A Taliban massacre in Qargha at the same place I had lunch in 2008

Qargha Lake near Kabul

i went to lunch at qargha lake in 2008 with two afghan friends and colleagues... we sat out in the garden at tables under the trees at the very same spot and the very same hotel where this massacre took place... i was supposed to attend a wedding anniversary celebration there last year but my security manager put his foot down...

At least 15 civilians were killed when seven Taliban militants shot their way into a popular lakeside resort here and took scores of hostages, Afghan officials said on Friday.

The seven attackers, a police officer and three private guards also died as Afghan security forces fought their way into the compound to end the siege.

The onslaught lasted nearly 11 hours as Afghan security forces tried to rescue hostages and the hotel's other customers.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that Afghans drank alcohol there and that there was prostitution and dancing. "These acts are illegal and strictly prohibited in Islam," said Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman. He added that: "Women dancers were sexually misused there."

Police officials described the sprawling resort at Qargha lake and the Spozhmai hotel, where the drama unfolded, as a daunting place to mount a rescue operation because it is wooded and easy for attackers to hide. In addition to the main hotel, there is at least one other hotel and numerous small cottages.

"The Afghan security forces managed to evacuate 250 to 300 customers at the hotel in the initial hours of the attack and in the morning we resumed our operation and so far we've managed to rescue 40 more hostages including women and children," said General Ayoub Salangi, the Kabul police chief.

"We also rescued four men who were stuck in the water," he said, referring to guests at the hotel who in the initial moments of the attack jumped into the lake. Because they could not swim, they had to cling to the stone sea wall, immersed in the chilly mountain waters until they were fished out by police in the morning.

it's so sad... qargha is one of the very few places kabul residents can go to get away from the city and enjoy a rare, brief moment in nature and a moment or two of enjoyment... it's terrorism, pure and simple...

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The NYT on "spy balloons" in Afghanistan - a day late and a dollar short

i've visited afghanistan, kabul in particular, at least a half dozen times over the past few years... when i arrived there in september 2009, the first thing i noticed was the surveillance airship floating over the vicinity of the main mosque and in fact i put up a blog post featuring a photo of it i had taken from the roof of our guesthouse (see here)... after inquiring, i was told that it had been there for a few months but that such tethered surveillance craft had been a familiar feature over military bases around the country for at least a couple of years... 

so, in may of 2012, the nyt "breaks" the story...

The dirigible, a white 117-foot-long surveillance balloon called an aerostat by the military, and scores more like it at almost every military base in the country, have become constant features of the skies over Kabul and Kandahar, and anywhere else American troops are concentrated or interested in.

Shimmering more than 1,500 feet up in the daytime haze, or each visible as a single light blinking at night, the balloons, with infrared and color video cameras, are central players in the American military’s shift toward using technology for surveillance and intelligence.

In recent years, they have become part of a widening network of devices — drones, camera towers at military bases and a newer network of street-level closed-circuit cameras monitoring Kabul’s roads — that have allowed American and Afghan commanders to keep more eyes on more places where Americans are fighting.

The dirigibles are now such a common feature in daily Afghan life that some people here shrug and say they hardly notice them. Other parts of the network have become lasting parts of the urban landscape as well, particularly in Kabul, where long-necked closed-circuit cameras overlook locations susceptible to attacks, like the Supreme Court building, traffic circles and main highways past the military camps.

But other Afghans describe a growing sense of oppression, the feeling that even as the Americans are starting to pack up to leave, the foreigners’ eyes will always be on them.

It is often expressed in typically Afghan fashion, as a grumbled undercurrent of quips and brooding pronouncements: “It is an American kite,” or “Afghans and Americans are up there.” (They are not; there is no one in the balloons.) “It shows us that, sure, the Americans are still here,” and, “It is not effective because there are still these suicide attacks and car bombs."

For others, the cameras are an outrageous intrusion into private lives, putting women and children on display for foreigners whom they see as immoral.

the value of this article for me which, i shamefacedly confess, i did not even think about until i read it, is the intrusiveness of such surveillance on afghans' private lives... we put bamboo screening around the rooftop terrace of our guesthouse for two main reasons - so we could be up there without being seen from the street or neighboring buildings and making targets of ourselves but also so we couldn't look down into the walled compounds of our neighbors and watch their women, an absolute no-no... it's just one more example that reinforces the idea that many afghans already have which is that we are disrespectful barbarians who don't give a rat's ass for their customs and their beliefs... and we wonder why they hate us... 

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The behavior of the United States violates everything that she and her colleagues were being taught the United States stands for

an excellent report of an interview of afghan women judges conducted by david swanson for truthout...

The first judge to reply spoke of the horrors of the Taliban, and of the initial gratitude for the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban 10 years ago. But, she said, the mission changed to one of fighting terrorism, and through that "we lost all of our civil rights." She described U.S. troops kicking in doors of houses at night with women and girls asleep in their beds. She described disappearances and accounts of torture. What the United States and NATO are doing, seizing people, locking them up, disappearing them, and torturing them is clearly illegal and against international law, she said. According to international treaties, she went on, when one country occupies another, the host country does not lose its sovereignty, and yet all decisions are now being made by the occupying country without any say by the Afghan government.

A second judge spoke up. "Your Constitution speaks of freedom and a people's government," she said, "but the United States is running secret prisons, torturing, disappearing people, and locking people up for years with no due process." The behavior of the United States, she said, violates everything that she and her colleagues were being taught the United States stands for. "It may seem trivial," she continued, "but it effects our daily lives." If a member of the international occupying forces gets into a hit and run with their car, and you go to the base to complain, you are threatened. They have total immunity from any rule of law, she explained.

[...]

The first judge to have spoken then joined back in, remarking that "the United States tells other countries how to be democratic and operate within a rule of law, but the United States as role model breaks every one of those things."

as i sit here in kabul behind my laptop, i can give first-hand validation to every one of the perspectives expressed in this article... the depth and breadth of american hypocrisy is beyond belief and it is one of my most significant daily challenges to keep myself from absolutely drowning in it and staying focused on relating to the afghans as fellow human beings and assisting them in whatever ways i can...

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In Dubai, enroute to Kabul

when i first visited dubai, i decided immediately that it was one of the creepiest places i had ever been... now, on my umpteenth pass-through, there's nothing to change that opinion... the service folk - hotel desk clerks, taxi drivers, restaurant help, indeed virtually ALL the menial labor - are drawn from india, bangladesh, pakistan, sri lanka, indonesia and the philippines, among others... they're uniformly delightful people, unfailingly polite and good-humored, but i'm well aware they're living lives of indentured servitude, two year contracts, surrendered passports, poverty wages, 12-14 hour days and regular 7-day weeks... meanwhile, the emiratis - the natives - hold down all the positions of officialdom, customs and immigration, government, etc. and do little more than strut around, playing with their smartphones - and themselves - living lives of utterly pampered luxury...

i predict that, in the annals of history, dubai will be seen as a premier example of the total dedication of our current age to the belief that the only things that matter are money, power and lots of stuff, and that obscene amounts of all three are the only goals worth striving for... our ancestors, if there are any that survive the coming reckoning, will regard dubai and all that it represents with righteous horror that the human race could veer so dramatically off the track...

in just a few hours, i'll be landing in kabul where abject poverty is seemingly limitless and the corruption of the wealthy elites is so over the top as to be incomprehensible... at least dubai has paved streets and the majority of the population has a roof over its head...

sigh...

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Fuck Barack Obama, his super-rich, elite clients and...

the horse he rode in on...

i rarely resort to crudity in my post headlines but i am SO-O-O-OOO sick of this shit...

robert scheer...

There is currently no shortage of corporate profits or excessive executive compensation to explain away the failure of the private sector to create jobs. On the contrary, as The New York Times reports, “In the fourth quarter, profits at American businesses were up an astounding 29.2 percent, the fastest growth in more than 60 years. Collectively, American corporations logged profits at an annual rate of $1.678 trillion.” And to add insult to injury, the top executives, who seem unable or unwilling to create jobs or adequately reward their workers, have increased their own compensation by a whopping 12 percent over the previous year, setting the median pay at $9.6 million per year for those in control of the leading 200 companies. The Times adds that “C.E.O. pay is also on the rise again at companies like Capital One and Goldman Sachs, which survived the economic storm with the help of all of those taxpayer-financed bailouts.”

[...]

[O]ur debt now looms so large because the government had to bail out many of those same corporations, quite a few of which, like General Electric and AIG, pay no taxes and have no problem paying truly obscene amounts to their top executives.

[...]

Continued tax breaks for the 1 percent of the population that controls 40 percent of the nation’s wealth will do nothing to restore the confidence of the other 99 percent of consumers who are suffering so.

This at least Obama seems to understand, but count on him to betray his own better instincts by once again following the advice of his treasury secretary and the Wall Street crowd that contributed so lavishly to his first presidential campaign and whose support he seeks once again.

meanwhile, here i sit in kabul, afghanistan, where good people are struggling every day just to survive while u.s. money leaves the country for dubai by the millions every day in the briefcases of crooks...

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Very light posting

i've been so damn busy that i haven't had time to post... i'm following the news, of course, from the kabuki theater of the threatened u.s. government shutdown to the libyan farce to the news blackout on bahrain to the even more ominous virtually complete absence of news on julian assange, where the most recent news item is dated 24 february...

what i can't seem to escape is the feeling that the walls are crumbling, but FROM what TO what, i don't have a clue... complicating matters is that i'm seeing all of this from the perspective of kabul, afghanistan, where i'm in the thick of the insane intersection of the u.s. and afghanistan governments... thank god i've got a good sense of humor...!

p.s. oops... i take it back... i just found an article on assange from yesterday's guardian reporting on his recent appearance at a public debate...

The WikiLeaks founder, who is currently appealing against his extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault, told the audience at a packed debate organised by the New Statesman and the Frontline Club that whistleblowing was essential in a democracy because "the only way we can know whether information is legitimately kept secret is when it is revealed".

good... at least he hasn't been "disappeared"...

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In Kabul

i arrived here yesterday afternoon and have spent most of the day today in meetings... this morning was a glorious spring morning... this afternoon...? well, see for yourself...

Current conditions as of 4:20 PM AFT

Widespread Dust

Current Temperature: 54 °F
Barometer: 30.03 in and steady
Humidity: 18 %
Visibility: 2.17 mi

High: 61° Low: 40°

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Burning a Koran really pisses some folks off...

can't say as i blame 'em for being pissed altho' i do have a problem with mob psychology where innocent people end up dead...

it would be nice if the nutcase u.s. pastor who thought it necessary to perform such a reckless and intolerant act in the name of christianity had to face some serious consequences... at a bare minimum, he should be forced to go back and read the real message of christ in the gospels... i see people like him as evidence of the real evil afoot in the world...

Mob kills 8 U.N. workers in Afghanistan

Officials say a crowd of up to 1,000 people attacked the United Nations compound in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, killing eight guards believed to be from the Philippines. The attack was sparked by a mosque sermon describing the burning of the Koran by an American pastor.

[...]

The rioting erupted after mosque preachers at Friday prayers -- the most important of the Muslim week -- sermonized against the burning of the Koran by an American evangelical pastor in Florida. After the service, up to 1,000 worshipers marched on the U.N. compound and overran it, police said.

believe me, i'm not recommending it, but i'm frankly somewhat surprised that the afghans haven't retaliated by burning a bible... can you imagine the kind of conflagration THAT would unleash here in the good ol' u.s. of a...?

meanwhile, here i sit at dulles airport in d.c., waiting for my flight to dubai where i will connect to a flight to kabul... woo-hoo...

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This makes me so very sad

An injured woman is escorted out of the supermarket in Kabul,
Afghanistan, where a suicide bomber killed several people.
Photograph: Rahmat Gul/AP

i've shopped at this supermarket a number of times... it's right next door to a most pleasant restaurant where i've had several most enjoyable meals in a lovely garden... several people i know live close by...

An attack by a suicide bomber on a busy Kabul supermarket close to the British embassy has killed eight people, including one child and wounded six, including up to three foreigners.

Afghan security officials were still removing bodies from the upmarket Finest supermarket in the Afghanistan capital's diplomatic neighbourhood as distraught relatives waited for news.

Kabul's police chief, Mohammad Ayub Salangi, confirmed claims by witnesses that today's attack was carried out by a single suicide bomber.

In a text message sent to the Guardian and other media organisations the Taliban's spokesman claimed responsibility for the blast, saying they were targeting the "head of Blackwater company in Afghanistan". There is no confirmation that any employee of the private US security contractor, now know as Xe Services, was in the shop at the time.

A supermarket worker, who had been packing customers' shopping, said he heard two grenades being thrown on the ground. He initially thought were falling glass bottles but when he saw they were grenades he sprinted out the front door seconds before the blasts, which were followed by the main explosion of the suicide bomb.

meanwhile, my country continues firing at people on the ground - militants and civilians alike - from unmanned drones being flown by people sitting behind computer consoles in the high desert of the u.s... when and where does this insanity stop...?

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Back in Amerika

yeah, it was only two weeks... two months outside the u.s. is more my average but, given where i was traveling amid the beauty, the magic and the timeless and tangible antiquity of the outer hebrides, coming back to the same sad state of affairs is particularly disheartening...

glenn greenwald, as per usual, zeroes in on the amazing and, no surprise, virtually ignored depth of obama's deceit...

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court. Back in the day, this was called "Bush's legal black hole." In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo. Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.

Immediately following Boumediene, the Bush administration argued that the decision was inapplicable to detainees at Bagram -- including even those detained outside of Afghanistan but then flown to Afghanistan to be imprisoned. Amazingly, the Bush DOJ -- in a lawsuit brought by Bagram detainees seeking habeas review of their detention -- contended that if they abduct someone and ship them to Guantanamo, then that person (under Boumediene) has the right to a habeas hearing, but if they instead ship them to Bagram, then the detainee has no rights of any kind. In other words, the detainee's Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged. One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when, last February, as The New York Times put it, Obama lawyers "told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team."

But last April, John Bates, the Bush-43-appointed, right-wing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram. I reviewed that ruling here, in which Judge Bates explained that the Bagram detainees are "virtually identical to the detainees in Boumediene," and that the Constitutional issue was exactly the same: namely, "the concern that the President could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely."

But the Obama administration was undeterred by this loss. They quickly appealed Judge Bates' ruling. As the NYT put it about that appeal: "The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight." Today, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the Bush/Obama position, holding that even detainees abducted outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram have no right to contest the legitimacy of their detention in a U.S. federal court, because Boumediene does not apply to prisons located within war zones (such as Afghanistan).

So congratulations to the United States and Barack Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind.

with my work in kabul, i've spent no small amount of time contemplating what was taking place less than 100km from where i sat at my desk, trying to make a constructive difference in the midst of utter tragedy...

despite the many positive changes this president has made, there is no way i can find it in my heart to support an administration that consciously and deliberately tramples on the most fundamental principles my country supposedly stands for... as long as the united states continues to say one thing and do another, particularly when it is as egregious as this, we expose ourselves to the revenge of those who are being crushed under the heels of our boots...

or is that the plan...?

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Obama in Kabul

i continue to be in fairly close touch with a few on-going developments in afghanistan... i've been aware, for instance, of a continuing rift between the u.s. state and department of defense missions in the country which has been heavily scrutinized of late, and rightly so, by the u.s. ambassador... i'm also aware that u.s. special envoy, richard holbrooke, not the most pleasant guy under the best of circumstances, continues to throw his weight around, probably to the great annoyance of not only the ambassador but also anyone else who makes the mistake of crossing his path... and, of course, that doesn't even take into account the obstacles thrown up by the afghan government, karzai in particular...

President Barack Obama arrived in Kabul on Sunday for an unannounced visit to Afghanistan, his first trip to the country since becoming president and commander-in-chief of the U.S.-led war effort. Obama's brief trip was expected to include a one-on-one meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an expanded meeting with Karzai's cabinet and U.S. officials, and a speech to American military personnel.

maybe obama decided it was time to kick a little ass and take some names... we can only hope...

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Perfectly capturing the essence of Afghanistan

i haven't had the pleasure of traveling outside of kabul either by road or otherwise but i hope to have the experience one of these days soon and, yes, i would very much like to drive this road...


Kabul Gorge near Sarobi
Kabul-Jalalabad Highway


Kabul Gorge near Sarobi
Kabul-Jalalabad Highway

dexter filkins, the nyt correspondent who has spent years reporting from afghanistan, almost perfectly captures the essence of the country in this article...

Afghans Don’t Let a White-Knuckle Highway Slow Them

The 40-mile stretch, a breathtaking chasm of mountains and cliffs between Kabul and Jalalabad, claims so many lives so regularly that most people stopped counting long ago. Cars flip and flatten. Trucks soar to the valley floor. Buses play chicken; buses collide.

The mayhem unfolds on one of the most bewitching stretches of scenery on all the earth. The gorge, in some places no more than a few hundred yards wide, is framed by vertical rock cliffs that soar more than 2,000 feet above the Kabul River below. Most people die, and most cars crash, while zooming around one of the impossible turns that offer impossible views of the crevasses and buttes.

[...]

One day last week, 13 accidents unfolded on the road in a mere two hours, all of them catastrophic, nearly all of them fatal. The daylong drizzle made the day slightly more calamitous than most. At one scene, a bloodied family grieved for their kin trapped in a flattened car. At another, a minibus lay crushed beneath the hulk of a jackknifed truck. At still another, the bottom of a ravine was filled with a car’s twisted remains.

And yet even as those accidents spread themselves across the roadway, the cars sailed heedlessly past. Taxis and buses weaved and passed one another at bone-chilling speeds, with only millimeters separating them from bloody catastrophe.

i learned to drive in the mountains of colorado, both on and off road, and there's nothing i like more than a good driving challenge... i've driven in many countries and dealt with extremely dangerous and truly insane driving habits but, i must admit, afghans are perhaps the most insane of the lot...

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In Afghanistan, corruption starts at the top

hamid karzai was just sworn in to a second term, so let's take a look at the corruption record so far and see what's likely in store in his coming five-year term...

this is from karzai's official biographer, nick mills, writing in foreign policy...

At the start of his second term, Karzai is under immense pressure from the new governments in Washington and London to grasp the nettle and clean house. But since the day in December 2001 when he was named head of the new post-Taliban government and had the support of the vast majority of the Afghan people, he has shied away from the hard decisions that might have set Afghanistan on a more promising course. I'm not sure if he has it in him to do it now.

this from pratap chatterjee in tomdispatch...

Hamid Jalil, the aid coordinator for the Ministry of Finance, points out that wasting money on unnecessary projects ... has helped to hobble Afghanistan's progress in the last eight years. "The donor projects undermine the legitimacy of the government and do not allow us to build capacity," he says, adding in the weary tone you often hear in Kabul today, "corruption is everywhere in post-conflict countries like ours."

Former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani summed up the whole profitably corrupt system that has run Afghanistan into a cul-de-sac this way. "It's not crazy, it's absurd," he says. "Crazy is when you don't know what you're doing. Absurd is when you don't provide a sense of ownership and a sense of sustainability."

and, in spite of all the damning evidence, the u.s. decides to make nice...

As President Obama nears a decision on how many more troops he will dispatch to Afghanistan, his top diplomats and generals are abandoning for now their get-tough tactics with Karzai and attempting to forge a far warmer relationship. They recognize that their initial strategy may have done more harm than good, fueling stress and anger in a beleaguered, conspiracy-minded leader whom the U.S. government needs as a partner.

[...]

The new approach, which one official described as a "reset" of the relationship, will entail more engagement with members of Karzai's cabinet and provincial governors, officials said, because they have concluded that the Afghan president lacks the political clout in his highly decentralized nation to purge corrupt local warlords and power brokers. The CIA has sent a longtime field officer close to Karzai to be the new station chief in Kabul. And State Department envoy Richard C. Holbrooke, whose aggressive style has infuriated the Afghan leader at times, is devoting more attention to shaping policy in Washington and marshaling international support for reconstruction and development programs.

'round and 'round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows...

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"More than military solutions" for Afghanistan...? I've said this from the beginning...

when i first got to afghanistan in march 2008, i was stunned at the level of poverty... almost every afghan i spoke with over six trips between then and now has said virtually the same thing cited in this survey... it's a no-brainer...

Poverty and unemployment are overwhelmingly seen as the main reasons behind conflict in Afghanistan, according to a survey in that country.

British aid agency Oxfam - which questioned 704 Afghans - said seven out of 10 respondents blamed these factors.

Taliban violence was seen as less important than government weakness and corruption, according to the poll.

Oxfam said the survey showed that the country needed more than military solutions.

One respondent in Nangarhar, whose name was concealed in order to protect his identity, described the impact of the conflict on his fellow Afghans.

"What do you think the effect that two million Afghans martyred, 70% of Afghanistan destroyed and our economy eliminated has had on us?" he asked.

"Half our people have been driven mad. A man who is 30 or 40 years old looks like he is 70. We always live in fear. We are not secure anywhere in Afghanistan."

Another man interviewed said: "If people are jobless they are capable of anything."

The survey suggests that many Afghans believe foreign aid does not reach those who need it most.

yep, yep and yep... sigh...

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Peshawar - paralyzing a population with fear

i've been following the increasing violence in the northwest frontier province of pakistan and the city of peshawar in particular... in all honesty, the violence in afghanistan and kabul pales in comparison to the horrific atrocities being perpetrated against pakistanis by their own people, not only in number of deaths but also frequency of occurrences and overall destruction... if the intent is to destabilize the government of pakistan and render the population helpless with fear, they're doing a damn good job...

al jazeera on the latest...

Residents of the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar are are becoming increasingly fearful as car bomb attacks continue to plague their hometown.

At least 11 people were killed in the latest attack on Saturday, which happened within 24 hours of a similar one.

The attacks appear to be aimed at weakening the government's military operation against Taliban groups.

i know many afghans in kabul who have relatives in peshawar and it pains me greatly to see this happening... when i was first in afghanistan, i knew several individuals who chose to have their immediate families live in peshawar expressly because it was considered safer than kabul... several have since moved those families back to kabul in a remarkable twist of fate...

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The Afghans are concerned about more troops - the United States must want the fighting to go on

Moises Saman for The New York Times
At a bazaar in Charikar, north of Kabul, many Afghans said they
felt vulnerable to the Taliban, unprotected by their own government
or the American forces.

yeah, no shit...

In bazaars and university corridors across the country, eight years of war have left people exhausted and impatient. They are increasingly skeptical that the Taliban can be defeated. Nearly everyone agrees that the Afghan government must negotiate with the insurgents. If more American forces do arrive, many here say, they should come to train Afghans to take over the fight, so the foreigners can leave.

“What have the Americans done in eight years?” asked Abdullah Wasay, 60, a pharmacist in Charikar, a market town about 25 miles north of Kabul, expressing a view typical of many here. “Americans are saying that with their planes they can see an egg 18 kilometers away, so why can’t they see the Taliban?”

Such sentiments were repeated in conversation after conversation with more than 30 Afghans in Kabul and nearby rural areas and with local officials in outlying provinces. The comments point to the difficulties that American and Afghan officials face if they choose to add more foreign troops.

If the foreign forces are not seen so by Afghans already, they are on the cusp of being regarded as occupiers, with little to show people for their extended presence, fueling wild conspiracies about why they remain here.

The feeling is particularly acute in the Pashtun south, but it is spreading to other parts of the country. More American troops could tip the balance of opinion, particularly if they increase civilian casualties and prompt even more Taliban attacks.

The grass-roots view among Afghans is at odds with those of top Afghan officials, as well as many American military commanders, who strongly endorse a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy, including a large troop increase.

now, check this interesting perspective...

Mr. Wasay and several friends visiting his pharmacy were discussing the Taliban’s killing of a police chief in a rural part of the province. The rumor was that Taliban fighters had severed his head and delivered it to his son, according to one of Mr. Wasay’s friends.

True or not, the anecdote was part of a growing mythology of Taliban power and a general perception that neither the Afghan government nor American troops were protecting Afghans.

Daily life continues to be so precarious for many people interviewed, especially those outside Kabul, that they have come to believe that the United States must want the fighting to go on.

“In the first days of the war, the Americans defeated the Taliban in just a few days,” said Mohammed Shefi, a graduate student in the pharmacy school at Kabul University. “Now they have more than 60,000 forces and they cannot defeat them.”

gee... endless war... now, ain't THAT an interestin' concept...?!?!

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Firefight ongoing in Kabul [UPDATE 1, 2 & 3]

[BUMPED]



i came to the office early just as this was coming down... not a lot of details yet except to say it's still going on... we had to take an alternate route as the one we regularly use passes right through the middle of the area where it's all happening... the good news is that everybody else was told to stay home so i've pretty much got the office to myself... such peace and quiet...!

Heavy gunfire has erupted at a guest house used by U.N. staff in Kabul, and Afghan police said five people were killed. A U.N. spokesman said U.N. staff were believed to have fled the building and efforts were under way to determine if they were all safe.

The fighting broke out Monday after dawn. The crackle of automatic gunfire reverberated through the streets.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards confirmed the guest house was used by U.N. staff but he believed all had fled the building. He didn't know how many international staff were living there.

sigh...

[UPDATE 1]

about 45 minutes ago, there were several mortar rounds that landed in the vicinity of the serena hotel in central kabul which isn't far from where i'm sitting here in the office... we had to go to the safe room for a while but evidently things have quieted down and i'm now back at my desk...

this is the latest news report i've been able to find...

Afghan forces exchanged gunfire with a group of militants holed up inside an international guest house in the centre of Kabul on Wednesday, police said.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said it was possible some of its staff and other foreigners were inside.

Intense automatic weapons fire and an explosion resounded in the capital, and plumes of black smoke rose above buildings.

A Reuters witness said a number of streets had been cordoned off by the police as the gunfire continued, and sirens reverberated across the city.

"There are five or six terrorists inside," said Waheed Sadiqi, a policeman at the scene.

double sigh...

[UPDATE 2]

here's more...

Gunmen with automatic weapons and suicide vests stormed a guest house used by U.N. staff in the heart of the Afghan capital early Wednesday, killing at least seven people including three U.N. staff, officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility, saying it was meant as an assault on the upcoming presidential election.

Heavy gunfire reverberated through the streets shortly after dawn and a large plume of smoke rose over the city following the attack on the hostel in the Shar-e-Naw district. Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahman said seven people were killed, including some attackers.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards confirmed that three U.N. staff were among the dead and one was seriously wounded. He said 20 U.N. staff were living at the guest house, some of them known to be registered there but he was unsure whether all were there at the time of the attack.

Flames could be seen on the roof of the guest house. Hours after the attack began, three explosions could be heard but it was unclear if they were from that location.

triple sigh...

[UPDATE 3]

this is the sight that greeted me this morning on my way to the office...


Smoke can be seen rising in central Kabul Wednesday Oct. 28, 2009.
Gunmen attacked a guest house used by U.N. staff in the Afghan capital
of Kabul early Wednesday, killing at least seven people including three
U.N. staff, officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility,
saying it was meant as an assault on the upcoming presidential election.
(AP Photo/Bob Reid)

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It looks like a runoff...

still no official announcement from either the afghan iec or karzai's office...

from the uk guardian...

Fears of an impasse rose when an Afghan body packed with Karzai's appointees, the Independent Election Commission (IEC), said yesterday that it, not the ECC, had the right to decide whether to hold a run-off.

Kerry, who had been in Kabul over the weekend to press the case with Karzai, flew back to the Afghan capital yesterday for a final round of talks.

At a late meeting last night at the presidential palace, attended by Kerry as well as the British and French ambassadors and the UN special representative, Kai Eide, a deal was struck whereby Karzai will be lauded by other world leaders as a "statesman", even though many observers in Kabul say he has no other choice.

Karzai's recent threats not to accept the results of the official investigation by the ECC, which found that almost one in every three of his votes was fraudulent, has shocked his western allies who believe he has engaged in dangerous brinkmanship.

A senior diplomatic source said Karzai had been talked round by ultimatums from world leaders, including Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, Gordon Brown and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general who made clear that if he did not back down he would "be working outside the constitution and would no longer be a partner of the west".

Only two members of Karzai's cabinet voted to reject the deal.

so far today, kabul has been quiet, altho' we're still on red alert... stay tuned...

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Kabul bomb blast

we were having a meeting in the cool morning air on the terrace when we heard the explosion... the sound had come from roughly the center of town but it wasn't until later looking at news reports that i learned it was near the ministry of the interior and the indian embassy...


Afghan soldiers carry body of a victim after a blast in
Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009. The
powerful explosion rocked the center of Afghanistan's
capital early Thursday near the Interior Ministry and
the Indian Embassy, where dozens of civilians were
killed in an attack last year.

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Sunday photoblogging - Kabul sunset

the dust and pollution don't exactly make for a healthy environment but they sure do offer up some nice sunsets and anyone who follows this blog knows what a sucker i am for sunsets...


Sunset over the Hindu Kush Mountains
5:23 p.m., Sunday, 4 October 2009
Kabul, Afghanistan

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