Week in Mazar, part I

It's been a long week here in Mazar i Sharif, in the north of Afghanistan about an hour's drive from the Uzbek border.  Mike, Jo and I came up for various reasons, but for me it was a chance to see how a field office runs, get out to meet some businesses, get out to meet some international buyers and hear out their questions and concerns.  Mazar is a more permissive environment than Kabul, without all the high-value and high-profile governmental targets.  As a result, you can see the industry growing fast as soon as you leave the airport.  The road is choked with congestion notable for its difference from the gridlock in Kabul--here, the traffic is more heavy trucks, more people moving about, and exponentially fewer armored Land Cruisers blasting through town on their merry old way.  Construction is everywhere, in the center of city and on the edges.  Fueling stations are in keen competition, with one industrious owner covering his in gold foil in a cutthroat business maneuver.

Yes, the kitsch in Afghanistan puts Hungary's to shame.  Commanders, or warlords if you prefer, put statues of roaring lions on top of their poppy palaces while the holiest site in the city, the blue mosque, final resting place of Imam Ali, has a bright red billboard announcing its name defiantly positioned on top of the already notable bright aquamarine dome--already the highest point in the city.  At nighttime the mosque gets lit like Vegas with flashing lights competing with flocks of white pigeons.

The white pigeons--known as "doves" when they don't come by the ten thousand, are a famous story to themselves.  Any pigeon that makes its way to the shrine will turn white within three days.  There's not a single dark colored pigeon on the grounds--the very few that have occasionally dark feathers simply haven't been here for three days yet.  The magic doesn't extend to the ducks though, which are dark gray.

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It's been a long week now because Mazar sits at the shoulder of the Hindu Kush, with the flat Uzbek plain stretching from here to the north pole.  Winter weather sweeps in unabated and runs headlong into the mountains, sitting and dumping rain for days on end while it decides what to do.  At least there's no snow, which would be stunningly beautiful, but which would also render the rutted mud 'roads' useless to wheeled travel.  And I don't have a donkey.

The real lockdown has come from snow in Kabul--no flights have landed in the last several days, and it's supposed to snow at least through tomorrow.  Leaves more time to enjoy the relative freedom of movement, the ability to actually walk to dinner once in a while.

Yesterday was a fascinating cultural day. After a lavish breakfast with seemingly-incongruous delicious bacon, Liz, Jo and I went with Karim to the National Gallery. The most striking thing about the museum is that it exists at all--the Taliban stricture against images

led to the case that I'm leaning on here--"210 images destroyed by the Taliban." These paintings were to be destroyed permanently, along with any other artwork depicting faces. The museum staff, ever resourceful, managed to save hundreds of pieces by painting watercolors over top.  In 2001, they washed off the watercolors, and the seed for the museum remained.  Other works were brought in by collectors or were repaired, and the museum, supposedly once a German embassy, makes for a short but deep insight into the artists' view of Afghan history.  Karim, who is Hazara, had a strong reaction to a painting of an old man wretched in a prison cell underlined by a poem translated roughly as "one day my love/ you will hear news of me."  It was distraught...  I personally enjoyed this painting of the traditional Pashtun attan dance, calling up the pre-Islamic rites that still have not been entirely eradicated from Afghanistan.  The rest of the museum revealed a more liberal but still recent history, with buxom jazz musicians, the King in full morning dress, and traditionally dressed women gazing arrestingly directly at the viewer.

After speaking for a while with the museum's curator and viewing some of his work--arresting in its own way, full of political pain--we moved over to the Sultani museum on the other side of the same building.  The Sultani museum is full of treasures that had been smuggled out of Afghanistan but but were then reassembled and returned by a concerned benefactor.

Bah, have to get ready for work...more to come on this post this evening!

Thoughts on Arrival

I've arrived safely in Kabul after nearly thirty hours of travel time. The city has an 'alert face' on right now after the attacks yesterday, so it was slow traveling from the airport. The police and army are both being thorough and conscientious in the security of main thoroughfares and we passed through six or seven checkpoints before finally reaching the compound. As a compound, it is quite comfortable, but those six or seven levels of security between here and the average Kabuli create a feeling of psychological and even physical distance, even though they cover less than the distance of a kilometer.

Stepping off the plane at Kabul airport crystalized the mix of feelings attendant on this adventure in Afghanistan. The mountains, snow-capped and gorgeous and imposing were also barely visible through the smog and dust. The air was acrid and the smells brought back a rush of memories from Baghdad and Saigon. Kabul is its own place though, a dry mountain city living uneasily half at war.

I am very much in listening and learning mode right now. Fortunately PDT has established an outstanding team and everyone has been a wealth of technical, personal, economic, and security information. As my task in Kandahar becomes more real and less theoretical, it still looks huge but thankfully it also looks like a challenge that can be tackled and that can become a major success.