Greetings from Kabul

I am just finishing up my third visit to Kabul in the last 6 months. All of my trips here have been quite short, so I don’t pretend to be an expert on the situation. But the cold weather has made me realize that things here are really not going well. The obvious barometer is electrical power. Even after 4 years of “rebuilding” there is still no electricity to speak of. Most people are lucky to get 2 hours of power every other day. Generators are everywhere. The capital cost of these machines and the staggering fuel bill to stay warm and keep the lights on are an unbearable drain on the economy. Who would want to invest in a place without such basic infrastructure ? Not to mention the hardship (or death) of the huddled masses who could not come close to affording the enormous cost of heat. People tell me the electrical power service was better even in the Taliban times. The problem is not the grid, it is generating capacity. Why oh why have we not done anything to try to improve the situation?

I'm sure your question is rhetorical, but nevertheless I would answer your question with another question...Is there oil in Kabul?

Its a dollar a liter for diesel and even a small generator goes through a couple of liters an hour.

May I ask what takes you to Kabul? Is anyone you're talking to there able to answer your questions?

I am in no way authorized to make public statements. So, I shouldn’t really say more than that.

We don't hear anything close the truth on the msm, for the most part. To hear it from this administration, Kabul is the Paris of the middle east since we went over there and saved it.

Interesting stuff. Keep us all posted.

Kicker and nomination.

here, maybe someone who already has journalistic cred like Will Pitt or La La Raw Raw and have it filtered through him/her.

We need the truth, but in the end your first priority is to protect yourself and the NGO you work with.

I remember back when some republican asshole president, possibly Reagan, put a CIA operative as head of the Peace Corp. That one move put every field worker in jeopardy. There was already concerns that the Peace Corp was a CIA front.

You are in a difficult position. I know you are torn. Do what is right for all involved. Anyway, thanks for the info. Maybe some here can run with that info and expand on it.

You know the drill.

This country actually had a progressive tradition of sorts including higher education for women. After years of barbarism, things have collapsed but there was the predicate.

Why couldn't we have gone in there and modernized and restored the chance for the people to catch up with their Superior past.

This is just sickening. Not enough power in Kabul, not enough in Iraq, and these are "the adults" the people we were supposed to be happy we had in charge after 911. I'd like to find the idiot to started that meme and point out to him directly that he/she is one of the dumbest people in the entire universe.

Malfeasance! It's a crime. "Defrauding the Federal government"...the Watergate charge...it means that by any objective standard, you have done your job so poorly, you have defrauded the government by taking a pay check for it.

People should go to jail over this and Iraq, period.

It didn't work. The Afghanis do not want to take orders from Kabul. If anything, they are satisfied with the tribal way of life.

I don't want a puppet government in Afghanistan, nor do I want the Taliban. But I am not Afghani, it is not my place to tell them how to govern themselves. My only hope is for the people to live in a safe, equitable society.

If anything our occupation of Afghanistan has pushed them further to the right.

I don't think that our action had to turn out this way and I believe that we could have been welcomed if we just helpd build roads between the major cities (something they dearly need) and focused on infrastructure. Instead, we did what we did and now the same structure, preo-invasion, has returned -- a bunch of war lords who push people around. Not our job to fix it now but we had a chance to do something in the interim.

Here's what I was talking about. It's from Winkipedia (easy to find under the rulers name):

"
Mohammed Zahir Shah (born October 16, 1914) was the last King of Afghanistan from 1933 to 1973.

On November 8, 1933, he was proclaimed king after his father, Mohammed Nadir Shah, was assassinated. In 1964, he promulgated a new constitution.

Shah was born into a family of Pashtuns (of the Durrani Popalzay clan) Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, he was also educated in the elite culture of Afghanistan's Persians, giving him access to both groups.

He instituted programs of political and economic modernization, ushering in a democratic legislature, education for women and other such changes. These reforms put him at odds with the religious militants who opposed him.

His cousin and former Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan staged a coup coup d'état in 1973, and established a republican government while Mohammed Zahir Shah was abroad. Following this coup, Zahir Shah abdicated in August and lived in exile in Italy for twenty-nine years.

He refused to return as a puppet leader during Soviet-backed Communist rule in the late 1970s, and remained aloof from the bloody feuds that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989."

had entered Russia as a liberator, he could have defeated the Russian army, but he went in as a conqueror, turning the long suffering population against him. General Winter would have been a lot kinder if the German troops had the good will of the population.

It all comes down to hearts and minds.


They are saying the slowness of the rebuilding effort helped fuel the insurgency in Iraq.

as a liberator. Shows you how bad Stalin was and how awful Hitler was also; and ignorant.

If I'm in Iraq, I'm furious everytime the damn electricity goes down, realliy pissed off. It's odd that the Neocons did nothing to solve this problem.

invites trouble. We could go on all night cataloging the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to bring everyone home then work to undo the damage we have done.

BTW, this John Toland book is one of my all time favorites.

The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters
A totally enjoyable book.

"mission accomplished"

e0m

The illegal Invasion of Iraq was a major crime and the Bush Regime should be prosecuted for that. Of course that will never happen.

After the USSR was defeated in Afghanistan the US Govts. mostly ignored that country until it was discovered that a natural gas pipline would garner billions for the US Multi-Corps. The Taliban were offered millions for their co-operation but they were stuborn. They were told they could get a carpet of gold or a carpet of missles and bombs. The Taliban made the decison to keep their independence and the Bush Regime set out to kill them all. The rest is a sad history of neglect for the people of Afghanistan and a land grab.

Any comments about that article about the government trying to terminate the contracts of all those people costing them 500K/year?

but the word doesn't exist.

The OP is absolutely right about the electric situation. Live by the generator. And that's the capital city.

Then there are the highways. I took the main highway that goes from Kabul to Pakistan. It's a goddamned dirt road! Took 6 hours to go 100 miles to Jalalabad. The West has managed to rebuild one highway, down to Kandahar, but that's pretty much Taliban alley, which, come to think of it, is probably why they got around to fixing that road--military reasons.

The West has dumped billions of dollars into Afghanistan since the US invasion, and I don't know where it went! I mean it. No roads, no power plants, barely a health infrastructure. There are, however, lots of guys with guns--NATO, US, Afghan National Army, militias, mercenaries--and lot of NGO types riding around in SUVs.

I don't get it. I really don't. Why is nothing happening?

Fortunately for the Afghans, at least they have their opium crop, eh?