First Day in Kabul

So now I survived my first whole day in Kabul!
Well I suppose that is nothing one should joke about. Already at breakfast we were told by the staff at the guest house that there had been a suicide attack at the airport road. The attack was directed towards an US army convoy, but killed nine civilian Afghans. Of cause the airport road is a popular target, that is the only road to and from the airport and that is where all the westerners go every now and then. True to the general trend this suicide attack took place early in the morning. It is horrible to say, but maybe I should be grateful that it happened today. That might make it less likely that it will happen already again in Saturday (in the morning!) when we are off to Mazar or any of the other days we will be travelling to and fro the airport.

Despite this I strangely do not feel insecure here. Of cause I don’t really believe that is in my nature to feel insecure from outer threats and of cause you can not think about the risk of you being blown to pieces any minute, but I did not feel uncomfortable. The thing I felt the most though is the stress that the insecure situation cause. Everywhere there are guards, armed with automatic weapons and you see a lot of heavily armed police and some military and there are plenty of road blocks and check points that I can imagine get rather annoying after a while. There are a nervousness in the air, everyone seem to get nervous if the car stops a little too long and if you hold a little too long outside a certain building or take up the camera in the wrong place. The most surreal thing though is actually the huge amount of those gigantic white armoured Land cruisers rushing along the narrow and crowded streets. They look so absurd in this setting they could just as well come from another planet. I am actually glad we don’t have one and as I thought we have not been wearing the flak jackets!

It is not advisable to go out to take photos in the street so I wanted to try to get some snapshots from the car, but as our driver is trained in defensive driving he does everything to avoid stopping which made making pictures very difficult. One of our meetings was a little bit out of the city, there we could stop and take a short walk and even take some pictures of the old bombed out royal palace, but still you had to be careful because there are obviously some ISAF offices near by and they might think you are photographing them. The whole area around the castle, except the newly built ministry buildings, was completely levelled to the ground. My colleague told me this used to be a part of the city, but a part that has been completely destroyed. When he was here in 2003 there were still all ruins, but they are now removed.

You still see a lot of ruins in the city, but it is difficult to tell if they are destroyed by war, fighting or just very poorly built. The surrounding hills are completely jotted by small brick boxes climbing the slopes. I don’t want to think about what they would look like after an earthquake! The general impression of the city, apart from the weird security stress, is poverty, sandy colours and dust, a lot of dust, and then I can imagine this is still nothing compared to what it is like in the midst of summer. I am also a surprised to see more women without burqas in the streets than I thought. First after the Taliban fell I would have guessed all women would get rid of the burqa. Since I have learned that the burqa has a longer and stronger tradition and that quite a few women continued wearing it, for different reasons. Then I had heard I should not expect to see many women at all in the streets. So, due to this my expectations were rather low. Therefore I am positively surprised to see more women than expected and many of them very smartly dressed, in bright colours and only with a shawl thrown lightly over the hair. On the way back from the meeting out of town we passed the markets along the Kabul river and there was a heavy traffic jam that we got caught in, not good from a security perspective, but good from a street life study perspective.

Tomorrow is Friday and holyday here, which means we will not be able to hold any meetings. Therefore we have been offered the great opportunity to join some of the embassy staff on a trip to the Panshir Valley. I look very much forward to that!!