Captain Cat's Diaries

Raised voices behind burqas

 
 "You can cut down the flower but nothing can stop the coming of Spring" - Malalai Joya, exiled former female parliamentarian

 

December has so far brought with it chilled winds and melancholy clouds filled with cold rain, as yet undecided about becoming snow.  Sweet smoke already fills this damp wintry air as wood stoves quietly burn up what’s left of a region once covered in pine forests. During winter, brightly painted Pakistani trucks trundle between Kabul and these southeastern provinces packed to the brim with lumber. This is a source of huge tension among tribes here, who fight out their turf wars to determine who gets to cut down the remaining green areas to sell as firewood. 

 

Mabel has gone, though her three kittens are here. They are sweet and affectionate, but I miss Mabel. I wonder if this was a conscious decision on her part, to step down giving way to her offspring, or whether she was mauled by one of the many stray dogs who sit like sentinels outside our compound walls.

 

Yesterday, in the absence of our Human Rights officers, I had to give a speech on the occasion of the International Day for the Prevention of Violence against Women. There were about a hundred people present at the event, including the Deputy Governor, the Provincial Chief of Police and some other large turbaned Provincial Council bigwigs, as well as numerous local journalists and a small television crew. Afghans certainly love their speeches.

 

Ironically but somewhat predictably, the only women there were tucked away at the back of the room, hidden beneath their tatty blue burqas, token participants to the occasion.

 

I wondered to myself what the point was, but hoped this whole charade of an event was nonetheless a small step in the right direction. I spoke on behalf of my organization over the crowd of beards and sun darkened faces to the women seated at the back. I told them that Afghanistan needed to get to a place and time where this day wasn’t celebrated once a year with flowery speeches, but one that had to be celebrated every day. Beyond this, Afghanistan needed to get to a point where people forget that they even need to celebrate that women aren’t being abused in their homes or raped with impunity, and that their attendance at school isn’t in question.

 

Except my words came out sounding hollow and empty, I felt like an idiot, and I suspect much was lost in translation. Who am I to give false hope to these women.  I told them I had worked with some of the most extraordinary people here over the past few years, committed to improving women’s lives, and that things can change. But it’s a fact that over the past few years, of the many women who have bravely taken seats in parliament or who are working as doctors or journalists or for national and international organizations seeking to promote women’s rights, many have received death threats, have been beaten or even killed – not by the Taliban, but by their own families and community members.

 

This country will be doomed until women realize that they can and must demand equal rights. And they won’t until they can trust that there are institutions working to help them achieve this, that there are safety nets and that the government is on their side and will hold accountable anyone who feels it’s their right to mistreat them.

 

It’s almost insulting to recognise a single day a year celebrating such a thing. But if it plants a seed and gets people thinking and talking, particularly in this highly conservative part of the country, then maybe it's a start.

Notes from a tribal gathering

 

…So back to those querulous tribesmen up in the Kurram Agency. After a couple of weeks, the Deputy Governor managed to arrange a meeting between the Shi’a Turi tribe and the Sunni Bangash tribe, to try to find a peaceful settlement to their long-standing dispute.

 

A word on this particular sectarian conflict: tensions between the Shi’as and Sunnis flared up back in the 80s when the Zia government in Pakistan introduced fighters to the Kurram Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in order to quell Shi’a influence on the main weapons supply route between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

The two sides now accuse each other of not allowing the other to travel freely through the areas they inhabit and control. Thus the Turi tribe tend to take out any hapless Bangash tribesman from Boshara who tries to travel across into Afghanistan to northern Paktia and onwards to Kabul, and likewise the Bangash spare the Shi’as no mercy en route to Peshawar in Pakistan.

 

It should also probably be noted that the Taliban (who are Sunni) have increased their activities in this area, establishing bases along the border with Afghanistan. The Shi’a Turis use this information a lot when trying to garner support from the Afghan authorities and US military to support their cause.

 

A word about tribal disputes. According to Pashtunwali, the Pashtun tribal code of conduct, if a weaker tribe wants ‘help’ (read ‘hitmen’ in most cases) from other tribes in a particular area, the tradition is for the tribe in question to slaughter a sheep in offering to the stronger tribe. A number of poor sheep have met their end in recent weeks as the Bangash have sought the help from fellow Sunni tribes this side of the border here in Paktia, where I am based.

 

Back to the story: on Tuesday morning after a heart stopping journey on a Blackhawk (courtesy of the US military) skimming effortlessly in between Paktia’s frosted peaks, we landed at a small military base up in the northeastern part of the province and set off with the Deputy Governor and a posse of parliamentarians from Kabul to a large meeting room perched on the side of a hill.

 

After about an hour chatting outside waiting for the Turi and Bangash tribal representatives to show up, we took off our shoes and went to sit in a large circle on the floor, as is the tradition in jirgas (a tribal gathering to solve a dispute). The Deputy Governor motioned for me to sit beside him, and as I sat down, I became very aware that amidst the hundred or so tribal elders filing in, I was the only woman in the room.

 

And so, as happens in jirgas over endless cups of green tea, the more respected elders and tribal leaders take the floor and present their side of the argument. The discussion went back and forth between both sides for some time. A couple of hours into the jirga, things suddenly got a little heated (by which point I was in dire need of two hip replacements and longed to stretch my legs out in front of me, which would have constituted something of a cultural faux pas).

 

One prominent parliamentarian and former jihadi commander held up his hand piously, and ordered the gathering to quiet down. He then started to bellow angrily, spluttering into his long black beard, stating that as the key Bangash representatives hadn’t turned up, the outcome of this particular meeting was void. I watched this man caught between dust-filled sunbeams on the faded carpet as he appeared to chastise his onlookers, and imagined him leading troops of men through once wooded hills armed with Kalashnikovs.

 

Commander Daoud

 

This man, Commander Daoud, is not a particularly nice man. He was one of the people in this province responsible for widespread vote rigging in his area of influence in Zazi Aryoub district. A short while after the jirga as we waited outside still hopeful that the Bangash would turn up, this burly man who towered above everyone else beckoned to me to join the large circle of tribal elders he was communing with. I looked at him incredulously. “Me?” I mouthed as I raised my eyebrows questioningly, pointing at myself. He nodded and I walked over.

 

I was instantly encircled. Thankfully my young colleague had come with me in order to translate. “The UN is meddling with our election! This is nothing to do with you! You foreigners should keep your noses out!” I tried to explain the UN’s role in the election, and that of the Independent Election Commission, and the Election Complaints Commission, but somehow it all got lost somewhere between him brandishing his walking stick at me and then storming off. Well, limping off really.

 

The next morning as we waited at the military base waiting for our ride back to Gardez, he hobbled up to me in what I believe was an attempt to apologise for his behaviour the day before. Apparently he had been more receptive to my other colleague that morning, who had been able to have a more rational discussion with him. However his words were lost, swept up in a sudden whirlwind of noise and dust as our helicopter landed, and we parted ways. I turned and watched as Commander Daoud hobbled back down the hillside, followed by his faithful former jihadi fighters.

All along the watchtower

  

This evening I sat in my usual spot in the narrow doorway of my room with Mabel and her skittish kittens, and watched as the sky turned a dusky deep pink above the mountains. The only thing standing between those mountains and I are coils of barbed wire which line the crumbling brick walls around my prison of a home. They stand out so black and sharp in this half-light. The empty watchtowers perched at the corners of the compound are as already as black as the night that’s about to fall. I’m filled with such longing to fly beyond these razor walls that it almost hurts.

 

I could actually close my eyes and draw the view from this room I’ve seen it so often.  In front of me just off to the right, beyond clumps of grass that we tried to grow earlier this year, there’s a rickety wooden hut covered in weathered, lichen green paint where Nemat, the houseman, does all of our ironing.  Nemat’s eyes almost disappear beneath his bushy brows when he smiles, displaying a row of crooked browning teeth.  I am embarrassed by the way he sometimes bows his head as if in deference when I walk past, his hand to his heart in that beautiful way the Afghan people have when they meet each other.

 

To my immediate right, a narrow barren yard stretches past another similar hut (which is used for nothing at all) and a makeshift tennis court. It comes to an abrupt end at yet another wall and a latrine, above which one of these empty guard boxes sits precariously. Way over in the far corner of the yard, past an unassuming vegetable patch where tomatoes refuse to grow, a once formidable bus now squats in a rusting heap, grubby yellow paint betraying a glorious past. I call it the ‘love bus’, I’m not sure why. I imagine it in bygone days bumbling along a large open highway full of hippies, music blaring from its open windows.

 

The Love Bus 

 

This whole place is bound by high walls and barbed wire, over which you can’t see unless you climb up to one of these guard boxes, which I do sometimes. The other evening I sat up there and watched a full moon rise over shadows of mountains. I sat on sand bags and called my father and tried not to cry as I told him cheerily how beautiful the night sky was.

 

And just when I feel I can no longer carry the weight of this confinement, this bizarre life in someone else’s war zone a million miles from home, a magical moment comes along and lifts me sky high above these jagged walls. I walk into my office and my three Afghan friends and colleagues, my companions these past 18 months in this remote little outpost of the Southeast, who have taught me more about this country than anyone ever could, embalm me in their gentle teasing, love and friendship, and I am soaring again.

Conflicted

It's never a good idea to write when you're angry, but I'm fuming. The head of the UN is making us all look like fools, I feel humiliated and angry that I have been put in this position, that I'm being forced into making a decision about staying on and working here (though I wonder whether I should be jeopordising an opportunity to put myself through law school next year if I leave - at least this is a tentative future plan).

Anyone following this saga has no doubt seen the very public argument between the head of the UN mission here and his deputy who was sacked a few days ago 'in the interests of the mission', because he didn't think we should be supporting these elections. Of course we shouldn't.

The other day I sent a letter to my head of office who was on her way to Kabul for a heads of office meeting. She asked us if there were any issues we wanted to raise. I wrote that I wanted to know what the UN's official response was going to be to the issues of widespread fraud throughout the country, and what our 'line' should be to the people with whom we have spent months and years building relationships, people who now trust us and come to us for help. 

Over the last few weeks since the elections, we have been working hard to get people's perceptions of the process, particularly from Provincial Council candidates. We have carefully collected and recorded incidents of fraud and passed these on to HQ.

A lot of people in the Southeast region are angry and want to see how our organisation will respond. We have been told in no uncertain terms that the local population will no longer respect or support us unless we speak out strongly against this fraudulent election.

It is incredibly demoralising. I had no interest in these elections in the first place, how can elections be held in the middle of an insurgency? How can they be monitored? How can those crooks working close to or for the 'Independent' Election Commission be held accountable? So much of the actual work we do here can be useful, but everything is being eclipsed by these wretched elections, and they are wretched in every sense.

So yes, I want my boss to ask the head of this organisation how, in light of our mandate - which was to support an election that was free, fair and transparent and given that it was none of these - how he intends to uphold our credibility, and how he views the damage to our reputation, particularly in light of the dismissal of his deputy?

Yesterday I met with 30 Sunni tribal elders from the Kurram Agency across the border in Pakistan. They want the Afghan government to help them. At the moment they are trapped, their villages are surrounded by a dominant Shi'a sect who are refusing to let them pass through to northeastern Paktya to get supplies and medical assistance. I met with the provincial Governor afterwards and we are setting up a meeting in a few days with Shi'a tribal elders to hear their side; we will hopefully then bring both sides together to negotiate some form of settlement.

The other week I was in Khost to speak to the deputy governor and elders from two warring tribes following a land dispute, which has already resulted in a number of deaths on both sides. I got UNHCR involved to deal with displaced families and am (still) working on getting local security forces to the area.

I have no idea whether any of these efforts will pay off in the long-term, or whether we do add any value here. I hope at the very least we don't make things worse. But being that bridge and having people come to ask us to mediate is incredibly rewarding and I am proud to work for this organisation in so many respects because I am convinced we can do a lot of good. Yet I am now forced to think about resigning over this stupid election, when it represents so little of the actual work we do here.

[...]

I just had to duck under my desk because I'm hearing a lot of gunfire right outside my office. More later.

[added afterwards - it was actually a wedding, but my insides have already turned to jelly. Urgh. We use confetti in the UK, maybe the Afghans could have a think about that. I was interested to note my reaction in that I didn't run for the bunker or put on my flak jacket or helmet which are here beside me, but hovered around the window looking for someone to tell me what was going on. Duh.]

Conversation with a young American soldier

 

On a Chinook, somewhere between Gardez and Khost, summer last year

Yesterday as I waited for a colleague to get checked out at the medical facilities at the PRT (we think she has malaria), I sat outside and had a chat with a 20-year old medical officer (who I'll call Mike for the sake of anonymity).

Mike was short and stocky, soft around the edges with cropped hair, of Filipino origin. He was wearing a khaki tee-shirt, army slacks and boots and smoked one red Marlboro after another as we sat in the sun.

My heart went out to this little chap and I asked how he’d ended up in the army here in Afghanistan. He was so young, but there he was acting so tough – pinching his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, flicking it away deftly once he’d finished with it.

He furrowed his brow and spat, taking a swig of water then pulled out another cigarette. He told me his parents couldn't afford to send both of their kids to university, so he signed up. He hopes to go to school (university) in a few years' time. I believe the military help pay for their recruits' studies once they've served for a few years, but it’s so sad that he was in that situation in the first place, that he didn’t feel he had a choice.

Mike pretty much talked at me for 45 minutes without stopping. He talked quickly and earnestly without ever making eye contact, as if he were on ecstasy. He hopped from one topic to the next, I couldn’t follow his train of thought, but I sat and listened.

“Man I’ve seen some f****d up shit. This guy came in the other day, he’d had his face blown off in an IED explosion – we had to perform a cricothyroidotomy, it’s a lot easier than a tracheotomy, there’s less damage done to the nerves, recovery time’s faster. Tracheotomies really mess with your voice box. I don’t think he made it though, I didn’t see him again after that.”

 

“The thing with the army is, you have to keep up. It don’t matter if you’re not as fit as the rest, if you can take the pain or can outdo your peers, you’re ok. The army’s all about being there for each other, we push each other. I’d do anything for my buddies. Back before we deployed, we’d get up at 4.30 and run for 8 miles. I hate the cold, but they stationed me in Alaska. WTF?”

“I love jumping, but jumping out of a plane in Alaska in winter? WTF? I love to surf. I’m from California and me and my buddies surf all the time. You gotta get on the board right. I can’t snowboard though. I get back from surfing all day and I watch TV.”

“In Alaska when you go running when it’s negative 30, you can’t touch your eyelashes ‘else they’ll just fall off.”

“I don’t touch the women here on the base. You see people in and out here with all sorts of weird shit. Man there are so many STDs on army bases, I don’t go near the women here. Not worth it. That means abstaining ‘til I’m home. That’s cool.”

 

“The thing with training, when they train you to become a soldier, they f***k with your mind. That’s what it’s all about. It’s all brain games.”

 

“These Afghans, man they love their pills. They’ll go for years without seeing a doctor, then they come in with these problems. I’m treating this police guy from Sayed Karram. He got his leg shot 15 years ago and has been wearing this splint since then – now all his muscles have atrophied. He never changed his bandages and he had all these sores. I told him ‘you do what I say now, you hear me?’ He came back a week later, all his sores had dried up. He can’t do anything with that leg though. There ain’t no physical therapy this guy could do to make it better.”

 

I hope the US military treat their boys well when they get home, that they get the counseling they need. I expect most don’t realize that they need it. I wonder what Mike will end up doing, whether he’ll leave the army and study, as he wants to.

The wonders of modern technology

Oh how adorable. The small print on my lab test receipt reads 'Cheeked by computerized automatiq ELISA Lab Machine and Micro Lab Automatic Machine'. At least I know I'm in good hands.

Actually I'm impressed they can now do lab testing here in Gardez (and on an automatiq machine to boot). I can now go to the US military base and request specific medication for whatever new form of amoeba is currently burrowing its way through my intestines, as opposed to simply guessing.

This is an amoeba by the way (not his best side):

 

However upon closer inspection, it actually looks like this:

A Good Day for Afghanistan...?

Voting Afghan style - a 13-year old boy casts his ballot (photo taken by Thomas Ruttig)

One of the reasons I hardly write these days is because it takes so darn long to get onto this wretched site. I have a thousand snippets and snapshots from election day here, but our skeletal bandwidth in the good old SER (office jargon for Southeast Region) makes me want to hurl my computer out of the window.

In a nutshell, I’d say the whole day was a complete sham. Afghans, once again, have been screwed over and let down – by their own leaders, by us. These words sum it up well.

So you’ve read the news reports, heard the broadcasts. Here’s a brief account of my experience of “Election Day” here in Southeastern Afghanistan:

5.30 am – I wake up for the 10th morning in a row having not slept. We have all been living and breathing these elections for what seems like an age. Weeks of meetings, weeks of excruciating encounters with ghastly sleaze bag election officials, and most recently ten days of relentless pre-election reporting and preparation. The hysteria emanating from Kabul is almost palpable, frenzied directives from HQ have been coming through thick and fast.

I force myself out of bed, muscles stiff and aching from a lack of exercise, and feel that familiar knot of tension in the pit of my stomach, which has been lodged there for a while now. I barely recognise the woman I see in the mirror. Only 24 more hours and this whole thing will be over…(wishful thinking).

6.40 am – As I sit eating a bowl of cold Ready Brek (yes, it’s amazing what one can find in Kabul supermarkets these days), there’s a huge explosion somewhere not too far off, followed by another. My heart leaps and the knot in my stomach tightens. Here we go, didn’t realize they’d start this early. I suddenly remember one of my colleagues had been preparing to head out to witness the opening of some of the polling centres at 7.00 am, so run back to my room to get my phone to call her. She’s fine. She hasn’t left. Surely now she’ll abandon her plans to visit polling centres throughout the day (I, for one, refused to set foot outside our compound).

6.43 am – Nope, she’s out there. With drivers. 30 minutes later, two more loud explosions. Gardez seems to be under attack. Jesus, how long is this going to go on for? Someone please recall that mad woman, reign her in. I’m suddenly seething with rage that she is putting the lives of our drivers on the line for what appears to be a senseless act of bravado.

10.00 am - I’m wired, typing away dementedly, trying to document all the reports coming in – there have been so many attacks throughout the region so far, I’m finding it hard to keep track. Reports of polling centres not opening due to threats from the Taliban, bombs planted on roads preventing people from going to the polls. Reports from our colleagues in polling centres that only 2 or 3 people have turned out to vote. Rocket attacks on district centres, which we later find out are staged by candidates themselves, to prevent people from going out to vote so they can quietly stuff ballots in the peace of an empty polling station.

10.30 am – two guys on a motorcycle decide to blow themselves up near a polling centre in an attempt to kill those brave enough to have turned out to vote. Unfortunately for them, their bike goes over a bump, setting the bomb off prematurely. They are the only fatalities, however they achieved their main goal, fear has been spread among the local residents.

10.45 am – my colleague returns back to our compound, having just missed the suicide bombers. She breezes in smiling, proud of the fact. Then ensues one of the most absurd conversations I’ve ever had.
-“That was close!” She gloats. Her cheeriness annoys me immensely.
- “Don’t be too proud” I tell her. “You had a close call”
- “Oh you and I will never agree on this – there has to be some balance between being so scared that you don’t move, and the other extreme. I had no reason not to go out this morning.”
- “You had every reason not to go out this morning. Two rockets were fired on the town moments before you set off.”
- “Oh they were far away”.

I give up trying to reason with this person. She thinks I’m a wimp, I think she’s irresponsible for endangering both her life and the lives of our drivers, who are too polite to refuse to take her out.

11.15 am -  I take a break and go up to my bedroom and collapse on the bed sobbing. I can’t stop. Why do these people have to go through this? Why is there an election at all? How can we be supporting something like this? Nothing makes sense and I feel helpless, bereft and exhausted, yet can’t stop crying. I splash cold water on my face and compose myself, ready for round two in the boxing ring.

11.30 to mid-afternoon-ish – more manic reporting and phoning everyone brave enough to be out there on what should be a day of hope, but which is turning out to be one of dread.

4.00 pm-ish -  I’m alone and break down at my desk this time, with more uncontrollable sobbing for no reason other than I'm exhausted. I wonder whether I should sign myself in to some sort of institution for the emotionally unstable. I’m so tired at this point, my head is buzzing and my fingers ache from typing.

9.00 pm – reports are coming in at a much slower pace now. Everyone is worn out. The polling centres are shut and the counting has started. I know that the dye was cast long before the polling centres opened, and will form just another ugly stain in this country’s sad history.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day in Gardez?

 

I’ve missed out on quite a bit these past couple of weeks. Gardez was attacked a couple of days after I left to go on R&R – suicide bombers sinisterly hidden beneath burqas blew themselves up at various locations around the city, notably at the National Directorate for Security’s office with which we happen to share a compound. All our staff were ok thank god, which is more than can be said for the poor policemen manning the check posts outside. Khost also came under siege for the second time in as many months. And as I drove from the helipad to our compound on Thursday morning, I was informed that one of the engineers had died about an hour beforehand from a heart attack in our little gym. He was an adorable little chap of about 60 who always wore an oversized white vest during his workouts. Despite my protests, he would always very kindly cede his place to me as I arrived in the gym to use the treadmill.

Yesterday afternoon I read in my bedroom to the melodious sound of machine gun fire just beyond the barbed walls of our compound. I’m reading a book called Wars, Guns and Votes – Democracy in Dangerous Places by Paul Collier, rather topically as Afghanistan prepares for its second Presidential and Provincial Council elections in 12 days’ time.

Collier writes: “[…] a proper democracy does not merely have competitive elections; it also has rules for the conduct of those elections: cheating gets punished (with some exceptions when convenient – CC). A proper democracy also has checks and balances that limit the power of a government once elected: it cannot crush the defeated. The great political sea change may superficially have looked like the spread of democracy, but it was actually the spread of elections. If there are no limits on the power of the winner, the election becomes a matter of life and death. If this life-and-death struggle is not itself subject to rules of conduct, the contestants are driven to extremes. The result is not democracy: I think of it as democrazy”.

Democrazy is a great term, and that’s certainly how it feels here. The “Independent” Electoral Commission is under so much pressure to deliver this election that decisions are being made to keep open polling centres in ludicrously dangerous places, which will only endanger the lives of the poor Afghans desperate enough to think that their vote might count for something.

 

All along the watchtower - a young ANP officer at the helipad in Gardez

 

Collier continues “democracy, at least in the form it has usually taken to date in the societies of the bottom billion, does not seem to enhance the prospects of internal peace. On the contrary, it seems to increase proneness to political violence. Probably related to this failure to secure social peace, democracy has not yet produced accountable and therefore legitimate government. Incumbent politicians have won elections by methods that require them to misgovern […] . In promoting elections the rich, liberal democracies have basically missed the point. We want to make the bottom billion look like us, but we forget how we got to where we now are […]; perhaps in encouraging elections, we have landed these societies in an unenviable halfway house that has neither the capacity of autocracies to act decisively nor the accountability of a genuine democracy.”

 

This book isn’t about Afghanistan, in fact there are only two minor references to the country, but a lot of what the author says makes sense and I see similar patterns here. It’s heartbreaking to watch. As if living in poverty and the throes of war were not miserable enough – being told to vote and assured that your vote will count (when we already know who is going to win) just adds insult to injury.

 

Elders from Ahmadabad district in Paktia province

 

We’re conducting a series of meetings over the coming weeks with tribes from across the region to get their perspectives and perceptions of these elections amongst other things.

 

And on that note, I am off to find a fly swatter and some reprieve from this heat.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

 

Smiling bashfully for the camera, circa 1981 or 2

Doesn't it all go by so quickly? One moment you're standing on the village green dressed as a mouse, the next...

I've been home for a couple of weeks. Yesterday evening I went for a walk in our woods with one of my closest friends, who I hadn't seen in months. We'd agreed to meet in the woods, as we often do. As I waited, I communed with a herd of cows who had all galloped down a sloping field towards me (possibly thinking I was going to feed them, possibly just out of curiosity or boredom). I was the centre of a lot of bovine attention all of a sudden, and crouched down so as not to scare them. They were all staring at me intently with their big brown beautiful eyes, some of them were timid and tried to stay back, others were more bold and I got a few licks from large raspy tongues. There is something magical about being in the presence of cows.

These two weeks have been full of such magical moments, which I want to bottle up and take with me back to Afghanistan. The mournful cry of seagulls, the backdrop to a sunny day out shopping in Bath with my mother; trying not to cry as I listened to my friend exchanging wedding vows with her soon-to-be husband in a small village church; rollerblading with my father down on England's sunny coast, intense games of chess with him and bike rides through the park; the effects of mojitos in trendy London bars with my brother and friends; cuddling kittens. Sitting in the stillness of the woods by myself just before dusk and listening to the silence of the trees, watching the place come alive as the woodland creatures forget I am there. Chatting to sheep.

This is a poem called Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas, a man who makes words dance (this is one of my mother's favourites):

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

       The night above the dingle starry,

         Time let me hail and climb

       Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

     And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

     And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

         Trail with daisies and barley

       Down the rivers of the windfall light.

 

 

     And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

     About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

       In the sun that is young once only,

         Time let me play and be

       Golden in the mercy of his means,

     And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

     Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

         And the sabbath rang slowly

       In the pebbles of the holy streams.

 

 

     All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

     Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

       And playing, lovely and watery

         And fire green as grass.

       And nightly under the simple stars

     As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

     All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

       Flying with the ricks, and the horses

         Flashing into the dark.

 

 

     And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

     With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

       Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

         The sky gathered again

       And the sun grew round that very day.

     So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

     In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

       Out of the whinnying green stable

         On to the fields of praise.

 

 

     And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

     Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

       In the sun born over and over,

         I ran my heedless ways,

       My wishes raced through the house high hay

     And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

     In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

       Before the children green and golden

         Follow him out of grace.

    

 

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

     Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

       In the moon that is always rising,

         Nor that riding to sleep

       I should hear him fly with the high fields

     And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

     Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

         Time held me green and dying

       Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Ibrahim Mangal and the Sub Tribes of Zadran

Years ago we sat on the dusty balcony of our lime green house in Karte Parwan (one of Kabul’s less salubrious neighbourhoods) and decided that should we ever form a band one day, this is what we would call it (Hello Cleveland!* Ibrahim Mangal and the Sub Tribes of Zadran are gonna rock you!).

Those band members have long since dispersed and our home demolished. The band name conjures up long van rides with M, S and the gang up the Tira Pass to Gardez and on to Khost, stopping on the way in Logar’s central bazaar to buy coils of deep fried dough dipped in honey.

That road is impossible to drive along these days, the insurgency along those feisty Zadran populated districts between Paktia and Khost has got the upper hand now. Talking of feisty Zadrans. We’re well into summer here in the Southeast and things are hotting up on several levels. And yes you Zadrans, I point the finger at you, as the ring leader of the deadliest insurgent group in this region IS from your Zadran tribe, you know it, we know it (the Coalition knows it).

I recently told my head of office that I wasn’t prepared to go to Khost anymore. Malauwi Faizullah (first cousin of aforementioned Zadran bad boy) will have to wait for a follow-up meeting, or come here to G-city. There’s only so much of myself I am prepared to sacrifice. Bombs go off almost daily, killing scores of civilians in the centre of Khost town itself, mere metres from our little provincial office there.

So I continue to hop from province to province each week (except Khost) around the hazy Southeast region shimmering in July’s heat. Our little Soviet helicopter buzzes slowly back and forth like a bloated bluebottle above brown arid peaks and plains.

I sit in on interminable meetings with yet more Afghan security forces (including Ghazni’s adorable Chief of Police – probably not that adorable in reality), US or Polish military folk and incompetent lie-through-their-teeth Afghan election officials (“everything is fine! Yes, our civic educators are busy in each district! There is no problem!”). This, in a last ditch attempt to help coordinate the mammoth task of identifying and securing polling sites (which people are going to be too terrified to come to anyway for fear of either being blown up or spotted by a marauding Taleb up to no good).

The whole thing is farcical. We all know who is going to win. I’ll give you a clue, he wears a long green cloak and is ridiculously wealthy having made a tidy fortune from all those pretty flowers his brother grows down in Helmand.

As I type, the call for prayers is sounding outside. It’s not as tuneful as the call for prayers in Dubai. Here Mullahs wail, discordant offerings to Allah carried sluggishly on this airless evening. And once again, almost despite myself, my heart fills with love and hope for this place.   

*Those of you familiar with one of my all time favourites, This is Spinal Tap, will get the reference.