborhood and I am taking no formal survey) do not cover their faces at all.

Many women also do wear the familiar and infamous blue burka, but they wear it as a kind of shawl, covering only their head and shoulders, hanging open in the front revealing embroidered dresses, high heels, jewelry, freedom.

In my experience, it takes thirty-seven hours to get from Kabul to Boston. Your mileage to hour ratio may vary - but you'll still be spent by the end of the "day".

I have also managed to schedule myself so that I head off on the annual ski vacation next week. This time, however, I have figured out to get access to the web - and, therefore, to you . . .

Kabul is on the road to empire. Almost everybody, every nation, who has laid claim to the world has passed through here. Alexander, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Babur, and of course the British.

The Romans, those silly barbarians scratching in the hills around that inconsequential sea, never made it to Kabul. Claims of their world importance are, to put it plainly, suspect and probably worthless.

The Americans have made it to Kabul. Welcome to the big time.

I've seen a fair number of women here wearing dresses made from a particular fabric. It is clearly artificial, some rayon or polyester weave (a guess, but a pretty good one; a foreign man cannot go up to a woman and ask about her clothes). What is worthy of remark is that this fabric is the exact blue color of the burka. The dresses sewn from it are modern (though still asian; they drape and pleat much more than western dresses) and are often intricately embroidered in silver or white thread.

Yes, there is a nod in one direction to tradition by using the color; and a suggestion that these women will be taken on their own terms and make their own decisions - at least abut what to wear.

Two striking images from my second week:

A woman dressed in a light gray power suit, pants, high heeled black leather boots. Very professional. Blue burka completely covering her head, but also billowing behind her like a cape as she marched off to her next meeting. No heads turned to see her pass but mine.

And I finally saw a woman in a full black chador, covered from head to foot, not even her hands were showing. She had added another wrap to her head (and around her shoulders; it was cold) so that even her eyes were nearly hidden from the gaze of others. All of this was skin tight.

There is the phrase "nothing left to the imagination", but, of course, in this case everything was still obscured - and the imagination was fired. This was not an incitement to prurient thought: it was a command.

She was tall and proud, defiant ("fuck you!") and playful ("don't you want to fuck me too?"), and as this daughter of Lilith swung her hips down the street, every head turned.

Kabul in winter is actually quite like Boston. The temperature hovers around freezing and the sky threatens precipitation far more often than it drops it.

But some days the cold air clears just enough, becomes nearly crisp, and the infinite sky is revealed unmarred by even a wisp of cloud. On those days, the mountains come out to play.

They are stunning. Just . . . wow.

. . .

Kabul’s height of 1800m is occasionally staggering - literally. I’m from sea-level, a mollusk stranded just beyond high tide and oozing down toward the water is my natural direction. When I’m a mile up, I always find that I sleep longer and deeper than normal. I also forget that running up three flights of stairs will be momentarily puzzling in its sheer breathlessness. The fourth day of training was especially bad, as I unexpectedly ran out of breath in the middle of a sentence.

Everybody here, from Afghan to zed, thinks that holding elections in June is crazy. I will go further than that: everybody thinks the elections are a farce.

Karzai will win. That has already been arranged. So why, some exasperated people snarled, bother with the elections?

Sure, an election gives Karzai a veneer of legitimacy – and Bush a mask of it. But Afghans are not stupid (and have rather extensive experience with geopolitics; one might even say they imbibe it with their mother's milk) and they know exactly what is going on. They know that their election is being played out (just as was ordained in Bonn) in order to impact the US elections.

Cynical? They would call you naïve if you somehow came to a different conclusion.

However, in contrast to nearly every piece of commentary on the Afghan Constitution from the Western audience (NGOs, media, whoever), every single Afghan I’ve asked thinks the Constitution is a good document. They then offer the caveat that implementation is nearly impossible.

By themselves, none of the choices of what to wear means very much. But taken together and including other, less striking, options (many Kabul women dress like poor Russians, which means their faces are bare and the clothes recognizably "western") you can see that there is a shift in attitude taking place.

There will be great strides taken for womens' rights in Afghanistan in the next few years. Educated women from Kabul already know what equal rights look like, they know what they want - and what they need to struggle against. Women from rural areas, as well as from the more conservative cities (Kandahar and Jalalabad in particular) don't. They don't know what to expect, what opportunities will open up or what traditions will be lost.

Changes, of all sorts, on the streets of Kabul (and, as the capital, scenes from Kabul dominate the media and have a wide psychological impact across the country) will both be resisted and embraced. For every apparent step forward big enough to be noticed and reported, there will be a corresponding step back. In order to measure the true depth of change, we need to fall back on more subtle, but not less clear, indications. What people wear and what they expect to be able to wear is one such.

There will be great strides taken for womens' rights in Afghanistan in the next few years. And it will not seem like enough to us, steeped all our lives in the active presence of women, who have gone to school with, worked shoulder to shoulder with, have had conversations with and arguments with and made jokes with and held hands with and shared tears with girls and women every single day. It won't be enough (and will never be enough - not even for us - until certain things are so taken for granted that they are invisible), but it might just be enough for this year. And next year, another few steps. And the year after that.

The changes are happening, right now. Don't miss them because "it isn't enough".

A wasteland wrought by human hands, houses blasted and crumbling, and homes broken beyond repair. A dead city.

But flying free over the empty quarter, unseen by the eyeless windows, a flock of colored birds.

All over Kabul, even over West Kabul, kites dart and weave and hover. Children toss their dreams up into the sky no matter what cruelties or foolishness on the ground try to drag them back.

People live despite disaster, dream despite despair, and, in the face of everything, fly.

The Taliban banned kites. That, perhaps, tells you everything you need to know about them.

Warning: I'm about to get professional.

There isn't enough reconstruction or rehabilitation in Kabul. Or, in other words, there is not enough of the right building being done. This is not a good sign for the immediate future.

What do I mean by "getting professional"? Anybody can come to Kabul and see that there is a lot of building underway. Anybody could go to Kabul, see all the building, and come away thinking that this country was really getting back on its feet, really taking strides toward the prosperous future that Afghans deserve. Anybody could say that all that building is a positive sign. And, in their amateur way, they would be wrong.

They would be wrong because they haven't asked the right questions. To be fair, most people haven't been in one post-conflict situation, let alone in enough to begin to know how to ask questions or to interpret the answers.

The issue is not simply how much building is taking place, but what kind of building. Houses or businesses? Reconstruction in damaged or destroyed areas or brand new construction? Are local people building their own homes/shops or are the projects funded by outsiders (donor governments, NGOs, or even wealthy Afghans who won't directly use the property)?

Most of the construction in Kabul is of businesses or of large governmental infrastructure. A fair amount is new construction and not rebuilding or rehabilitation. And the money being spent is largely international. What this means is that the things being built may not be the things people need right now.

There is very little reconstruction of houses, for example. People need places to live, and many refugees are returning to the city (or coming to Kabul rather than returning to their villages), but people are not building their own houses. This is unusual in circumstances of refugee return and it needs to be explored. There appear to be several factors having an impact.

First, and this is quite disturbing, there seems to be a culture of assistance developing in Afghanistan. People are waiting for the international community to take responsibility for nearly everything. It isn't quite dependency yet, but we are taking steps down that road and that is not a good thing.

Of course, this could not happen without the international community's involvement. And the international community feels guilty over having left Afghanistan alone after they drove the Soviets out, they feel guilty over the development of the Taliban, and over the desultory response to the recent famine (now, thankfully, over). And they appear to be overcompensating. That has the potential to rob the locals of their own initiative and their own solutions. How do we fix this? That is one of the crucial questions facing the international community in the twenty-first century and there are no easy answers (fortunately, Haneef Atmar, the Afghan Minister of Reconstruction and Rehabilitation is a very able, experienced, and committed man: if there is anyone who can begin to define the terms by which nations rebuild themselves, he is one of the best candidates).

Second, and related closely to the first, the types of reconstruction that get good press, that make sense to our media and so get reported as "success stories", are the big projects. If a government doesn't have a building for the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of Women's Affairs then let's build one. If a country doesn't have a good, modern hospital (or ten) let's build them. If a capital city no longer has a university, let's rebuild it.

These are certainly worthy goals, but they also aren't necessarily the most important ones in the first couple of years. Yet they are always considered of the highest priority.

Third, and this is extremely thorny, land ownership is a huge and unresolved issue. People may not be able to rebuild because they do not have a clear title to the land. The government of Kabul has changed hands five times in the past twenty-five years and every one of those governments made changes to the deeds.

Let me give you a composite but representative example, pulled together from conversations with a number of Kabulis:

A family runs afoul of the communists back in the early 80s and goes into exile (probably Pakistan, but possibly farther afield). They manage to have a cousin come and move in so that someone in the larger family is still living in the house. However, the cousin then bribes someone in the government to change the deed to his name.

The communists lose the war and the mujahideen take over the city. A fighter or commander decides that he wants the house. He kicks the cousin out, goes down to the record hall and changes the deed to his name.

The Taliban take over the city. One of them changes the deed yet again. And then he sells the house.

Something like this, if not quite as extreme in all the particulars, happened to thousands of people in Kabul. No one wants to rebuild if they might lose the land in court as soon as they've finished - which is a very real possibility. The land ownership is sufficiently confused and confidence in the honesty of the courts is shaky enough to worry people quite a lot.

Fourth, and this goes right to the very heart of the matter, there is very little money in the economy. Not only do people not have very much for reconstruction work, they don't have the funds necessary to take a land claim through the courts. It costs several thousand dollars (people said at least $5000, but usually more) and several months of court time to have a property claim finalized.

Yes, Afghanistan is trying to put systems in place to straighten all of this out. But it goes slowly and the land ownership issue has begun to fester, having an impact on people's sense of the legitimacy of the government. Nearly everyone I spoke with was very annoyed at how slow the reforms were in coming and at how corrupt the courts have become. Currently, there is no assurance of fairness and dissatisfaction is growing.

I must add that when considering reconstruction, people tell me that the difference from even six months ago is immense. Of course, six months ago almost nothing was being done as even those with the ability (legal and financial) to build were still uncertain about the security situation. That, good news!, is no longer considered a hot issue.

So, in my professional opinion: despite superficial appearances, there is not enough reconstruction going on in Kabul. There could be more and it could be done more strategically.

. . .

What would I, speaking in my professional capacity, focus on? Property law and land claims. This offers the most opportunity to the most people in the least amount of time. In addition, dealing with property now has immediate benefits that will extend far into future: one important need is establishing a trustworthy, effective, and efficient judiciary. Do it now, before a culture of laxity and corruption becomes set.

I think this will be the last of the "Kabul Diaries" for now. I am likely to return there later this year and I will no doubt learn much more.

. . .

I’ve heard both expatriates and Afghans say that Afghans are “narrow-minded” - the same phrase, repeated several times.

With the mountains ringing this city, I can see how some might feel like the world was a bowl and they were down in the bottom (especially with the current media focus). I can see how people might feel like the world ended at the edge of nature's ramparts. Over the mountain might seem like nonsense.

But, of course, this is the crossroads of the world. The people from here know exactly what lies on the other side. They've sold at least one of everything at one time or another. They’ve forgotten more languages than are still spoken. They have seen every idea tried - and fail.

"Narrow-minded"? I'd call the Afghans very focused on their own problems. They have little time right now for anything else. I certianly cannot fault them for that.

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.

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.

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.

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'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!

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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 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.

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 . . .

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.

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.

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 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 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 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'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.

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 . . .

Perhaps this is more properly part of a "Boston Diary", but, hey, it's all the same planet.

When I left for Afghanistan it was still the tail end of winter. We checked the daily forecast to see what sort of jacket we would need. It is now two solid weeks into spring. When we check the forecast it is to see if we need a jacket at all.

This means that now, as I walk about the city, I have to dodge joggers instead of crazy drivers (the bicyclists are equally insane). There are no joggers in Kabul. There are no bare legs in Kabul, not even on men. There sure as damnation are no women in Kabul walking around with bare arms, bare legs, and bare bellies. America is an odd place.

. . .

The day I returned, I slipped into the office for a few minutes to say hi to my colleagues. Walking from the car to our building the first person I passed was a woman in chador. America has a sense of humor!

There is an all too frequent rhetorical flourish among the anti-Bush blogosphere and their commenters about the amount of Afghanistan the Taliban control. This benighted landscape, cowering under the stifling cloud of medieval theocracy and modern violence, is variously described as "most of Afghanistan" or "much of the country".

The rhetoric, of course, is trying to equate the ongoing insecurity in Afghanistan with the Bush Administration's failure to deal decisively with the Taliban since November 2001. While both of those remain troubling issues, unifying them into a single, simple image is false.

The Taliban reached their high water mark on September 9th, 2001 with the assassination of the Northern Allaiance's chief commander, Massoud. At that point they controlled about nine-tenths of Afghanistan and they had regained the offensive against their enemies. Since November of that year, they have been on the run and now control nothing.

While the Taliban no longer control any area inside Afghanistan, they do have the capacity to create insecurity and commit acts of violence in parts of the country.

Look at a map of Afghanistan. Kandahar, the major city in the south, has been the heart of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Follow the road to the south and you'll come to Quetta in Pakistan, another hotbed of that strain of fundamentalist Islam. Follow the road out of Kandahar west to the province of Helmand or east to Zabol and Ghazni and you might be highjacked by Taliban fighters. You might encounter Taliban anywhere south of that road and due east from the city of Ghazni through Paktia province. Go further north than Ghazni city or further west than Delaram and you might still have to contend with bandits of various ilk, but probably not with the Taliban.

Small groups of people can move about the country at will, especially if they are armed. Small groups of Taliban, therefore, can carry out missions of terror pretty much anywhere in the country¹. But only if they can avoid the warlords who want to kill them, the patrols of the US and Afghan army who want to kill them, or the normal ordinary citizens who want to kill them. Afghanistan is a violent culture. Taliban who move outside of the regions where they have support are in trouble.

I find I cannot overemphasize this enough to Americans and Europeans: the vast majority of the Afghan people hate the Taliban. There is absolutely no way that they - or any other religiously based movement - could take over the country ever again. The prevalence of such musings in the western press - and among the anti-Bush with whom I began this piece - is unfortunate given how damaging such a misreading can be.

However, I can understand where the beginnings of such an analysis come from. Afghans are among the most religious people I have ever met anywhere in the world. Islam really matters to them and they constantly demonstrate that simple, humble fact in their daily lives. This appears to disturb the equilibrium of a fair number of folks raised in a secular-yet-still-judeo-christian milieu. Worse, these off-balance people don't talk to Afghans (or any Muslims) about what they believe and about what God demands of them. Assumptions are made based upon books written to sell and lurid interviews with extremists, and these assumptions are what gets passed on.

One of the most interesting conversations I have had in Afghanistan was with a young man, Pashtun, Sunni, and deeply religious, who felt he needed to explain to me the difference between true Islam and the Taliban heresy. He quoted me surah and verse from the Koran to demonstrate how the Taliban had misinterpreted. Another man, Shi'a, added and argued on fine points, but agreed wholeheartedly that the Taliban had missed the point completely.

"But then how did the Taliban take over?"

"They promised us peace."

. . .

This is not to say that the policies and actions taken against the Taliban have worked out just fine. They have not and they deserve criticism.

Insecurity in Afghanistan is a product of multiple actors vying to reinforce their own interests at the expense of others'. One reason - indeed the main reason - the Taliban were able to take over much of the country was that they brought security. The anarchic war of warlord against warlord had worn out the population and any possibility of escaping from that terrible cycle was worth grasping. Well, we all know how sadly it turned out. And because of that, I'll say it again, every Afghan I've spoken with about the Taliban hates them. There is simply no way the Taliban could ever take over the country again.

However, as the Taliban have abandoned their strongholds, the security situation in the country has reverted to a less stable one. Banditry and warlordism (not the same thing) have resumed where they left off. The inability (and this is the world's greatest failing toward the people of Afghanistan; something of which we should all be ashamed and working towards changing) of the US or ISAF to provide security across the country (in other words, to arrest or kill the bandits and warlords) is the single most destabilizing factor in the country.

. . .

¹ Five aid workers for Medecins Sans Frontieres were killed on Wednesday² in the north-western province of Badghis. (What CARE said.)

There is speculation that the Taliban were involved. I am skeptical for the reasons above. I have spoken with colleagues who know more about Afghanistan than I do and they share my skepticism. There are many groups in Afghanistan who have an interest in the elections, either to destabilize the situation so that they are called off, or to depress turnout so that they are called into question. Nonetheless, you will see several inexcusably lazy stories tying the Taliban to these murders and very little speculation as to who else might benefit.

²

" Wednesday's was the single highest death toll among aid workers since late 2001. "

CNN is not correct (the story is actually from Reuters - which means that it will appear in hundreds of newspapers, as well as this version on CNN's web-site). Wednesday's equaled the worst attack this year. Five staff of Sanayee Development Foundation, an Afghan NGO, were killed February 26th of this year.

The media have a responsibility to count the lives of locals as equivalent to those of expatriates. You can be sure that Afghans read that story and noticed that five of their countrymen, working for a local NGO, were written right out of the story. Such reporting carries a message about whose lives are really important and which work is truly valued by the international community. I know that MSF, for one, does not share CNN's or Reuters' perspective.

. . .

UPDATE: Grammar fix.