Leading Afghan Blogger Speaks

Despite decades of civil war, marauding Taliban and deadly military air strikes, Afghans have experienced some changes for the better over recent years. Health facilities, schools and roads have improved, and a fledgling media industry is finding its feet. Bloggers are off to a fast start, with Nasim Fekrat, also known as Afghan Lord, leading the way. This 25-year-old ethnic Hazara knows all too well the dangers of self-expression, but believes freedom of speech is vital if Afghanistan is to leave its bloody past behind.

When I was 11 years old my father pushed me to pray and I would not pray. One night my father raised his hands to the sky and said: "Please god, take Nasim. Kill him, take him back – I don't want him." He did this in front of me and my siblings and nobody said anything. That evening I couldn't sleep. I was thinking death would come right at that moment. I was so scared, thinking god would come to take me soon, that I kept moving my hands and legs to make sure I wasn't dead.

My mother was kind to me. After my father kicked me out of our house she gave me blankets and told me: "I can't help you, your father is very stubborn, but go to the roof and sleep there." Eventually I left and went to Kabul where a local family took me in. All I did after that was read books.

When I created my first blog I used a pseudonym – I wanted to escape my identity and to be neutral. I told people I was born in Afghanistan but that was it. I didn't want to be seen as one type of person or another. Now in my writing it's no secret: people know I'm Hazara.

I'm not a practising Muslim, I'm agnostic. Another blogger has been calling me out as a non-Muslim. I know people realise from my English writing that I don't believe in god, but in my Farsi blog I'm trying to keep that a secret. I'm not sure I'm succeeding.

In Afghanistan, when you write your opinion in the public sphere, you are labelled a racist. I've been receiving a lot of threats. Someone by the name of Coffin posted on my blog, saying "Soon I will find you", and I also received an email that said "Your days are numbered". People approach me from aid organisations that don't exist. But I've been dealing with this since 2004 when the police shut down the satirical magazine I had started, so these sorts of things are very normal for me now.

Our life, or our society, is completely different from in the west. I told my friends that as long as you have bread to eat here in Afghanistan, don't go to Europe; in Europe we are not treated as human beings. Our looks are different, our ways different. It takes a long time to match with them, to understand. When I went to Hamburg I asked two German people for directions and they completely ignored me; they turned and walked away. So I tell my friends, if you want to go to Europe, fine, just visit for a little while and come back.

Newspaper media is very new in our society. There were just one or two newspapers up until the Soviet era, which were only propaganda for political parties. At that time freedom of speech had little meaning. Now, with people coming back from Iran and other countries, Afghans are more educated, they are more interested in news and in reading. We now have more than 20 daily papers and 100 weeklies.

I don't read Afghan newspapers; most of them are not independent. They are biased towards a specific political party or organisation, or whichever donor is giving them money. We don't have a situation here in which very few people earn enough money to publish a newspaper.

All that I write is with a view to making an Afghan thinktank. I want to bring independent thinkers together who can talk about Afghanistan in a different way. I don't want a repeat of our history of massacres and tragedy. This has become my mission.

One thing I still don't know is how to deal with the past. Afghan history is full of genocide and bloodletting – and we still have warlords wielding power. So writing about the past, dealing with it, is kind of taboo in this society. It doesn't matter who you are – if you are Pashtun, Uzbek, Hazara, Tajik – whatever you write, somebody will attack you. People think we should just forget the past.

Nowadays when I see my father I kiss his hands, but he is not happy with me. He regrets what he asked god for, to take me. I can read that in his eyes. But I forgive him. Because at that moment I decided I wanted to be a man for myself, not for my father. It made me very strong and able to take care of myself. In my life, whatever I wished for, I reached out and grabbed it.

• Nasim Fekrat was speaking to David Lepeska in Kabul.

--this interview was published at http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/ on October 17.

Sacred Fight of the Dongria

For a secluded tribe in the Indian state of Orissa, Niyamgiri Mountain is both home and sacred temple. Abundant natural resources have allowed the Dongria Kondh people to live an isolated and spiritual lifestyle on its slopes, disconnected from the outside world. But that way of life is now under threat, as an Indian subsidiary of UK-based mining giant Vedanta Resources plans an aluminium refinery on their land. Tribe member Jitu Jakesika, 21, explains why his people would rather die than let heavy industry onto their sacred mountain

For us, this is our sacred place. We worship Niyam Raja, which means lord of our lord. There are many gods, but he is the most powerful for us, so he is the Niyam Raja. Here on our mountain there is forest, wildlife and medicinal plants. We get all of our food here on Niyamgiri – everything we need, except salt. We can go for a month without having to travel down to the market.

We don't hunt very often, only around special occasions like the Meriha sacrifice. This is the most important festival for the Dongria. If our village wants to celebrate the Meriha we invite all the surrounding villages to join us. A lot of villagers come to see us, bringing axes, arrows and knives. They come to our village dancing and singing songs. The priest welcomes everyone.

Then we make a bamboo fence around a buffalo and when the priest says OK we start to hit him with our knives and axes. He gets angry and runs around. It can be messy and very bloody but we keep hitting him until he dies. I have done this two or three times in my life. I feel sad to see this strong animal die, but it makes our people very happy – we believe it gives us strength.

When the girls reach maturity they don't like to sleep with their families any more, so they go to a dormitory. Every village has a girls' dormitory. Every week young boys from different villages come by dancing, drumming and playing instruments, and they sing of the mountain and the forest and the river, and declare their love for their girl. When I was young I did this many times. Sometimes we slept together. This is done without marrying, like girlfriend and boyfriend. We Dongria, you see, can love 100 girlfriends; it is not like in Indian culture.

Some get married at 15, others at 18, and some wait until they are even older. Once a couple is married the man is allowed to have girlfriends. That is OK, the wife never minds. But if the woman takes a boyfriend the husband would be very angry.

Already, the aluminium refinery has changed things here. Now when it rains there is dust everywhere, a white-coloured covering on our fields. Our crops don't grow so well. Also, the river is poisoned. I know this because five cows died when they went to drink water from the river. And some people who bathed in the river developed sores on their body.

Nobody came and warned us about this; we had to learn about it by ourselves. Now that I have learned I am telling everyone. Just today I visited three villages. When I arrive I call all the villagers and explain to them what is happening. I tell them how we will fight and that we have to remain strong at this moment. I have talked to different activists, and sometimes they come with me to help our people to understand what's happening.

We have to protect our culture. OK, we can be educated and developed, but these young children – we have to teach them about our way of life, our beliefs. What will happen when the older generation dies?

The government says that it will make a decision, but then it they delays and delays. It is still trying to convince us it will be OK. But our people don't want any development from this company, and we don't want money. Why destroy our nature? God has given us this nature – this is how our people think.

The company cannot take this mountain. It can try to plant trees and make a forest, but it can't remake it. The company says: "We’ll give you new houses, new land, a new village!" But all we want is our mountain. Every family, every young boy and girl, every person, wants to stay. Nobody wants to leave this mountain.

If the government decides to allow for mining, we will have to fight. This is our land; for generations we've been living here. They have money, power, guns; they can kill us in five minutes. So we'll tell the government: "Please kill us all and then you can have your mine. Because without Niyamgiri we cannot live."

• Jitu Jakesika was speaking to David Lepeska in Orissa.

This interview was published at http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/, on October 20.

Indian sailors strike for action against pirates

DELHI // Tired of paying the heaviest price for piracy, two leading Indian seafarers’ unions went on strike this week. More than 100,000 sailors refuse to work until their government provides an armed escort for all ships passing Somalia and frees the 18 Indian crew members of the hijacked Stolt Valor.

They may be in for a long wait.

“It’s been five weeks and still my husband is stuck on that ship,” said Seema Goyal, wife of Prabhat Kumar Goyal, the captain of the Japanese-owned, Hong Kong-registered Valour. “I worry about him constantly and our three children don’t understand what’s going on.”

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has more than doubled this year, with 74 attacks and counting. As the increasingly bold and well-armed sea bandits have snatched one after another of the cargo-laden ships passing through the Gulf of Aden, Indian citizens at home and at sea have borne the brunt of the hostilities.

“Because they are skilled and speak English, there are more seafarers from India than from any other nation,” said Sunil Nair, spokesman for the National Union of Seafarers of India. He said more than 150,000 Indian sailors work in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. “Because of this, Indians are at more risk as a result of all this piracy than anybody else.”

On Tuesday, the Somali coastguard freed an Indian cargo ship with two Indian crew members that had been hijacked near Socotra Island a few days prior. Last weekend, Somali pirates released the Deyanat after its Iranian owners paid a reduced ransom. Three emaciated Indian crew members arrived in Mumbai after seven weeks in captivity and related tales of food shortages, constant death threats and drug-addicted captors. And in Salaya, a Gujarati port town, locals are waiting to hear from three ships carrying 15 local seamen who lost radio contact from the region this week.

Mr Nair estimates that 17 of the 30 ships hijacked near Somalia this year have had Indian crew members.

One high-profile exception: there are no Indian sailors among the 20-member crew of the Faina, a tank-laden Ukrainian vessel captured a few weeks ago.

On Sept 15, about 35 pirates stormed aboard the Valor, a chemical tanker, off the coast of Yemen. The hijackers stripped the 22-member crew and confined them to the bridge, according to crew members who have been in phone contact. More than five weeks later, progress has been minimal, even as the ransom demand has dipped from US$6 million (Dh22m) to $2m.

Critics, such as the Hindustan Times, a popular national daily, said Delhi has been “pussyfooting on the issue”. That, however, may not be the case.

“In reality, there’s little the government can do,” said Roger Middleton, senior fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, and author of a piracy study released this month. Mr Middleton said military force rarely works and that ransom ultimately resolves the majority of these incidents.

“It’s very possible that the Indian government is trying very hard to help negotiations behind the scenes,” he said. “We can’t know for sure, and beyond that, they can’t do much other than monitor the situation.”

A K Antony, the Indian defence minister, has repeatedly said India is unable to mount a military attack because it has no maritime agreement with Somalia – a point reiterated on Tuesday by the Somali ambassador to India. In the case of the Stolt Valor, armed aggression would be doubly risky because of the 24,000 tonnes of chemicals in the hull. And responsibility for hijacked ships falls first to the owner nation, then to the country where the ship is registered and finally to the country in whose waters the incident occurs.

“In cases such as this, it is normal for negotiations to take place between the proprietors of the ship and the hijackers themselves,” said Nagma Mullick, spokesman for the ministry of external affairs. “That’s what’s been happening here and our embassy has been working to facilitate those negotiations.”

On Saturday, Pranab Mukherjee, the Indian foreign minister, reassured the captive sailors’ families that their loved ones would return home safely.

That same day India rushed a warship to the Gulf of Aden to protect Indian shipping interests in the region. It is the first time an Indian Navy vessel has been authorised to patrol international waters, a move the navy said was not incident-specific. The patrol comes more than three weeks after the navy requested authorisation to pursue and use force against the Stolt Valor hijackers, but was refused.

Somalia’s caretaker government, battling an Islamist insurgency, lacks the resources to combat the problem. Thus, a flurry of hijackings along the coast has in recent weeks attracted a clutch of foreign military vessels. Still the problem festers. The pirates are holding 10 ships and nearly 200 crew. Some of the $20m to $30m paid to pirates in ransom this year, according to Chatham House, is funding Somalia’s Islamist insurgency and possibly wending its way into international terror networks.

“Operating in an area full of rich pickings and with enormous rewards on offer seems likely to point to a trajectory of increasing ruthlessness,” Mr Middleton wrote. “It is likely to be only a matter of time before more people are killed.”

Such fears may be strongest on the subcontinent, where security concerns have led to the sailors’ strike. When Mr Goyal, the captain of the Valour, spoke to his wife last week, he said the pirates were becoming “increasingly hostile."

-- this story published in The National, www.thenational.ae, on October 24

Left Out in the Cold

CHAR-E-QAMBAR, Afghanistan- When the fighting came to his village in south Helmand, Abdul Rahman gathered his wife and seven children and fled to this bulging refugee camp on the Western edge of Kabul. Five months later the steely-eyed 35-year-old is questioning his decision.

"We are only getting food if I can find work in the city, which does not happen very much," Rahman says through an interpreter, scanning the mud walls and torn plastic roofing of his home away from home. "My children go to sleep hungry. We have no money and nobody is helping us."

Rahman is not an exception at Char-e-Qambar, where as a result of bureaucratic balderdash, minimal health care and almost no foreign aid an estimated 5,000 Afghans are struggling to survive.

Not a refugee camp?

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates there are about 250,000 internally displaced people in Afghanistan and 3.4 million Afghan refugees in Iraq and Afghanistan - the fallout of three decades of conflict. Those numbers are rising as the insurgency intensifies and insecurity spreads across Afghanistan and into Pakistan's tribal areas, from where 20,000 fled into Afghanistan in late September.

The village of Char-e-Qambar lies a dozen kilometers southwest of central Kabul. Here, on an open expanse of desert under looming mountains and a blazing sun, nearly 900 Afghan families have squeezed into a tight, ramshackle collection of tents, tarps and mud homes.

The first trickle appeared in mid-2006 but the majority arrived in early 2008, fleeing intense fighting between the Taliban and international forces in southern Afghanistan. More arrive every day, yet to UNHCR this is not a refugee camp.

"It's not officially a camp - it's a spontaneous settlement," says Nadir Farhad, spokesman for UNHCR in Afghanistan. "The decision to open a camp is totally the government of Afghanistan's. Then it can be backed by international organizations such as UNHCR and we would be responsible for the camp and be able to provide them with proper, monthly assistance."

An Afghan Ministry of Refugees spokesman says the government is conducting a survey to determine the status of camp residents - refugee, internally displaced, or other. But on several visits Devex failed to find a residents who had recently been visited by a government representative or filled out a questionnaire.

"To the best of my knowledge many are not really IDPs," Farhad says of the camp residents. "They are just squatters."

Either way, UNHCR's stance may be inaccurate.

"The government has the primary responsibility for the welfare of its people but UNHCR and other agencies have a mandate to respond to vulnerable individuals in situations of displacement," says Patrick Duplat, an advocate for the pressure group Refugees International, in an e-mail.

He added that the government does not need to make any official declarations for aid to move in - a view confirmed by a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan, and other aid outfits. Duplat, who co-authored a recently released report on the refugee and IDP situation in Afghanistan, has not visited Char-e-Qambar but is aware that many residents do not receive adequate aid.

"If people are suffering," says Duplat, "it's because the response has been poor at all levels, but it is not due to a bureaucratic impediment."

Darkness falls

Makeshift, multi-colored tents press up close to hand-packed mud walls, leaving foot-wide passageways in some spots. The stench of sewage and rotting food lurks around every corner. Gaggles of wide-eyed children, some with distended bellies, prawl dusty alleyways in torn clothes, looking to relieve their hunger-borne boredom. Housewives with little to do - there is no food to cook, no house or clothes to clean - peer out from behind tent flaps, scanning for their children or good news.

In the afternoon, long-bearded men retreat from the desert sun. In dark, windowless tents they speak in low, solemn tones, the phrase "Insh'allah," or god willing, never far from their lips.

"My daughter has been sick for two or three weeks," Abdul Rahman says matter-of-factly, sitting next to his 10-year-old daughter, who lies prone, moaning and occasionally twisting her rail-thin body. "Sometimes she gets fever, sometimes she gets sick in all her body, sometimes she's bleeding from her nose and mouth."

Rahman has taken her to the camp's clinic, to no avail. Run by the Education Health Bureau of Afghanistan, a small local NGO funded by the Dutch government, the clinic operates out of a tent near the camp entrance three days a week, offering consultation and free medicine.

Pharmacist Asadrullah Siddiqui, 23, is overwhelmed with 60 or more patients per day. He has more than 100 medicines but is often unable to supply what residents need.

"The health is bad here because there's no clean water and no full meals," Siddiqui tells Devex. "It will most likely get worse during the winter."

Unable to find adequate care at the clinic Rahman went to a doctor in Kabul, who prescribed medicines costing 12,500 Afghanis, or $250. Rahman has no money, so he carries a prescription on a piece of paper everywhere he goes, hoping someone will help buy the medicine to cure his daughter.

Many camp residents are similarly desperate.

"The Americans, when the Taliban attacked our village, they just started attacking everyone," says Dadgul. The 25-year-old from Helmand, who like many Afghans goes by one name, barely escaped the fighting with his wife and three young children. "We haven't been given any food and I can't find work. This will be a long winter."

Sorgul Kasho, also from Helmand, has three children and is building a new mud room for his home, hoping it would keep his family warm during the winter.

"Sometimes we can find work and eat, sometimes we do not," the 36-year-old says. "Our children are crying for food, but we cannot feed them."

Dribs and drabs

Aid agencies and their backers have in recent months cut back their efforts because of targeted attacks and deteriorating security. Indeed, as Duplat points out in his report, refugees and the displaced have received less humanitarian aid as a result of increasing insecurity.

But Char-e-Qambar is on the edge of Kabul - headquarters for the international community and the safest place in Afghanistan.

"The ICRC concentrates its activities with regard to assisting displaced persons on the direct conflict zones," says Franz Rauchenstein, ICRC spokesman. "In Kabul and its surroundings other humanitarian actors, including the government, have access themselves."

Less than five miles from the camp, foreign workers sip frothy mocha chais and nosh on cheeseburgers at Chaila, a hip garden cafe in Karta Se. In the evenings, expat staffers and consultants kibbitz over cocktails with a foot in the pool at L'Atmosphere, a few clicks further east.

"I know they are living in a poor condition, it's very hard," says Farhad during an interview in his office at the sprawling, heavily secured headquarters of UNHCR Afghanistan. "Our preferred solution for the IDPs is to go back to their place of origin if security permits it. If the security doesn't permit it we do our utmost to provide assistance where they are."

Aid has trickled in since the spring. In July, UNHCR delivered "winterization assistance" - lanterns, blankets, small bags of coal and dozens of white plastic tarps, which can be seen underneath rags and cloth coverings on rooftops. The Afghan government delivered hundreds of 10kg bags of flour that same month.

"Still our tents are too old, we have no food, and the medical assistance is no good," says Noor Mohamed, a 26-year-old father of two from Uruzgan. "When they brought the bags of flour the police took more than half of them, to sell for profit. Please you must tell people to help us."

The Afghan Ministry says it handed out cash awards of US$100 to each family in May. Some camp residents say they received the hand-out, others complain that it was only given to the newer arrivals from the south. In August, soldiers from the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force passed out Meals Ready-to-Eat, but only enough for a couple hundred families.

"The situation with the internally displaced in Afghanistan is of grave concern," says Duplat, from Refugees International. "The international community were not and are still not set up to respond to humanitarian crises. Rather, the emphasis is put on longer-term development and institution building, at the expense of humanitarian activities."

The lone aid group providing humanitarian assistance daily is a local outfit. Since spring, Kabul-based Aschiana has been running boys and girls schools in tents near the camp entrance. Six days a week Mohammed Wahid leads classes in Dari and Pashto before the children are fed a meal of bread and bean soup. At lunchtime, hungry families come to share their son or daughter's food, which often leads to fighting.

"Winter is near, and last year many children died due to cold weather," says Engineer Yousef, Aschiana's founding director. "If they don't receive any aid this year maybe children will die as well because the prices of food and heating have both gone up."

A bitter winter looms

In late August, an American air strike near Herat killed 90 civilians, including 60 children, according to the United Nations. This most bloody American attack added to 2008's record total of civilian deaths. The following week the British charity Oxfam warned that Afghanistan could be facing one of its harshest winters in 20 years, putting up to 9 million poor and displaced at serious risk. With drought, rising food prices and a renewed insurgency compounding the problem, the group urged the international community to act quickly to avoid a "humanitarian crisis."

Yet many aid agencies are short on staff and most have curbed operations in light of increasing insecurity across the country - particularly in the area immediately surrounding Kabul.

Duplat sees a broader, systemic problem. He acknowledges the insecurity, but says the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan's humanitarian branch "remains inadequately staffed." The result is poor coordination and few opportunities for advocates to raise humanitarian concerns. The Char-e-Qambar neglect may thus be of a piece with the international community's fitful progress in improving the lot of Afghans.

"Until there is a real humanitarian coordination both in Kabul and in the provinces," Duplat says, "delivery of emergency services - including responding to internal displacement - will remain inadequate."

-- posted to devex.com on October 13.

Former Street Child Offers Afghan Children Education, Better Life

KABUL, Afghanistan - Engineer Mohammad Yousef settled comfortably into a strong, cushioned chair before spitting out his coming-of-age tale all in a rush.

"During the civil war my father was killed by a bombing and people told my mother to go to the streets and beg but I didn't want that so I stopped my schooling," said the 39-year-old from Ghazni province, sitting in his corner office across from Shahr-e-Nau park in Kabul. "I became like a street child and earned some hand-outs to feed my mother, my sister and myself and then I noticed so many kids on the streets and I was thinking: Why we should not do something for these children? They want to become educated. They have the talent, they have the capacity and they want to become a good member of the community but the war has put them in a very bad condition."

At that time Kabul had about 10,000 street children and Yousef, then 20, went around the city asking everyone he knew and many he didn't know for funds to start a school.

"Most people thought I wanted to make an army with all these children so they wouldn't help me," Yousef recalled with a half smile.

Years of rejection passed until the American newswire Reuters offered a few thousand dollars in 1995. Yousef found a few abandoned offices, hired a couple teachers and chose the name Aschiana, which means "bird's nest" in Dari and symbolizes protection. Within a few years funding appeared from the Canadian International Development Agency, CARE International and the United Nations Children's Fund. It's been mostly smooth sailing ever since.

"Last year we had 10,000 students at seven schools and four outreach centers in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, and Parhwan," said Yousef of his organization, which now teaches refugee children as well. "So we're doing alright."

These days, an estimated 70,000 street children run loose in Kabul, hawking maps and newspapers, begging for change, and committing minor crimes at the urging of small-time gangsters. Tens of thousands more wrestle daily with hunger and idleness in cities and displacement camps across the country. For all of them Aschiana offers safety, shelter, nourishment and a sense of self, not to mention the possibility of a better life.

On a bright September afternoon sunlight streaks into a row of clean, narrow classrooms at Aschiana's Shahr-e-Nau school, where well-behaved youngsters sat rapt. In one, young girls stepped up to a blackboard and confidently called out a series of prime numbers with a pointer. In another, a rail-thin boy furrowed his brow and tucked his tongue over his lip while carving an intricate design on top of a wooden jewel box.

"I like working with wood," said 12-year-old Mohammad Balk'l, looking up. "Someday I would like to build a cabinet."

He's ambitious, not unlike the Aschiana curriculum: basic literacy, math, English, woodworking, computers, geography, physical education, arts and music. The students are aged 7 to 17, and Yousef recently added anti-drug and HIV/AIDS programs. Every student receives a full meal and must take Yousef's favorite course, peace education.

"Most of the time children learn violence, in the street, in the house; they hear about bombs," he said. "It is important that we are thinking about peace and safety and security in the future."

This year, however, Aschiana's future clouded. After months of delay in payment its main donor, the European Commission, told Yousef they were reassessing their donation. Aschiana had to scale back operations but Yousef hopes it's just temporary - in September the EC said it would release the funds soon.

Yet somehow the organization has been able to expand its reach - it's the only non-governmental organization working daily at the Char-e-Qambar refugee camp on the edge of Kabul. Since April, Aschiana has run seperate boys and girls schools there, feeding each student a lunch of bean soup and bread.

"I went and saw the situation out there and decided to work there, also hoping to gain attention of government and other NGOs to help," said Yousef, who noted that Aschiana required no special clearance because it has an agreement with the government to work in any part of Afghanistan. "These children are displaced due to war so if we can make them busy with some activities they forget the risks of war."

Aschiana is looking to grow. The life of street children in Afghanistan has taken a darker turn in recent years, with kids as young eight or 10 selling drugs and getting involved in kidnappings and even murders.

"In the future we will work with marginalized children to integrate them into the community," said Yousef. He has spoken with the police and plans to create a special class for child criminals and an emergency shelter for the most at-risk children. "There's a lot more we can do."

Yousef has begun looking outside Afghanistan for help. Only one Westerner works at Aschiana but the organization is seeking more English-speakers to contact donors and win funding, to handle the budget and communicate with international aid groups. Full-time hires as well as volunteers and interns are welcome.

"We need people with experience in development, education, psychology, management and IT," Yousef said.

Just down the hall sunlight streamed into a high-ceilinged gym, where boys in baggy judo outfits lined up to flip, kick and tumble on green and red rubber mats.

"I don't like being on the outside," said Ahmed as he paused to catch his breath. The 10-year-old from Panjshir has lived on the streets of Kabul since he was about 6. "This is so much better."

-- posted on devex.com on October 10.

Aid Workers Under the Gun

KABUL, Afghanistan-Taliban gunmen attack an aid vehicle outside Kabul, killing four workers including three Western women. An Afghan staffer for a French aid group is abducted and murdered in Kunduz. Insurgents kidnap and repeatedly shoot a Japanese agricultural specialist near Jalalabad. A United Nations convoy is attacked and two Afghan doctors killed in Kandahar province.

The steady drumbeat of brutal, targeted attacks over a single late summer month have put the Afghanistan aid community on high alert. Some agencies have pulled internationals, others suspended operations; the rest remain watchful, wary and concerned.

"Because of the attacks, because of the abductions, because of the killings," said M. Hashim Mayar, who's been working with non-governmental organizations in Afghanistan for more than 15 years, "this is the worst security environment I've seen."

Mayar is deputy director of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), an independent aid coordinator that recently released a report revealing that insurgent attacks have increased nearly 50 percent this year. Total security incidents hit 983 in August, according to the United Nations, the hightest total since the fall of the Taliban. Through September, 30 aid workers have been killed - double last year's total - and in early October U.N. special representative Kai Eide appealed to Taliban leaders to allow aid distribution. Insecurity has spread into previously stable parts of north and central Afghanistan, encroaching ever closer to the capital.

"This is a new and recent tactic on the part of the Taliban," said Waliullah Rahmani, director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies. First it was suicide bombs, he explained, and then isolating districts and provinces - now they've moved on to humanitarian agencies. "They see aid workers as furthering the government's agenda, and so they are enemy targets just like the U.S. and the Afghan army. The general security situation has never been worse, and until the military forces combat the Taliban, aid workers must learn to adjust."

Tactical shift

The ancient Persians called Afghanistan "the land of the unruly," and for the 21st century aid worker it is still no picnic. Some question what the insurgents accomplish by targeting people trying to help Afghanistan.

"In some cases it's because we're easier targets," said Ciaran Donnelly, country director for the International Rescue Committee, which suffered the vehicle attack that killed four staffers. "In some cases it's to instill fear in communities and in our staff and in the general population that nobody is safe, to create a heightened sense of intimidation."

In some cases, it's working. Shortly after the killing of 31-year-old agricultural specialist Kazuya Ito, Peshawar-Kai, which for 25 years provided medical aid and alternative livelihoods to Afghans along both sides of Pak border, pulled its 8 Japanese staffers out of Afghanistan. Several other Japanese aid organizations - including the Basic Human Needs Association and the Association for Aid and Relief - have done the same.

"Aid agencies play a crucial role in strengthening Afghanistan and helping its people," said Rahmani. "Losing them would be a major blow."

Facing greater insecurity

For the moment, most are planning to stay and continue much-needed, if circumscribed, operations.

"One very clear decision that has been made is that IRC is not leaving Afghanistan," said Donnelly shortly after the attack. IRC, which has been delivering aid in Afghanistan for 28 years, suspended operations after the attack but plans to slowly restart work by October.

"The situation is so fluid in Afghanistan these days that really to implement programs in any part of the country you have to be extremely flexible and reactive to a very fast-paced and dynamic operating environment," he said, citing plans for fewer field visits by staff and a quick trigger on suspending operations when necessary. "Any sign of threats to our staff and we'll be able to hopefully pull back in again."

Nigel Pont, country director for New York-based aid group Mercy Corps, offered a different perspective.

"The situation is worse than it's been in quite a while, across the board," Pont said during an outdoor lunch at one of Kabul's handful of high security, expat-friendly restaurants. Mercy Corps has been in Afghanistan for more than 20 years, working in agriculture and microfinance across eight provinces. "But we're confident because our national security management teams are very good."

Those teams meet regularly to make security decisions for operations across Afghanistan - about which places are safe, what precautions to take, and what time of day to move around. Like most aid organizations, Mercy Corps employs a low-profile approach, which essentially means going under the radar: no organizational signage and minimum security; unmarked cars with private plates that are used on a rotating basis and take a variety of routes to and from work; no razor wire, flags or armed security at the office; predominantly Afghan staffers who live in local housing, wear local dress and travel sterilized, without work identification, cellphone or any incriminating documents.

Some organizations go even further. Employees of the Afghan Health and Development Services, a Kabul-based aid group, travel without any paper or writing tools, thinking the Taliban assume that if you are literate, you must work with an NGO. The Spanish-funded Association for Cooperation with Afghanistan bars staffers from moving more than 10 kilometers outside the western city of Herat. Several of the female Afghan employees of Arghand Cooperative, an NGO run by former National Public Radio reporter Sarah Chayes that sells soaps and oils made from local products, have been prodded by greater insecurity in outlying districts to move into Kandahar.

The debate over low-profile operations continues apace. The attacked IRC vehicle and U.N. convoy bore identifying stickers and signage, but no protection. The Afghan government has recommended that all NGOs travel with armed escorts, while ACBAR advises all NGOs and aid organizations to operate with a low profile.

"We want overall security so that our NGOs can move freely, so that they don't need to be escorted," said Mayar. "The first goal of the [NATO-run] provincial reconstruction teams and the military forces is to bring stability, security, and that's what they should do."

In late August the civilian and military actors in Afghanistan signed a new set of guidelines, laid out by the United Nations, intended to prevent the blurring of lines between humanitarian agencies and the military. Many are hoping the new agreement will improve aid worker safety, but it may be too late.

"The Taliban, they are spreading these night letters now that whoever works for NGOs, they are spies and they should be punished," said Mayar. "They will not believe in us anymore."

But local communities might. The majority of aid workers in Afghanistan are Afghans: IRC has 550 national staff and only 10 foreigners; Mercy Corps has about 400 nationals and 10 foreigners; and the worldwide conflict zone and reconstruction staff of the United Nations is nearly 80 percent local nationals. Particularly in hostile environments, a reliance on local communities - to help guide projects, address security concerns and communicate new developments - can make or break aid efforts.

Around the capital, the noose tightens

For the first time since the Taliban left eight years ago, Kabul is becoming one of those hostile environments. A series of fierce attacks - a Taliban assault on Kabul's finest hotel, the Serena; an April assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai; the Indian Embassy bombing in July, which killed 40; a massive insurgent attack that killed 10 French soldiers not far from Kabul - has residents feeling under siege.

"Day by day the attacks are closer to Kabul," Rahmani said. "If not inside Kabul city, the Taliban are certainly active very near and around Kabul. If they are not pushed back they will come to the capital."

Further, crime has been on the uptick along with a profusion of small arms. Kidnapping, murder, theft and other violent crimes have increased steadily in Kabul over the past year. As a result, security restrictions on international staffers within the city have become extremely tight.

"When I first arrived we were able to walk around, but now it's different," said Richard Nash, a development consultant who spoke to Devex in September.

Like most foreign workers, he is barred from walking outside, even a few hundred meters. And although the banged-up white-and-yellow Corollas are ubiquitous, cheap and generally safe, public taxis are off limits - transport is strictly via armored SUV.

"All the organizations seem to be cracking down more and more," Nash said, "especially over the last few months."

Most agencies have instituted phased arrivals at work or no-movement zones outside their offices in the morning, when most attacks occur. They maintain a very short list of safe cafes and restaurants and keep close tabs on their workers via mobile phones and radio networks as well as a strict curfew. Thus most expat staffers live their lives sealed inside high-riding vehicles and air-conditioned homes and offices, cut off from the very people they've come to help.

Field work in the surrounding area is nearly impossible. Provinces close to Kabul, such as Wardak, Ghazni and Logar, were easy to visit even last year. But the Afghanistan NGO Security Office has since summer been urging journalists and aid workers to fly to Bamiyan and Jalalabad instead of taking the increasingly dangerous roads. On September 12, Logar Gov. Abdullah Wardak was assassinated near his home in the town of Paghman, about 20 kilometres west of the capital.

"I'm from Wardak, right close to Kabul, and I can't even go home," said Mayar. "Last year I could, but now the road is just terrible because of the Taliban."

Roads going out of the capital in every direction but one - north, to Panjshir and the stronghold of the Northern Alliance - are now off-limits, effectively cutting off access to the central and eastern regions of the country.

What's at stake

The escalating violence has kept aid groups from many of the most needy, forced the closure of dozens of schools and health clinics and impaired vital development projects. And the timing of the aid attacks couldn't be worse; a terrible harvest, a drought, and predictions for a harsh winter have left up to 9 million Afghans facing a food shortage, according to the British charity Oxfam, which is warning of a "humanitarian crisis."

It's not just in Afghanistan. Aid workers working in conflict zones have always been aware of the threat of kidnappings and violent attacks. But the problem has doubled in the past five years, in direct relation with the need for aid and development assistance in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some 1,000 have been killed worldwide in the past 15 years, according to some estimates.

For every aid worker injured or killed, thousands of locals are left without assistance. After the killing of several Medecins Sans Frontieres workers in Somalia this year, aid agencies cut back their programming severely, further endangering the estimated 3 million hungry Somalis. Rahmani and other observers worry that if the attacks continue, the humanitarians will pack up and go home.

"People say this all the time," said Mayar, of ACBAR. "'If the security gets worse the NGOs will leave Afghanistan,' but it's not the case. The NGOs know that if they leave the insurgents will be very happy - and that's not what they want."

Either way, aid work in Afghanistan will require more safety - and courage - than ever before.

-- posted on devex.com on October 10.

Down But Not Out in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan – Skateistan is a media darling. The nonprofit organization teaches young Afghans to skateboard and has been lauded in dozens of major radio, video, print and online outlets across four continents.

Still it teeters on the brink.

"We spent the last few months doing a lot of press and the attention is really great, but the fact is, we're broke," said Director Oliver Percovich in September, sitting on a shabby couch in the sparsely furnished Skateistan headquarters. "Getting funding is not easy, especially when you don't have a great deal of experience at it."

Ever since Percovich and Sharna Nolan, his girlfriend and a fellow Australian, first dropped their skateboards on a Kabul sidewalk in early 2007, they've been swarmed with interest - from local kids, the press and, more recently, potential donors. But turning those good vibes into money - and establishing Skateistan as a stable and valuable organization - has been a stickier proposition.

Dancing with donors

Kabul is home to an estimated 60,000 street kids. Illiteracy is rife, along with crime and drug addiction. In an effort to improve some of those young, precarious lives, Skateistan has been offering free skateboarding lessons several times a week at an empty fountain not far from central Kabul. But no funding and minimal equipment limits what it can do.

Thus Percovish and Nolan are trying to build an indoor skate school that offers free skateboarding and that will expand into personal health education, English-language courses, computer skills classes and arts instruction. The duo prepared a few polished funding proposals and has since mid-2007 been knocking on the doors of nearly every major donor - from the United States and Canada to England, Germany, Australia and several arms of the United Nations.

"Everyone expresses interest," Percovich said. "But when it comes to donating even $10, it's been a lot more difficult."

Nolan has been spearheading Skateistan's fundraising efforts, wielding the knowledge she gained during a year working for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, a think tank, and on a rural project funded by the U.N. Development Program. She put together a proposal requesting $45,000 to build an indoor skate school and submitted it to the U.S. Agency for International Development via a friend - a consultant working under USAID's Assistance to Small and Medium Enterprises Development project. Nolan had come across consultants of ASMED, which funds locally-driven business projects with up to $50,000, while working with UNDP in Herat.

"They have millions and require minimal reporting and supervision, which was perfect for the Afghan management in Skateistan," Nolan said via e-mail from Darwin, Australia, where she is working on a government-backed community water project. "They deliver funds much faster than major donors and can be more flexible in their outlook. The only catch was that they needed an economic component to the proposal which we thought could be filled with merchandising."

Skateistan failed to quickly put together a compelling merchandising component and the proposal was turned down. A representative of USAID, which tends to fund much larger projects, told Devex that Skateistan "doesn't really fit into any of our objectives."

Despite the fact that Percovich and Nolan are Australian, making contact with their own government has been a long, strange trip. In early 2008 they applied for a direct assistance program. Months later they were turned down. Then Percovich, after dozens of calls and e-mails, wrangled a meeting with the Australian consul, who told him the Australian government was considering pitching in - not with money but with free shipping assistance.

Other governments have been more accessible. The Canadian aid arm expressed interest for months without settling on a funding amount. In September the Deutsche Entwicklungsdienst, the German aid agency, expressed its desire to pay the wages of one full-time Skateistan employee. A recent visit to the Norwegian embassy was promising.

"The Norwegian ambassador gave me an hour of his time," said Percovich of a meeting set up with the help of a friend of Nolan's. "That was really fantastic of them. They expressed interest, support, but what that will mean in the future I have no idea."

The Afghan government promised a free plot of land if Skateistan wins funding to build their skate school. In May, Percovich found an ideal spot in Wazir Akhbar Khan, an upscale, heavily patrolled neighborhood popular with embassies and expats. The Afghan government was supportive until August, when they gave the plot to the government of Kuwait.

"I'm guessing they represented a good deal more money than we do," Percovich said.

For the major donors, Nolan believes Skateistan's size has been a disadvantage.

"As there is the same reporting requirements no matter what they give, it's to their advantage to give larger grants rather than smaller ones to save on administrative costs and paperwork," Nolan said. "Two people with big hearts and the support of dozens of kids and the broader community often can't compete against the big giants on paper."

A bit of good news

The tide may be starting to turn. In August and September Skateistan raised nearly 2,000 euros from the sale of skateboarding photos and t-shirts and two fundraisers, one in Germany and another in Australia. More recently a private Austrian donor pledged another 2,000 euros. Weeks later Electronic Arts, the American video game giant, did the same.

As of early October the pledges had yet to arrive.

But donated goods have poured in. An Australian sporting goods firm donated safety equipment. Titus, a chain of sporting goods and skate shops in Germany, will donate to Skateistan all second-hand boards sold by customers to the store from July to November. DHL has pledged $15,000 worth of shipping fees to transport goods from Germany to Afghanistan.

In late September, Percovich began to receive offers of assistance from the type of international NGOs - People in Need and Mercy Corps, namely - that USAID tends to fund. Representatives of both organizations told him they'd help find funders.

And finally, in early October, a breakthrough: the Canadian International Development Agency donated $15,000 and the Norwegian aid arm promised $30,000. Percovich was ecstatic as he left for several charity events in Germany.

"I've learned that the people who've been here three, four or more years are really impressed with what we've done because they know how difficult it is to get anything done here," Percovich said. "It's a matter of getting to the right people and hopefully we'll get there."

Still, total costs have exceeded $15,000 and Skateistan is barely scraping by. A web of charity and Percovich's personal savings keep the organization afloat. Tired of working for no pay, staffers have begun to leave.

"It's not exactly the easiest thing for an Afghan to be a volunteer on this type of project," Percovich said. "The employees we have at the moment - I don't know how long we can keep them without pay."

Costs will rise during the coming Kabul winter. Outdoor skate venues will freeze. And relationships will be strained. One already reached the breaking point: Though they remain friends and working partners, Nolan and Percovich broke off their three-year relationship this summer.

A sustainable vision

Some have questioned Skateistan's sustainability. On this issue, Percovich and Nolan still speak with one voice.

Both admit that the whole plan hinges on building the skate park. Once that's done the school would require about $1,200 per month in donations to operate as they envision. The school would be run by Afghans and a couple international volunteers. Kids would sign up for sessions and borrow equipment, all without charge. They would be required to take care of the space and the equipment, which many already do at the current space, an empty fountain in north Kabul.

"We are confident that the Afghans can manage things pretty much themselves," Nolan said. "A lot will fall on the shoulders of the project volunteers. We have no shortage of students who are keen as mustard to volunteer. The kids already sweep the fountains where we skate and are caring for the boards - it's part of the life skill training."

Percovish and Nolan hope donor interest will at some point come to fruition. Dozens of Afghan students, teachers and artists have offered to help, in various capacities. Photo and t-shirts sales represent a slow-growing revenue stream.

"There are some other ideas for business development but first and foremost is the development of social capital that allows youth in Kabul to create opportunities for themselves and solve their problems," Percovich said. "Money hasn't solved many problems in Afghanistan and it is high time to try another approach. Aid has focused on providing money when a simple link with the right person would have sufficed. Intangible assets in society are frequently ignored or undervalued simply because they are hard to value. They do make a hell of a lot of difference, though."

An uncertain future

Inside a nondescript warehouse in Melbourne, 40 new skateboards, 50 pairs of sneakers and a variety of skating supplies sit shrink-wrapped on a palette because Skateistan cannot afford the $1,200 shipping costs.

On a late afternoon in September, meanwhile, a couple dozen Afghan children made do with torn sandals, no kneepads and two beat-up skateboards. They laughed, smiled and tried out a few new tricks, but some grew frustrated with the long wait for their turn.

Kids drifted off in twos and threes as an egg-shaped, red-orange sun sank low. A couple of girls lingered, one pushing her friend across the sidewalk on a skateboard. "Could I have the board back?" Percovich asked, reaching his hand out.

The girls pushed away from him, laughing. He and an assistant chased them down and gently took the skateboard as the girls whined playfully.

With that, darkness fell on Kabul.

-- posted on devex.com on October 20.

Iqbal Quadir Upends Development

Iqbal Quadir founded Grameenphone in Bangladesh in March 1997. Eleven years later the for-profit business has gathered 20 million subscribers and sparked a telecom boom: Bangladesh now has at least six mobile operators and nearly 30 million subscribers, and the Grameenphone model is being replicated in much of developing Asia and Africa.

By promoting economic activity and widening access to markets and jobs, Quadir believes the telephone has increased his country's gross domestic product more than millions in foreign aid - a triumph that has become his guiding principle.

"In some ways, Grameenphone created me," said the 50-year-old, who has since launched a handful of not dissimilar enterprises. "I developed the sense and perspective on what developing countries need: companies that are inclusive."

To that end, Quadir's latest creation is the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a newfangled incubator for the business ideas of budding developing world entrepreneurs. It welcomed its inaugural group of fellows in fall 2008 and just might change the way we see development.

"At the end of the day," Quadir said, "poor countries develop because their people are put on the global economic highway."

If that's the case, Legatum's inaugural class of 12 fellows has just entered the on ramp. All are current or incoming MIT students, chosen for their entrepreneurial potential.

"There are proxies for entrepreneurialism," said Michael Maltese, the Legatum Center's managing director, speaking of the selection process. "We look for leadership qualities and whether they created anything, such as a community-based organization."

Candidates must also offer at least the seeds of a business plan, which, in partnership with MIT's Sloan School of Management, the center will nurture.

"The Legatum Center aims to take half-baked business ideas and complete the baking process," Maltese said.

Amy Banzaert is developing an alternative charcoal made from sugar cane waste to provide clean cooking fuel in underdeveloped regions. Adnan Shahid will work an incubator for mobile technologies businesses in Pakistan. Natalia Maya Ortiz hopes to improve productivity and market access for Colombian farmers.

"Over 60 percent of Colombia's population is rural, and the main livelihood is agriculture," Ortiz said.

Production there is inefficient, Internet access minimal and markets are local, she noted. The result is that few farms are self-sustaining.

"Rural people many times don't have knowledge and skills to use Internet or information services," she said. "My idea is to provide training for new technologies and skills as a means to improve competitiveness and production."

The center will help Ortiz develop that idea, via a scholarship and its informal curriculum.


"It's not a school, and it's not an academic program," said Maltese, comparing the Legatum program to the Rhodes scholarship, which rides on top of academic studies. The fellows will attend monthly meetings with Quadir and sit-downs with prominent figures in development and entrepreneurship.

The goal is to prepare the fellows for success upon departure.

"By the time they complete the fellowship they will be at that stage that they could make a very good pitch to investors and hopefully get startup money to launch their business," said Maltese, adding that U.S. investors have shown interest in Legatum, which plans to link them with graduating fellows.

Legatum's deep-pocketed backer revealed his interest last year. New Zealand billionaire investor Christophive Chandler is so reclusive that when he is listed by Forbes magazine as one of the world's richest he is represented by a dark silhouette because no public photo of him exists. But the 48-year-old Kiwi met Quadir in mid-2007, listened to his idea and invested $50 million via his development firm, Legatum Global Development.

"Legatum made the investment in the center for two reasons," LGD Managing Director Alan McCormick said in an e-mail. "First, because MIT is one of the world's leading academic institutions and has a long history of producing new business ventures. Second, because Quadir is the living embodiment of enterprise and development, an investment banker who utilised a readily available technology - cell phones - to have a profound effect on the life of Bangladesh's poor."

McCormick sees great potential in the center, which will expand to award 40 fellows over the next few years.

"We'd like to see a dramatic shift in the recognition that enterprise solutions provide the most effective and sustainable path out of poverty - not because we say so, but because the work that the Legatum fellows are undertaking is practically and demonstrably effective," McCormick said. "The intersection of technology, business and development is the future of sustainable development, and its home is at the Legatum Center."

The center is founded on that philosophy, rooted in Quadir's experiences with Grameenphone in Bangladesh. Quadir, who lectured in technology and economic development at Harvard before moving to MIT in 2005, regularly gives a presentation in which he points out that $650 billion in aid to sub-Saharan Africa since 1960 has led to very little growth. He argues that top-down and foreign-devised development plans widen the power gap between the people and the authorities in developing countries. The answer, Quadir says, is bottom-up, technology-based entrepreneurship-for-profit businesses that foster innovation and competition and empower people to improve their lives.

"I think it is a great idea," said Vijaya Ramachandran, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C. "My research and work done by various scholars on African and Asian development shows that investments in education have a high payoff in terms of entrepreneurship - particularly in terms of expanding skills and building business networks."

This perspective is not new. In his 1999 bestseller, "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said, "Entrepreneurship is the most potent force for uplifting countries." New York University economist William Easterly, one of the first to point out that aid and development programs often do more ill than good, has long argued that development professionals should assist homegrown entrepreneurs like Quadir.

Such ideas are mostly alien to the highest rungs of academia.

"Hopefully we will create enterprises around the world in developing countries," Quadir said. "In addition, we could make a dent in that thinking of the classic development approach, and in order to make that dent it helps to be at a respected university."

Ortiz agrees.

"The center is an ideal place to gain a lot of knowledge and skills about entrepreneurship," the 25-year-old said. "People from developing countries, like me, we could never study or receive education like we could get at MIT, so if I didn't have help of people like Legatum I couldn't make my dream come true."

Fast facts
Name: Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT
Founded: 2008
Mission: To train developing world entrepreneurs and develop their ideas.
Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.
Founder and director: Iqbal Quadir
Employees: 4
Opportunities: Fellows must be from the developing world, and enrolled at or planning to attend MIT.

-- posted to devex.com, 15 Sept 2008.

Living the Life II

My second night in Afghanistan I stroll a few blocks down the street to grab a beer at Gondamack Lodge, the high-end guesthouse and resto-bar run by a former Australian journalist. The Afghan government banned alcohol earlier this year, but they turn a blind eye to several foreigner-friendly establishments in the capital, all of which are heavily secured.

First I'm asked for my passport on the sidewalk. American, check. Then a man peeks through a sliding eye-level panel in the exterior door, sees me, slides a heavy bolt and opens. Finally a third security guy buzzes me thru two steel doors and into a tranquil green garden, where aid and development workers sip room temperature pinot, quacking ducks amble after healthy portions of pasta and beef and, from rather robust stereo speakers, Yaz worries “we're moving farther away.” I secure a picnic table next to a tree and gape.

So here it is, I think to myself, the other side of Kabul. I'd go on to find a similar scene at other ex-pat frequented hotspots – Cabul Coffee House, where the coffee is from Italy and the banana juice is swoon-inducing; Chaila, where the burgers, wraps and coffee are first-rate and missionary workers are thick on the ground; La Cantina, which has excellent burritos for the low low price of $15 and any beer you like as long as it's Heineken in a can; and the ultimate in ex-pat decadence, L'Atmosphere, a sleek indoor/outdoor restaurant/bar/cafe complete with ping-pong table, well-oiled battalion of ever-present servers and, in case the Kabul heat is getting to you, a cool, shaded swimming pool.

I order a beer and start reading the local newspaper. By the time I've finished my second cold one darkness has fallen and the novelty has waned considerably. On the walk home I fall in step with a chatty young Afghan. “You have no bodyguard?' Safeed asks me. “You are here alone? That is not good idea; there are many bad Afghans.”

Must be why the foreigners need their little islands of fantasy.

Living the Life

His speedometer is busted, stuck on 45 kph. His gums have crept halfway down his big, yellow-ish brown teeth. He likes to play wailing Afghan music about as loud as he can stand it while swerving down mountain roads. When he smiles his face, criss-crossed by cavernous creases, glows. His name is Saeed Mirza and he is the baddest driver in the Panjshir.

He wears a forest green correspondent's vest and keeps a keffiyeh wrapped rakishly around his neck. His faux-Gucci wrap-arounds sit untouched on the dash. He's got a Brett Favre-like salt-and-pepper three-day beard and his hair is cut in a chic, Roman style, with short bangs flat against his forehead. He speaks in an Anthony Quinn growl and is loved by all. Locals smile and wave as he zips through their village. He chats with policemen and security guards as if they were his cousins. He rarely goes three minutes without a full-bodied belly laugh. He drives an aging Toyota wagon across hellishly dangerous Afghan highways for a living yet this man, this Saeed Mirza, full of life and mirth and verve, may be the richest man I've ever met.

An Afghan Love Story

Meraj, the bright, handsome Afghan who's been working as my interpreter, has started telling me about his love life. It begins when I ask about the dark orange stains on his hand.

"In Afghanistan, when a man gets married he puts henna on his hand," he explains over a lunch of kebabs and pulau on my first full day in Kabul. "I was married two days ago."

"Congratulations," I say. "I wish I would've come a couple days ago."

"Yes," Meraj says. "It was a very great event, with music and dancing and you would have had a very nice time.” He is 28, his wife is 18. And what's her name? “We don't mention the name of our wife,” he tells me. “Only to members of our family; even my friends don't know her name. Why should they?” He does tell me that her name is the Pashto word for blossom.

The next day we're waiting to go into a play and he gets a phone call. After he hangs up I ask if everything is alright. "No," he says. "That was my girlfriend." I ask if he means girlfriend girlfriend and he says he does. "I didn't want to tell her about my marriage because I love her so much. I have been seeing her 5 years and I love her and I don't want to lose her. But I think a classmate of hers, who was at the wedding, told her about it." He explains that his wife would be unhappy to hear about his girlfriend, who is only 17. He is worried his girlfriend will not speak to him anymore now that he is married.

"David, she is now speaking to me, but only sometimes," a slightly happier Meraj tells me a few days later. "She knows I am married and it will never be the same again." But that's fine, I say, because you love your wife, right? "Yes, of course I do, she is wonderful. But also I have lost the love of my life."

It seems twisted and very wrong, but Meraj's drama is complex. He couldn't marry the girlfriend he loved because she is from Herat, and not approved by his family. So he married a girl who was, which led to this. He's not a bad or sleazy guy, just stuck betwixt his heart and his culture.

Word on the Street

Meraj, my interpreter, and Habib, the driver, pick me up for my first day of reporting at 8am sharp. [The driver side of our banged-up white-and-yellow Toyota Corolla is on the left, as opposed to cars in India and Pakistan as well as the two taxis I took the previous evening. It's a reminder that Afghanistan was never colonized, not by the British or anyone else. The two types seem about equally common, and nobody seems to mind that steering wheels can be on the left or right but all cars drive on the right side of the street.] We head in the direction of the refugee camp swelling on the western edge of the Afghan capital and I, ever curious, start asking about the Taliban.

“We were all women under the Taliban,” Meraj tells me. A handsome 28-year-old who's worked for the World Bank and USAID – he's a clear beneficiary of their toppling. “Nobody had all of the freedoms that they should have, whether under Islam or not. Right now I have no beard. If this was Taliban time they would pick me up and throw me in jail until I had a beard, probably about 2-3 weeks.”

Habib, who spent much of the Taliban years in Pakistan, in the Swat Valley, has a different take. “We had security then,” he says, before speaking about the Taliban directly. “During that time they did nothing wrong, but now they are killing innocent people in mosques and schools. This is not right.” Nor does the burly, bearded driver much care for his president. “Karzai's good, but not as good as we wanted him to be,” Habib says.

Afghanis seem to think of Hamid Karzai the same way Americans used to view Musharraf. “He's not a great president,” a staffer at Roshan, Afghanistan's largest telecom, tells me as I purchase a SIM card, “but others would be worse.” On my flight into Afghanistan my neighbor, a young jeweler named Naveed, says, “he's good but he could be better.”

Back in the Corolla we're crawling at a snail's pace. “Look at these roads!” rages Habib as we slowly roll in and out of golf cart-sized craters on our way back into the city. “What kind of president is he if he can't even rebuild our capital!”

Afghan Art Imitates Life

The day after the UN released its report on Afghanistan's poppies, finding production down overall but still strong in Helmand province, the Helmand Theatre Group enacted a new short play as part of a theatre festival in Kabul. Locals had packed the hall for the previous performance, Moliere's Tartuffe, and came out strong for the Helmand group's show as well. Afghans are an active theatre audience, laughing loudly and applauding any rich actorly touches, and they were held rapt for the 30 minutes of "Drugs."

The story was simple: a poor, desperate father accepts a gift of poppies for his daughter to become bride of a local poppy farmer. Weeks later, after being beaten and suffering from too much work, the daughter comes running to her mother, sobbing. But her father, knowing that he'd be killed if he were to renege on his agreement, forces her to return. The message is clear: poppies equal power.

And in Helmand, which now produces two-thirds of Afghanistan's opium poppies and supplies about 60 percent of world supply, poppies have never been more powerful.

Life Goes On in the Capital

My Lonely Planet Afghanistan tells me that beer and alcohol are served at the restaurant of the Mustafa Hotel, but they aren't. Earlier this year the Karzai government banned alcohol in cafes and restaurants across Afghanistan as well as liquor brought into the country on commercial flights, reasoning that alcohol was haram, or forbidden, in a Muslim country. The move was a step back from the liberal democracy urged on the country by the US and the West and a step towards the harsh strictures enforced during Taliban rule, from 1994 to late 2001.

The Taliban attacks are coming increasingly close to Kabul of late, so it's no surprise that Karzai is offering Islamist hand-outs. Yet the Afghan capital remains vibrant.

A Friday evening stroll through one of its busier up-market neighborhoods turned up children flying kites 100-meters high and a heated volleyball game in Shahr-e-Nau park right next to a couple dozen deaf Afghans engaged in equally heated, if silent, discussion. Across the street from the park men played casual games of snooker next door to KFC, or Kabul Fried Chicken, over which the Colonel smiled, although I doubt he'd be entirely pleased with the flattery.

Kabul Crime Tears Social Fabric

Mohammed Sangar Ahmadzai is about as gentle and soft-spoken an Afghani as you'll ever meet. His dark hair is cut short and he's wearing a white and blue Benetton T-shirt as I sit down next to him and his friend Ali at the Delhi airport while waiting to board my flight to Kabul. The two of them are to study IT in the Indian capital soon and are returning home to get a 3-year student visa. They ask if I've got a ride at the other end and I explain how my driver-fixer-interpreter took a job in Kandahar at the last minute, leaving me without a friend in one of the world's more dangerous cities. "You don't want to take a taxi," Sangar advises. "You might get kidnapped."

We land and the three of us hop into a cab. They take me to the high-security neighborhood of Wazir Akhbar Khan and drop me at my guest house. Refusing payment, Sangar gives me his business card and invites me to lunch at his home the following day.

"I had done really well in my exams and this led to an offer to study IT in India, in Delhi," he begins, shortly afer we've put away our fair share of kofte, pulau, bread, and chaka, a thick, creamy yogurt with something of a bite. "This was a couple months ago, and I was very excited. But my father told me, 'No.'"

He pauses to take a bit of rice. "Then one night I worked late at the office and I was coming home, this was after 9pm, and I came home and as I was getting out of the car I was jumped by three men. I tried to stop them but they had guns and they kidnapped me."

Sangar says this so matter-of-factly, in such a light, straightforward tone that I think he's either kidding or insane. Turns out he's just a Kabuli, as familiar with kidnappings as Midwesterners are with snow.

The men tossed Sangar into their car, covered his eyes with one of the black and white scarves that are ubiquitous here and took him to an empty warehouse. His hands and feet were tied and bound together in front of him and he sat on the ground for five days while the kidnappers negotiated payment and release with his father. He thought they might poison him or put something in his food, so he drank only water and juice, losing nearly 15 pounds from his small frame. His aunts, mother and seven siblings gathered every night at his home, hoping for good news but fearing the worst.

"Finally one night they put me in the car and drove and drove and drove while I was blindfolded. They stopped near a field at the edge of the city, put 250 Afghanis in my hand, took the scarf from my eyes and told me to go and not look back at them or they'd shoot me. I got into a taxi and I told the driver to go to my neighborhood and gave him the money; I didn't look back," he says. "When I got home everybody was happy and they'd made food for me but I couldn't eat. My father came to me and he told me, "You are going to school in Delhi.'"

With lingering poverty and rising insecurity, crime is up in the capital. The Afghan Criminal Investigation Department reported 130 kidnappings from April through August, but the real number is more than double that; fearing the kidnappers will kill their loved one, most do not report the crime. And only about 10 percent of kidnap victims are foreigners, so it's Afghans like Sangar that are taking the brunt of it.

Pride of Afghanistan

I'm the only Westerner on Ariana Airlines flight 312 from Delhi, in a plane amongst the oldest I've seen, with half-emptied ashtrays, seatbelts of thick, heavy steel and ripped magazine pouches sagging from the seatbacks. The pilot, very excited as we land, sounds rather like Borat. “Thank you-a-very much for-a-flying Ari-ana," he says over the public address system. "And-a goodbye!”

A bit of bounce and swerve on the approach, a glimpse of green fields and we touch down. Now that I think about it, the service and the curry were excellent, I had more than enough space to make myself comfortable and the two-hour flight was pleasantly uneventful. I can't see any good reason why the thousands of UN, US and UK employees working in Afghanistan should be barred from flying Ariana. It's a decent airline with a good safety record. More importantly, it's money the Afghan economy could surely use.

Watch Your Step

I visited the world's only landmine museum a few days ago, on the eastern rim of Kabul. The manager, Mohammad Noor Sahak, stepped up to me as soon I strolled inside.

“You are with which organization?” he asked.

“No organization,” I told him. “Just me.”

He looked sharply at me and tilted his head; this seemed a new one to him.

“You are from UK,” he asked.

“No, USA.”

“Oh, I see.”

“USA is good?” I asked him.

“Afghanistan is better,” he smiled.

I studied a few of the dozens of varieties of landmines arrayed in glass cases, and still scattered across Afghanistan, one of the world's most heavily-mined countries. They were made in Italy, China, Pakistan, Iran, and of course the USSR, with names like butterfly and bounding fragmentation. Some were plastic and could fit in the palm of my hand, others were metal, rusted and the size of a healthy tire. I took a few notes, snapped a few pics. Mohammad Noor, never straying more than a few feet from my side, stepped even closer.

“You don't need all this information and pictures,” he said, literally breathing down my neck.

“Maybe I do,” I responded. “Could you maybe go to your desk and I'll come and ask you any questions I might have?”

“What would you like to know?

"Why you are following me so closely."

“This is important part of my job, to keep an eye on all visitors.”

I nodded and continued. Minutes later, as I was nearing the end of my tour around the one-room museum, he spoke again.

“So,” Mohammad Noor began, softly. “You will help me get to United States?”

“To do what?”

“Maybe you could help me think of reason?” he smiled again.

We tossed a few ideas back and forth, perhaps he could lecture about landmines, or museums in war-torn countries, or about the need for security to protect cultural artifacts.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Why do you want to go to the US? You told me Afghanistan is better.”

“US is better,” he snorted, as if I were a fool.

Choice in Afghanistan

The television in my Kabul hotel, the Euro Guest House, has 1223 channels. I'm pretty sure I've never seen more than 400-500. Clearly overkill, I take it to be an expression of the new Afghanistan of choice and an improvement on the harsh repression of the Taliban era.

And given a choice, Afghans seem to lean towards news and sex -- I counted about 100 channels of each. Yet there's also an incredibly wide selection, including at least 19 different languages from over 30 countries. Not a bad way to learn about the world outside.

The Rebirth of Kashmir

They came from Bandipore and Baramulla, Pampore, Rajbagh, Sonmarg, and Uri, three to a scooter, 60 to an overloaded minibus, on foot, by bicycle, truck, rickshaw and horse-pulled tonga. Aged 8 to 68, men and women, boys and girls, waving placards and posters, hoisting banners and waving flags, miles-long convoys coursed through the streets of Srinagar as lakhs of Kashmiris descended on Idgah last Friday for the most exuberant display of their favorite new pastime, the protest party. The demonstration was called by leading separatist politicians but you can tell it's a celebration because of the smiling faces, the sense of brotherhood, the confident glow of the righteous. The protesters are exuberant, unchained, shouting anti-India slogans and pro-freedom chants. Everywhere, Kashmiri men are starting impromptu performances of the two-step jig that's sweeping the Valley. Hands in the air, shoulders rolling, heads bobbing and right foot stomping an imaginary Indian flag, boys and men bounce in a misshapen circle, shouting, "Ragda! Ragda!" They look at each other, one to the next and again, grinning and soaking it in, almost unbelieving. They've been waiting for this day for years. The origins of the ragda are a bit vague. Some say it began this spring when a Kashmiri hijra set an Indian flag out on the ground and, seeking a more fabulous way to denounce his oppressors, stepped on it and shouted, "Ragda! Ragda!" ("Stomp! Stomp!"). It's turned out to be contagious, and it's given this movement rhythm. The police and Indian army troops, armed to the teeth and out in force earlier in the day, have melted away. How do you attack someone laughing and dancing joyously as he denounces you and your country? Later on, separatists politicians would clamber up to the dais only to be lost in the din, like a drop of water trying to direct the tides. The masses would be too busy dancing and shouting and unburdening themselves in a grand group catharsis. Parties don't need to be told how to embrace the moment. Yes, many protesters are vehemently denouncing their oppressor, India, and celebrating Pakistan and Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. But these are less acts of allegiance, more expressions of Kashmiri unity, as separatist and Muslim. Walking to Idgah, a smiling Mehrajudin Mattoo, 63, pauses to reflect on the sea change in Kashmir. "Those days, it was the gun, everywhere," the retired civil servant tells me, thinking back to the 90's. "But this is different. This is the real Kashmir and they can't stop us. We know what we want and we know the best way to get it." Hilal Ahmad Bhat, 26, is standing in the back of a lorry with a few dozen like-minded new friends heading towards the protest grounds. He is a teacher at a government-run school and I ask why he's protesting the very government that pays his bills and feeds his family. "It is not a question of our bread," he said. "It is a matter of our freedom, because the exploitation has gone too far. Amarnath was just a single issue, just a part of the larger struggle that's been going on for a long long time, and now we've had enough." The tipping point was not the land transfer, but what came after. "The road blockade was the turning point," said businessman Rafiq Bhat, 40. "Kashmiris are sensitive about their land, but if you threaten to starve them, look out." Still, that push has not prodded Kashmiris embrace the violence that's been frequent further south. "Our protests are totally peaceful – not like Jammu," added Bhat, who stayed in school when the conflict was revving up in the early 90's. He didn't think the gun was the answer. "We want a peaceful resolution to our struggle. India keeps telling the world about the militancy here, that we are terrorists. But look around, there is no violence here today. There are no terrorists. We are a peaceful people." I spent a few weeks in Kashmir in the late 90's, lived in Srinagar from mid-2006 to mid-2007 and have visited regularly since, and suddenly it's completely new. Still kind, generous and willing to talk through the night, most Kashmiris had lost family, friends, and in the last few years been worn down by the conflict, despite the recent drop in violence. Depression and other mental illnesses quarupled from 2001 to 2007. So while Kashmir remained beautiful the shadows of the past and a lingering threat darkened the days. No longer. The floodgates have opened and Kashmiris are releasing two decades of pain, anger, fear, frustration and loss – the pent-up emotions of the conflict generation. It is not a revolution as much as an evolution. We are witnessing the rebirth of Kashmir. For now, the insurgency is over, giving way to a broad-based non-violent movement for azadi. And for my money, this is how freedom arrives. Not from the barrel of a gun. Not with a knock at your door in the dead of night. But from a seething, jeering, bopping mass of one. I'm reminded of a well-known reggae protest song: Ah, no ignorance do it. Ah, no brute force do it. Your weapons can't do it. So hear this! Throw down your arms and come, Throw down your arms and come, Throw down your arms and come, Drop them Put them away, to stay. Kashmiris have answered the call. With the United Jehad Council announcing it will refrain from violence to allow this mass movement to take its course, so too have the militants. Who's missed the bus? Delhi. Portraying the heavy, the Indian government has imposed a curfew and, as of 25 August, taken to shooting violators.

These Jokers Are Serious

India's terror tally: 6 days. 58 bombs. 3 cities. 53 dead.

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Just before he kills his victims the villain of The Dark Knight, this summer's white hot Hollywood blockbuster, likes to ask them a question: "Why so serious?" The Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger, does not expect an answer. But as the victims realize the end is near, he relishes their rising fear – it suggests they hadn't been taking him seriously enough.

The terrorists who set off dozens of bombs in Bangalore and Ahmedebad last weekend and scattered handfuls more around the Gujarat port city of Surat seek a similar response. As with the Joker, the horrors have come rapid-fire, yet each has lingered longer than the last. Bangalore's eight blasts occurred over 15 minutes, killing 2. In Ahmedebad the 21 explosions took more than an hour, and have now killed 51. Surat residents discovered 21 slow-ticking bombs across the city over a period of nearly 30 hours.

A few of the Surat bombs were found in public garbage cans. One was placed behind a hoarding under a traffic flyover. Another had been secured in a low-hanging tree branch. Nobody knew where or when the next might appear, or whether it might reveal itself more rudely than the others. Was that part of the plan? Unsure whether the bombs were intended to explode, the police have theorized that they may have been a distraction, or a test to measure response times. Whatever the case, Surat may have been saved from physical damage but by all accounts the city is psychologically shattered.

Ahmedabad, too, has been scarred. Monday commuters leaped from a smoking city bus, later found to be suffering from an overheated engine. In the Ghodasar neighborhood an unclaimed tiffin prodded locals to call the police, whose investigations revealed the offending lunch case had been forgotten by a young boy. Residents have been phoning in false bomb alarms and mental health professionals in both cities report a spike in anxiety and stress disorders.

A Joker-like strategy of inciting fear is not the only cinematic homage hidden in this week's terror. The pattern of the Ahmedebad blasts closely follow the Bollywood film Contract, which arrived in local cinemas the previous week. In the movie a terrorist leader details his plan for a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai, followed an hour later with several blasts at city hospitals. The Ahmedebad bombs followed this very outline – with an extended first round of strikes followed by blasts at two major area hospitals, with the latter doing the lion's share of harm and ratcheting up the horror.

Dozens of analysts have outlined detailed policy proposals on the editorial pages of India's daily newspapers. Most cite the need for a unified central intelligence agency and various multi-pronged initiatives intended to redouble surveillance and security, increase Muslim development and foster community awareness.

Fine ideas all, but we should first grapple with what we are facing. These terrorists have three objectives: to incite widespread fear and make over a billion Indians ill at ease; to throw a wrench in India's widely lauded economic progress, its rise to superpower status; and finally, to sew religious enmity, particularly between Hindus and Muslims.

On the first score their success has been obvious and widespread. The fear has even reached Delhi, where the Japanese embassy was evacuated and shuttered Wednesday after receiving an anonymous bomb threat via email, and the southern state of Kerala, where a bomb-warning phone call panicked police.

On the second point the bad guys have made decent headway. Bangalore is a global IT hub. Ahmedabad is one of India's leading manufacturing centers. Surat operates one of the country's biggest and busiest ports. All three are now less attractive to local and international investors and businesses. Foreign trepidation has already risen its head; Japan recently warned its citizens about traveling in India. And in an email from Indian Muhajideen received minutes before the Ahmedabad blasts began, the attackers put leading businessman Mukesh Ambani and four major Muslim film stars in their crosshairs. These targets are well chosen; India's global profile has grown due in large part to its business dynasties – with the Ambanis, Tatas, and Birlas in the vanguard – and Bollywood celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan.

The third and most combustible objective has not yet come to pass, despite the seeming efforts of the opposition BJP. Party leaders have called the ruling UPA government "soft on terror," and a spokesperson said the problem "requires a Kashmir-type operation to tackle terrorism and root out the outfits supporting it." Strange choice of model, because India's war against a Pakistan-backed insurgency there has droned on for nearly two decades and resulted in some 50,000 dead. Further, this week the BJP urged residents of Jammu, the state's predominantly Hindu winter capital, to create a blockade in order to keep crucial goods such as meat, vegetables and dairy products from reaching the mostly Muslim Kashmir Valley. This in a region rife with long-simmering religious tensions.

The Dark Knight climaxes with the Joker's most insidious stunt. Two ferries – one full of criminals, the other full of law-abiding Gotham citizens – have been wired to explode. The Joker gives each boat a detonator for the bombs on the other boat, then gleefully announces to all passengers that if neither pushes their button for 30 minutes, both boats will blow. It's a moral dilemma, a deadly game of chicken, and Gothamites find it in themselves to stay calm and embrace life.

Can India do the same, or will its impressive progress be stalled by fear and communal rage? A good question, and just cause to get serious.

-- published in Aug 4 Tehelka, an Indian newsweekly.