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SCENE

AFGHAN
ISSUE 88 - November 2011

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Reading Shakespeare in Kandahar

Highland Fling: Karzai in Scotland Behind The Scenes of Kabul At Work The 2001 invasionup close and personal
perspective insight people reviews pics life

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AFGHAN

Afghan Scene November 2011


ISSUE 88 - November 2011

Afghan Scene November 2011 Afghan Scene November 2011

Introduction Contents

Publisher: Afghan Scene Ltd, Wazir Akbar Khan, Kabul, Afghanistan Manager & Editor: Afghan Scene Ltd, Kabul, Afghanistan Design: Kaboora Production Advertising: sales@afghanscene.com Printer: Emirates Printing Press, Dubai Contact: info@afghanscene.com / www.afghanscene.com Afghan Scene welcomes the contribution of articles and / or pictures from its readers. Editorial rights reserved. Cover photo: Julius Cavendish

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7 Introduction 10 Who Is The Body Builder? A Kabul at Work vignette 16 Kabul At Work Behind The Scenes Scene talks to the man behind the multi-media mapping project 22 Highland Fling: Karzai in Scotland Former British Ambassador to Kabul Sir Sherard CowperColes recounts how President Hamid Karzai went to Scotland in an extract from his memoir of high diplomacy in Kabul 40 Cover feature: Reading Shakespeare in Kandahar Af-Pak correspondent Nick Schifrin asks if the cost of Americas revenge following 9/11 has, as in Shakespeares bloodthirsty play Titus Andronicus, been too great 58 Recollections of the 2001 invasion Journalists look back on the high hopes and brutal fighting that accompanied the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan 10 years ago

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64 In the First Person Lapis man David James talks Afghanistan 68 Be Scene Kabul party pictures 72 Afghan Essentials All you need to know about where to go in Kabul

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Introduction

Thank You and Goodbye

he reins at Afghan Scene are changing hands, which seems as good a reason as any to look back on three years in Afghanistan and pay a valediction to a country that almost anyone who spends any time here comes to love deeply. There was Kabul itselfcity of secret gardens, open sewers and edgy urbanization, of warlords temples to greed and garishness, slums rising up sheer mountainsides and the bucolia of the university campus, where it all started so long ago. At night you could listen to tabla and rabab in rose-scented gardens, or you might stumble ceremonial sword fighting on the streets of Qala-e-Fatullah to mark a local boys engagement, or you could hit LAtmothat ubiquity where waiters in starched tunics served anaemic coffees and industrial-strength cocktails to the hardbitten and the hard living.

There was waking on remote outcrops at dawn, or rolling over the green breast of the central highlands without another car for miles, or catching a glimpse of a wolf at 13,000 feet. There was slurping sweet green tea at chaikhanas by the way, or eating partridge in the dead of winter in a snowbound village, or sipping bootleg whisky in Kandahar on hot summer nights while gunfire grumbled across the city. What Ill remember best are the visceral friendships, which took no account of background, circumstances or nationality, the comradeship, the shared excitement. It was better than Id have ever imagined. Staelemashe, Afghanistan. Well meet again.

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Scene Team
Afghan Scene November 2011

Afghan Scene November 2011

Contributors
Afghan Scene Magazine is proud to showcase work from the best photographers in Afghanistan
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles was the British Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2007 until 2009. He served as the UKs Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2009 2010. He is now BAE Systems international business development director, focusing on the Middle East and south-east Asia.

David Gill is a British writer, photographer and videogarpher focusing on a social documentary and overseas development. His current book project Kabul, a City at Work is a selection of over 100 original portraits. web.mac.com/shot2bits/work

Lynne ODonnell covered the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan for The Australian, for whom she was China correspondent from 1998-2002. She was Kabul bureau chief for Agence France-Presse 2009-2010

Nick Schifrin is the ABC News correspondent covering Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Julius Strauss first travelled to the Balkans as a freelance photographer during the Serbo-Croat and Bosnian wars. Later he worked in Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq and Russia. He now runs Grizzly Bear Ranch in a remote British Colombia valley with his wife Kristin.

Almost all of the photographs and cartoons featured in Afghan Scene are available for sale direct from the artists. Most of them are available for commissions, here and elsewhere. If you would like to contribute to Afghan Scene, or if you cant get hold of a contributor, please contact editor@afghanscene.com.
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Kabul at work
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Who is the body builder?


Name: Ahmad Shuja Momuzai Age: 30 Length of service: 10 years Income: none Price: $100 for gym membership Employees: Personal trainer Gyms in Kabul: 500 Location: Iron Man Gym

Mr. Afghanistan colours up Photo: David Gill

We want to show the world that this is Afghanistan. A strong Afghanistan, a peaceful Afghanistan
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Again there is no prize but people take it very seriously. Last year, Mr Afghanistan spent I started body building in 2006. It is a more than $10,000 on his body with protein peaceful sport, you know, no fighting. My supplements and training over a year. It is an father was also a body builder but had to expensive sport and dangerous too. He died stop because of the wars. Anyway, he told me and his brother said he was poisoned. about it and I began training. For the last two years I come second in Mr Kabul. He was training for Mr South Asia and people were jealous. Sabotage is common amongst I work out 3 times a day. 30 minutes in the body builders. I remember when I was a morning and evening and 15-20 minutes kid during the communist times there were at midday. If I werent dieting I would be 52 body builders who were being flown all pushing 140kg on my arms and 500kg on my over the world. Someone killed the pilot on thighs. I train in the Iron Man Gym but there the plane and everyone was killed. It could are over 500 gyms in Kabul. have been Iranians or Indians who were responsible. Who knows? I used to be so skinny, weighing just 60 kg. Now I am 80. I am dieting at the moment I am not scared though as this is a peaceful as you have to strip down all the fat before sport. Thats what keeps me going. We want building up muscle again otherwise your to show the world that this is Afghanistan. muscles dont look good when you pose. A strong Afghanistan, a peaceful Afghanistan. And people are inspired by us. Last year at The trouble is that there are no professional the Mr Kabul competition a policeman asked gyms, they are good but there is no me where I work out. The next day he joined investment from the Olympic Committee or the gym and stopped smoking cigarettes and the government to make them quality gyms. hashish. You pay for the privilege. Last year 16 people won medals in the South Asian games but I When I was younger I used to run and do kick think they had to pay for their own tickets to boxing. In one fight I broke my friends nose compete. And there are no physiotherapists and stopped after that. If you hit your friend to help you if you injure yourself. well it is not good to fight. Anyone can try to compete in a competition, so long as you have a good body. There is no prize just a trophy, a medal and a certificate. If you win Mr Kabul you are We moved to Pakistan when I was 17 after I was arrested and detained in Pul e Charki prison for being Panshiri. It was tough and I worked in a garment factory to help pay for

never thought, when I was younger, that I would be competing for the title in Afghanistan.

eligible to compete in Mr Afghanistan.

When we saw the attacks in the twin buildings and realised we could go back to Afghanistan we were happy.
The Body Photo: David Gill

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my younger brothers education. It paid off worsened though. Thats politics for you. though as two of my brothers are working as interpreters for the military as their English is Life is good now however. It is more like so good. it used to be when I was a child. I love my family, my wife, my son, my sister and We used to watch beatings and murders on brothers. I love my job as a house manager TV from Pakistan. When we saw the attacks and I love training. in the twin buildings and realised we could go back to Afghanistan we were happy but But what makes me sad is when I hear about when we arrived it was hard. The city had suicide attacks. Yesterday there was a suicide regressed. During the communist regime, attack in Kunduz and 30 people were killed. Kabul was really clean and there were trees That is 30 families who will be grieving now. and beautiful buildings, none of these horrible And you know how big Afghan families are. poppy palaces. When I was a kid in those It makes me so so sad to think about their times I loved playing with my friends in the loss. A lot of people my age, all they have gardens at school. The city was a good place. ever known is conflict and their minds have It was peaceful during the Taliban but there been affected. They get angry quickly, they was no work and no freedom for women. argue you can see it in the roads when they drive, people shout at each other all the When we returned there was no gas, no time and it makes me sad. That is why I like electricity. It was almost like a ghost town. bodybuilding; you can have huge strength Day by day it got better. Security has and maintain peace.

Ahmad Shuja Momuzai at work Photo: David Gill

Kabul: A City At Work is a multi-media project, led by a joint international and Afghan crew collecting interviews, photographic portraits and video shorts of the people of Kabul in their working environments. You can find out more at www.kabulatwork.tv

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Behind The Scenes


Scene talks to British photographer and Kabul At Work supremo David Gill about his mammoth multi-media project to document presentday Kabul through the prism of the working lives of hundreds of Kabulis
Scene: Where did this whole project start? What was the inspiration? When did you think this is what Id like to do, and how had you got to that point? try to find publishers. Everyone thought it was a great idea. But no one would really fund it. I just started doing it. I thought, Build it and they will come. So I started working on it for free in my spare time, David Gill: It kind of started when there was collecting characters, boring everybody that attack at the Indian Embassy. Id been silly with the concept, but never giving up. trying to convince everybody that I lived And then I got a tiny bit of funding and in this amazing city and then that Indian that meant I couldnt give up. I was legally Embassy bomb went off and Kabul was all obliged to finish the thing. And then we over the headlines and on TV, and it made made this documentary for al-Jazeera with me realise that Kabul only gets attention [Director] Oliver [Englehart] and that went when something dramatic happens. So I down really well, and that gave me lots of pitched this story to Esquire Magazine, and encouragement. So we took it to the US they ran the feature, Kabul At Work, little State Department, had a screening of it at vignettes of eight different people. When the Duck and Cover, and they thought it was they were [first] trying to put together a awesome and said, Wed love to fund it. list, I came up with 50 suggestions. So then the editor said, You should do a book. So Scene: How did you persuade Kabulis to let that was the genesis of it, the idea. you document their lives? Scene: What happened next? Its one thing to have an idea, another to turn it into something. David Gill: Well then I started working onI dont know how interesting it isyou David Gill: On one level its really straightforward, the access in Afghanistan is you can just rock up. People dont have huge amounts of gatekeepers like they do in [the U.K]. If youre talking about influential people, you just ring them up and they

Kabul At Work:

David Gill on patrol in Helmand Photo: David Gill

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say, Come round. There are different levels of social stratayouve got your business magnates and your ordinary people. Theres an American film project, theyd throw a dart at a map, fly there, open a yellow pages, put their finger on a page, call them up and say, Can we come over and do a story on you? To prove the point that everyones got a story. And by virtue of the 30 years of conflict, the Taliban era, everyones got a story [here]. Theyve been refugees, caught up in a civil war. Everyones got some kind of incredible back-story. From Abdullah Abdullah to the guy selling phone cards in Medina Bazaar, I suppose thats the background. [The project]s not really about that. Its about their lives and how they got on with it, whether they left and came back, or whether they had to stay because they were poor. Its about how they manage to function and get on with their everyday lives. Scene: What were the difficulties you faced once you began pulling together all the different strands and vignettes of Kabul life? David Gill: One of the biggest obstacles is running a business. Registering with AISA. The idea of, Lets set up a business, off we goits a huge logistical nightmare just trying to register with all the right government ministries. The main problems are: interviewing people who dont talk about themselves in the same way Westerners do. The entire project was inspired by a Studds Terkel book titled Working and he wandered round America saying, Oh youre an air hostess, youre a steel worker, youre a

prostitute, tell me about it,and they would. In Afghanistan, youll ask someone and youll start hearing how their tribe moved from Ghazni to Kabul in the 14th century, and if you dont speak the language and arent part of the culture its really difficult to construct a personal narrative for each of them on video. So the logistics, the language, and then, obviously, convincing people to tell you storiessometimes you interview them and they tell you one story and you go back and they tell you something completely different, and you think, What did you tell me yesterday, thats complete bullsh*t. Interviewing women is still one of the most difficult challenges. We have a good selection of womena general, a mechanic, a driving instructor, an actress. Its just difficult, convincing women that this is a good idea. But most of the women we have found are really ballsy, so maybe thats not even a difficulty. If you think of them, theyre all bonkers. They dont really fear. No one does a study but I think the large majority of the population must have some kind of mental trauma. Scene: And what and when were the moments that filled you with hope and excitement and satisfaction and kept you going? David Gill: I feel like Im still at the start of it. As time marches on and Im in the middle of the project and the websites launched I feel as though Im at the start. Ive overreached myself. Trying to encapsulate a city of five million people, I want to over-deliver on this project because I believe in it so much.

People are constantly suggesting who you should [profile] and the list gets bigger and bigger. Id like the project to be where it just continues and can be part of some socioanthropological resource at universities, and people can study who were the people around this period. Giving Afghans a voice is something I definitely want to do. And one of the things were trying to do is work out what everyones saying, and seeing if theres a common thread or an overarching theme. Joke: if theres one common theme, its that life under the Taliban was better. Life under the Taliban: discuss. The sweet-maker said he preferred life under the Taliban because there were no imported snickers bars.

Scene: Have you noticed any change in yourself since embarking on the Kabul at Work project?

David Gill: Weirdly enough, I think Ive got more patient. I used to get really stressed, Id think this is ridiculous, come on. And then you get used to it. Getting one thing done a week is a success. Getting money out of the cash machine is a good day. Its kind of like, when something goes well, its a lot more valuable. Back home people complain about their iPhones being too slow, or something. White people with white peoples problems. When I go home and think, Jesus! You complain about different things, dont you? I think Ive got a lot more perspective and patience, I Scene: Its human nature to complain. dont know if patience is the right word. Its more a Zen acceptanceits something about David Gill: I think that has to be taken with soft temper. The Afghans have an expression the fact that there is no security and thats about soft temper. And my soft temper is a lot what people appreciate. Would you want them better than it used to be. back tomorrow is the question, and of course they dont. But even the skateboard teacher Scene: What happens next? used to love it when there was a big push. He said he used to go on the roof at night, and David Gill: I dont know if well ever finish watch the rockets. It was like a party he said. this. Its going to be late. There will be no big launch party, Id like it to just continue. Scene: Any choice anecdotes you can share? Training people up to continue the work. The idea is that this will be a constantly evolving David Gill: We just finished the gambler. mapping project. I want it to be the go-to Hes great, he just gambles on birds, hes got place for Kabul that links to other interesting like 40 grandchildren, and borrows money projects in Kabul. A virtual Kabul. Theres so off his kids, and hes just the worlds worst much potential. You know, new journalists are gambler. And when he does win, he cant bring always coming to Kabul and they dont have the money back into the house because its any ideas of their own. It could be a journalist un-Islamic. He wants to go on Hajj but cant resource centre. If you need a good idea, come because he spends all his money on gambling. and steal it from Kabul at Work!

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Adding colour to life


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Highland Fling: Karzai in Scotland


In an extract from his memoir of high diplomacy in Kabul, former British ambassador and Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles tells the inside story of Hamid Karzais highland fling

ne of President Karzais more attractive traits was his love of walking. Every evening, he would take a lengthy constitutional round and round the grounds of the Palace in Kabul where he was effectively a prisoner. On learning of both these facts, the Prince of Wales generously invited Karzai to go walking with him in Scotland, staying at the Princes house on the Balmoral estate, Birkhall, which had belonged to Prince Charless beloved grandmother.

describes as Her Majestys Government in the United Kingdom making all arrangements (and paying all reasonable bills), once the Guest and party have reached the shores of the UK. President Karzai, and his ofcials, gratefully accepted the invitation on the terms we explained to them.

Karzai at Magdalen College Oxford Photo: Sherard Cowper-Coles

But the course of true love between Britain and Afghanistan never ran entirely smooth. Only a couple of weeks before the President was due to land in London we in Kabul Somehow, over the summer of 2007, we realised that we had a major problem. In the settled on a date for President Karzais visit absence of any indication to the contrary to Scotland in late November. The Prince and from Karzais protocol team, we had assumed President had already met several times, in that the President and his party would make London and elsewhere, but this would be the their way to Britain in an aircraft of their rst time Karzai had stayed in a British royal own. But, in going over arrangements with the residence or spent such an extended period Afghans, it dawned on the British Embassy with a member of the royal family, or indeed ofcial charged with organising the visit from any senior Briton. Prince Charles kindly asked the Kabul end that our Afghan guests were Rory Stewart (of whose Turquoise Mountain assuming that the British Government would Foundation the Prince and President were somehow get them to the UK. After all, that joint patrons) and me to stay at Birkhall too. was what happened when President Karzai visited Washington or New York: the United The Government in London saw this as a States Air Force would take him all the way chance to develop the better relationship there and all the way back. But it turned between Britain and President Karzai which I out that there was no Afghan Presidential had been tasked to build. In the latter part of aircraft, and that the ancient Boeing 727 2006 and early 2007, there had been plenty of the Presidential Palace usually chartered or indications of worryingly anti-British views on borrowed from the Afghan airline Ariana was his part. We wanted to put this behind us, and not allowed to land in Western Europe, for to introduce him to the new Prime Minister, safety reasons. Frantic further exchanges with Gordon Brown, who had taken over from Tony the Palace revealed not only that there was Blair at the end of June. We therefore turned no aircraft available, still less booked, but also the trip into what is known as a Guest of that there was no Afghan money available to Government visit: just short of a state visit, charter one, or even to pay for tickets on a with what the printed programme pompously regular airline.

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to what the Afghans would see as a minor logistical question. That also ruled out our appealing to the Americans for help: doing so would only complete HMGs humiliation in Afghan (and American) eyes. Somehow, at short notice, the British Government had to nd the money for a charter ight, or dream up some good reason for postponing the visit. Perhaps the MOD could contribute to the cost: after all, they had more invested in Afghanistan, in both absolute and proportionate terms, than any other British Government player. DFID had far more money allocated to Afghanistan than it could sensibly spend. Could we not ask the Treasury for money from the Reserve, given the importance of a successful visit for wider British interests? If Ministers were enlisted, surely the Treasury would cave in.
Karzai in Scotland Photo: Sherard Cowper-Coles

Nor was there any budget in London for substantial unforeseen expenses of this kind. Nimble footwork by the Foreign Ofces Afghan team found a Gulfstream jet available for charter, and established the (enormous) cost, including what looked like a quite exorbitant insurance premium for taking such an aircraft into and out of Kabul. But that was only the beginning of the battle. Just halfway through the nancial year, nobody in London had available the tens of thousands of pounds needed to pay for a charter of this kind. Quite properly, the FCO Director responsible for Afghanistan insisted that we look at all other possibilities: RAF to Bahrain, or Muscat,

followed by scheduled rst-class ight on to London. Options were explored, alternatives costed: using the RAF and scheduled ights would be much, much cheaper. We tested the water with the Afghans: it was clear that President Karzai would be reluctant to travel by scheduled ight. And then the argument that always trumps everything was adduced: security. How could the President be protected in the cabin of a commercial airliner, when his bodyguards needed to carry guns? I chipped in, arguing that the goodwill generated by the visit would be undone if HMG adopted a cheese-paring approach

The battle went on for the best part of a fortnight. There was the usual Whitehall shroud-waving: no one wanted to be the rst to concede. No one doubted that the money would be found, but it was not clear from where, or whether it would be subject to conditions. Eventually, the teams in London and Kabul found some unspent Foreign Ofce funds that could exceptionally and without creating a precedent, of course be used to pay for the charter.

in Germany but chartered by the British Government. It had been decided that I would travel with the party, to use the nine hours of the journey to build my relationship with President Karzai and his Ministers. Apart from personal aides, the other members of the party were the Foreign Minister, Dr Spanta, and the National Security Adviser, Dr Rassoul. We spent most of the ight looking out of the window, or gossiping about Afghan politics, with the President leading the discussion. The one point at which President Karzai became especially animated was when he spotted that I was reading Sir Olaf Caroes classic work The Pathans. Caroe had been the last British Governor of the North West Frontier Province before Partition, and had been asked by the new Government of Pakistan to stay on in that role. His mighty work on the tribes west of the Indus said, in suitably magisterial tones, all there was to be said about the Pashtuns. President Karzai sang the books praises. He saw himself as a kind of Pashtun paramount chief. He believed that Britons in general, and Caroe in particular, understood his people better than any other foreigners.

Our reception at Heathrows Royal Terminal made me proud: it was a reminder of just how good the Foreign Ofces Inward Visits machine still is. At the foot of the steps, the President was greeted by representatives With Karzai blissfully unaware, I hoped, of of the Queen and the Government. He was what a close-run thing the whole exercise had whisked into the main building, offered tea been, the President and his party duly took and biscuits by a black-coated butler, while off from Kabul early on Sunday 21 November his party were distributed among the vehicles 2007 in a large and luxurious Gulfstream in the motorcade by efcient FO ladies with executive jet, registered, embarrassingly, clipboards. The President would ride in an

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Karzai about to board the Royal Flight for Scotland Photo: Sherard Cowper-Coles

enormous armoured BMW provided and driven by the Metropolitan Police. Drs Spanta and Rassoul had a limousine of their own. The rest of us were placed in couple of capacious people carriers, to reduce the length of the motorcade. Then it was off into London, accompanied by the motorcycle outriders of the Metropolitan Polices Special Escort Group. The SEG is one of the unsung glories of ofcial Britain. They move the Queen, VIP visitors and senior Ministers (if they so choose and have a real operational need) through trafc as a knife cuts through soft butter: quiet, efcient, undemonstrative, they use whistles, transponders to turn trafc lights the right colour and an extraordinary knowledge of Londons byways to make British VIP motorcades a model to behold. In my two and a half years as principal private secretary to Robin Cook when he was foreign secretary, I experienced many motorcades around the world: the California Highway Patrol closing, quite outrageously, an entire freeway for the British Foreign Secretary, French motorcycle police banging hysterically on the roofs of cars to get them out of the way, Italian Carabinieri, sirens blaring, skidding out of control, and, most memorably, a sweetly inexperienced New Zealand motorcycle escort getting us lost in the suburbs of Auckland. Nothing beats the understated efciency of the Mets SEG, as they race past in relays, holding trafc at side-roads and junctions, threading a way for the motorcade around trafc islands and obstacles of every kind, negotiating backstreets, bus lanes and routes through the Royal Parks. No noise, no fuss. Pure ballet.

The next morning, President Karzai ew on ahead to Aberdeen, on an RAF aircraft, in order to have time alone walking with the Prince of Wales. I followed on British Airways. From Dyce airport, a dark-green Land Rover from the Balmoral estate whisked me up the Dee valley. The views were breathtakingly beautiful, with the leaves turning every shade of dusky gold, against the darker blues and greens and greys of the moors behind and beyond. Birkhall could not have felt more comfortable or natural: a proper country house, without ostentation or extravagance, and full of family things, albeit from a rather special family. The staff were quietly courteous, showing me to my room, suggesting when I might like to join His Royal Highness and the President for tea. Hotfoot from Kabul, Rory Stewart arrived soon after me, equipped for his Highland stay with kilt and trews and tartan and tweeds. We chatted with Karzais Private Secretary, who was still in disbelief about where he was and what his boss was doing. After a while, the Prince and the President appeared, back from their walk. Hamid Karzai was beaming from ear to ear. Despite the difculties of negotiating the weather in a shalwar kameez and black town shoes, he had had the time of his life. After tea, Rory gave him a gift from the Turquoise Mountain Foundation: a sura from the Koran inscribed in the most elaborate Arabic calligraphy. Then it was a bath, a quiet pre-supper chat with the Prince of Wales (who was longing to be allowed to visit Afghanistan) and the most delicious and healthy dinner quatre,

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surrounded by nine grandfather clocks collected by the Queen Mother.

the Bodleian Library. The Hertford porter soon put me in my place: clearly thinking that I was a practical joker, and that the On the Tuesday morning the Royal Air Force strangely dressed gentleman beside me ew President Karzai and me back to London. was an impostor, he said rmly that the The Special Escort Group whisked us in from Principal was in a meeting and could not be Northolt and on to Lancaster House for a disturbed, even for President Karzai. full-dress luncheon in the Presidents honour, In the Unions great debating hall, President given by Her Majestys Government. Karzai delivered a tour de force, in front of a full house of students of every size, shape Wednesday was another day out, this time in and background. It was in settings like this Oxford: the rst stop was Magdalen College, that one saw his skill as a speaker who could whose beautiful tower stands guard over the inspire and communicate uently in three approaches to Oxford and the bridge over the languages. He addressed questions, from Cherwell of the same name as the college. smooth Indians, an angry American and President Karzai was greeted there by the worried Brits, with charm and conviction. President of Magdalen and by the President We were on something of a high as we left the of the Oxford Union (an undergraduate): a home of lost causes and forgotten dreams, for summit of three Presidents. As we toured the the Presidents audience of HM the Queen at President of Magdalens magnicent lodgings, Buckingham Palace. an impressed Afghan President commented ruefully that perhaps the President of The main event, on the last day of the visit, Magdalen was better housed, and the was talks with the Prime Minister over President of the Union more powerful, breakfast at Number 10, followed by a press than the President of Afghanistan. conference. As I had hoped and expected, the President and the PM connected immediately. Afterwards, we abandoned the motorcade Hamid Karzai responded to Gordon Browns and walked from Magdalen to President seriousness, his mastery of detail and his Karzais next engagement, a speech at willingness to listen. On a personal level, they the Oxford Union. This, I knew, was what had young sons in common, and exchanged Hamid Karzai loved: striding out cheerfully, gifts. Sarah Brown appeared with young John being greeted by startled American Brown, then aged four: Karzai was immediately tourists and puzzled shoppers just off the charmed. Sensibly, the Prime Minister spent bus from Blackbird Leys, a real politician most of the time tte--tte with his guest. connecting with real people. On the spur The press conference was a cakewalk. of the moment, I thought I would try to introduce the President to the Principal As I made my own way back to Kabul, via of my old college, Hertford, just opposite Dubai, I reected that the visit had been

a success. The AfghanBritish relationship was set on a new course. It felt good to be ambassador to Afghanistan at such time, making a difference. With the Prime Minister due to pay his rst visit to Kabul in December, what could possibly go wrong?

Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the Wests Afghanistan Campaign by Sir Sherard Cowper Coles and published by HarperPress, An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, is available now. This extract is reprinted with the kind permission of the publisher.

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Diplomatic hardcorps | Sascha, Merja, Rudolpho, Gunnar and Rima at the British Embassy Ball

Diplomatic hardcorps | Sascha, Merja, Rudolpho, Gunnar and Rima at the British Embassy Ball

Northen Exposure | Kabuls Leslie on a visit to the Alaskan wilderness

Three people much taller than scenes snapper Jam Melissa Road runner | Superfixer Noor on the road to | Matt, and Rima at Nicks farewell

Down and Dirty | Aschkan, Rima and Tara get the lowdown on Kabul nightlife

All Hail The Giant Acorn | Clem, Em and Leslie get dressed up

Snow-it-all | Lally at a Kabul soiree

The Hardcore British Press Pack | P*ssing off ISAF since 2008

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Reading Shakespeare in Kandahar


The United States has won some measure of revenge in the 10 years since 9/11. But as in Shakespeares bloodthirsty play Titus Andronicus, has the cost been too great? By Nick Schifrin

Tigers must pray Photo: Julius Cavendish

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hank you for coming, Prof. David Kastan told the half-full auditorium. You did not have to be here this morning. I did. It means the world to me that you came. I looked around at my fellow classmates; we were all tired and dazed. The night before, the acrid, unforgettable smell of melted steel, atomized concrete, and human remains had drifted seven miles north, from southern Manhattan up to Columbia Universitys campus. It was Sept. 13, 2001, and I was 21 years old. Two days earlier, I had walked into Kastans Shakespeare class before the attacks began and walked out after the second tower had already fallen. Columbia canceled classes for two days. I spent my time at the daily student newspaper, the Spectator, where I was managing editor. On Thursday morning, the first class back was Shakespeare. I will not make a political statement today, Kastan continued. But I will say this: This play we will discuss today is about revenge -- and what demanding revenge can do to a person. I only hope that the people who will be making decisions on how to respond to Tuesdays attacks read Titus Andronicus. When he finished, the class gave him a standing ovation. Nine-and-a-half years later, I found myself standing outside a large house in Pakistan. It was 1:00 p.m. on May 2, 2011, and I was a correspondent for ABC News. Twelve hours earlier, the United States had finally taken its revenge. In the middle of the night, Navy

SEALs shot the man who ordered the 9/11 attacks in the head and chest. After loading his body onto a helicopter, they flew it to Afghanistan and then to a ship at sea, where they dumped the prepared body in the ocean. I was the first American reporter to arrive at Osama bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad. My team and I aired the first video from inside the compound and filed 11 stories in five frantic days. It was only after I had returned to my home in Islamabad, about a 90-minute drive away, that Titus Andronicus and Kastans warning came to mind. I was sitting with a group of American and British friends -- journalists, NGO workers, and diplomats -- having that familiar melancholic conversation about 9/11: Where were you? And, because we now lived where 9/11s plotters had fled: Did you imagine youd be here, 10 years later? No, I said. I hadnt imagined, sitting in my Shakespeare class a decade ago, that I would end up in Pakistan reporting the death of Osama bin Laden. But perhaps Shakespeare might have imagined the United States would be here, 10 years later. Titus Andronicus is a play about revenge. It is about how a general fighting for an empire -- Rome -- finally defeats the barbarous Goths and returns to his capital with prisoners, the vanquished queen and her sons. Despite the queens pleas, Titus kills her oldest son to avenge his own sons deaths, beginning cycles of brutal violence that end in the death of nearly every major character.

I tell my sorrows to the stones Photo: Julius Cavendish

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At its core, Titus Andronicus is a play about how good people can become unhinged and indeed overwhelmed by the need to avenge. It is about how powerful people surrender themselves to cycles of violence, how tribal and religious customs unequivocally demand retaliation, and how two tribes or two religions speaking past rather than with each other can lead to chaos.

this part of town -- far from the old British-built cantonment of green lawns and red mansions -- the streets were thin and gray. Autorickshaws competed with horse-drawn carts.

Meena Bazaar was rare in that it catered to families -- one of the few places in Peshawar where you saw women in large numbers. But on this day, there were no girls choosing colorful bangles, no women buying dresses. Most of the Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, small, fragile shops were now piles of debris, blood and revenge are hammering in my destroyed two weeks before by a massive car head, one of Tituss enemies says before the bomb that had gutted this crowded corner of bloodletting begins. the city. The explosion was one of the most violent acts of terrorism in Pakistans history. Kastan was right to worry. The United States The official death count was more than 110, but has made many of the same mistakes that Titus residents said at least 60 additional bodies were Andronicus and his fellow tragedians made: never found, obliterated in the blast. prioritizing revenge and killing the enemy over helping the local populations; choosing allies The explosion coincided with a visit to Islamabad who help produce short-term gratification by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Her (security gains) but long-term trouble; refusing timing could not have been worse. The bomb to truly engage with a population that seemed in the Meena Bazaar exploded just before she so different from themselves. began to speak. The aggressive, ubiquitous Pakistani TV channels showed her news Had the Americans learned from Shakespeares conference in split screen: Clinton on one side, epic of vengeance, might Afghanistan and the aftermath of the explosion on the other. Pakistan, where I have lived for the last three years, been less violent and more welcoming of The Pakistani Taliban were in the middle of one the United States today? of the most violent campaigns of retribution the country had ever seen. They were blowing In early November 2009, I walked through up police and soldiers, but also bombing what had been the colorful and crowded mosques and markets full of civilians. And aisles of Meena Bazaar in Peshawar, Pakistan. yet the depravity of a Peshawar bomb clearly Every time I visited, the city always felt designed to kill as many innocents as possible ancient, mostly unchanged from how it has somehow did not stoke the citys anger at been described for decades: filled with dust, militants. (For their part, the Taliban denied smelling of diesel fumes and baked brick. In involvement in the attack.)

Sweet mercy is nobilitys true badge Photo: Julius Cavendish

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Most people in Peshawar blamed the United States -- not the Taliban. Clintons speech about developing a partnership between the people of the United States and Pakistan fell on deaf ears. Residents either directly accused the United States of planting the bomb or accused it of inspiring the violence by pushing Pakistan to fight Americas war along the Afghan border. Shams ul-Ameen, a property dealer, told me he was walking into the bazaar as the bomb went off. He was blown off his feet but survived, and he saw a scene like doomsday. A few days after the explosion, he had found the body of a 4-year-old girl on a nearby roof. Like everyone I spoke with that day, Ameen blamed a foreign hand for the violence -- including the United States, India, Afghanistan. Anyone but the Taliban. These are foreign forces, Ameen said. Hindus and white men together want to destroy Pakistan. This is an American trick. On the surface, they pretend to be friends, but they strike Muslims in the back. Siraj ul-Munir, whose shop was destroyed in the Meena Bazaar explosion, told me he was worried Pakistan had no future. We are wondering what will become of our future generations who today ask us, Father, why do these bomb blasts take place? Who are these bombers? We cant answer them, he said. We are innocent people. Tell us what we did to deserve this. Its since the arrival of the Americans that theres been a spike in all this violence.

For years, U.S. officials have found statements like that unfair. They have been frustrated by the anger that Pakistanis and the Pakistani media often exhibit toward the United States -- despite billions of U.S. dollars flowing into the country. In 2010, one U.S. diplomat told me, with some derision, that Pakistani perceptions of the United States were a collection of conspiracy theories. But the people of Peshawar were reacting to a basic fact: Their lives have gotten worse since the United States invaded Afghanistan. A decade ago, there were no suicide attacks on markets in Peshawar. (There was only one suicide attack in Pakistan before 9/11. Since then, there have been some 300.) A decade ago, the phrase Pakistani Taliban did not exist. The people of Peshawar were responding to the world around them and what they saw the United States doing. They saw CIA drone attacks in the nearby tribal areas. They saw U.S. soldiers fighting and killing in Afghanistan. They saw the United States pouring money into developing Pakistan, but much of it going to high-priced Western consultants who did not engage with the population and demanded big, expensive programs that helped the elite, not the masses. And the people of Peshawar saw the United States unconditionally pour even more money into a Pakistani military that supported Afghan militants labeled good Taliban, even though blowback into Pakistan was evident. A U.S. official once admitted to me that, for years, U.S. policy in Pakistan came from Langley rather than Foggy Bottom, implying

that the CIA (and the Pentagon) ran the show and that drones and counterterrorism tactics were more important than the diplomats and development experts. In Titus Andronicus, Titus gets halfway through the play before he realizes that not only do his historic enemies -- the Goths -seek revenge; his fellow Romans may as well. Rome is but a wilderness of tigers, Titus says. Tigers must prey. Elsewhere in Pakistan, where the United States sought not to avenge but to assist, the population doesnt blame its ills on Americans. A few months before the Peshawar attack, I visited the Government Centennial Model High School in Dadar, a school destroyed by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. One student was killed and more than a dozen injured when the buildings crumbled on top of them. By 2009, the school was filled with shiny new classrooms, one of which displays a large plaque from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The principal, Mohammad Irfan, said he was proud to have received U.S. help. We were destroyed. We were ruined at that time, he told me. Now, we feel very, very happy with America. We now feel, Long live America, long live USA, long live Pakistan!

businessman, and he was even more positive: The people who oppose America, they should see how theyve helped me. And they will change their minds. But these vignettes are sadly rare. In most areas of Pakistan -- where people perceive their lives as less secure and less developed since 9/11 -- there is still a strong antiAmerican narrative, from the streets of slums to elite drawing rooms. That feeling extends even to Islamabad, the capital. In September 2008, I arrived at the swank Marriott hotel on a Ramadan evening. Rubble was piled 10 feet high, electric wires sparked against pools of water and gas, and mangled iron gates poked out of the mud. I saw at least eight bodies. As one police officer walked outside, he threw up into his own hand, sick with the stench of death. Inside the lobby, the reception desk had been crushed, a piano was thrown against a wall, and a fish flopped against the marble, its glass aquarium lying shattered nearby. Twenty minutes earlier, militants had exploded 2,200 pounds of military-grade explosive at the outside gate.

Even then, some of my fellow Islamabad residents -- who opposed the Taliban and their suicide attacks -- blamed America. Its not Down the road, Badr ul-Islam, an old man a good thing what they are doing, but theyre with a long white beard, had received $5,000 doing it out of compulsion, said one Islamabad from the United States to buy refrigerators resident of the Taliban, asking me not to for his struggling dairy business. He was not a print his name. If my home was bombed, he government official or bureaucrat, like so many continued, and my parents and brothers were recipients of U.S. aid. He was just a private killed, wouldnt I become a suicide bomber?

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Revenge is ingrained in this culture. In Pashto -- the language spoken by 40 million people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is a saying: Even if I wait 100 years to take revenge, Ive made haste. For Pakistanis, the war launched to avenge the 9/11 attacks had created a vicious cycle of revenge.

the sound and smell of diesel generators. Men with beards and turbans filled the markets; women, when they appeared in public, were covered by burqas.

when I asked him why he thought he had been snubbed. When I took my helmet off, a kid jumped away from me... We havent spent enough time engaging with the people.

Thurmans orders were to get through the city quickly, but on the way out of town, his convoy of 30,000-pound, mine-resistant, ambushprotected vehicles skidded to a stop. On the other side of two lanes of traffic, an empty On a sunny morning in October 2009, Capt. fuel truck and a passenger van had overturned Michael Thurman, an eloquent military police after a crash. A group of people surrounded commander out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, drove two drivers who were badly injured. me through the streets of Kandahar. Thurman wanted to help, so we hopped out of Thurman was an example of a gifted, postthe vehicle and walked over to the crash site. 9/11 breed of officer Ive come across in Afghanistan: men and women in their late For 30 minutes, Thurmans medic examined 20s or early 30s who have come of age inside the large, bleeding gash on the truck drivers a military as it fought two wars. Smart and head and the dozens of cuts on the body of the brave, it seemed like Thurman had read every vans driver. Thurman handed out water, teased book about insurgency and Afghanistan. He children who nipped at his heels, and engaged was respected by his men. with local elders who had congregated to watch. At one point he took off his sunglasses Id come to southern Afghanistan ahead of an and helmet -- something U.S. soldiers werent expected surge of U.S. troops. Forty percent of supposed to do -- so he could better relate to the population of southern Afghanistan lives in the crowd. Most just stared at him in silence. and around Kandahar city, and Id spent about They did the same with me. a week with Canadian troops, the only soldiers who were living inside the city at the time. After the wounds were dressed and the kids had scattered, Thurman and his medic packed If Peshawar was mostly the same after the last their gear and began to walk off. As they did, few decades, it felt like it had been centuries not one person shook Thurmans hand. Not since Kandahar had changed. Some of the dirt- one person said thank you. In Afghanistan, packed roads had been replaced by asphalt, guests are royalty; not shaking hands was the but most shops were still made of mud, as equivalent of a slap in the face. were the large boundary walls that protect every house. The city rose early and filled with They still dont like us, Thurman responded

the insurgency with his opium connections. Kandaharis from other tribes associate him with the pre-Taliban warlords who ruled different parts of the province in the early 1990s by controlling segments of road with For years, soldiers were suspicious of everyone the help of murder and rape. Raziqs uncle who lived in this Taliban stronghold, and worked for a particularly cruel commander they often failed to take the time to connect back then; he was later hanged by the Taliban with the people. And crucially, many of those from the turret of a tank. whom U.S. soldiers did spend their time with and helped install into government positions Despite that history, the United States allied were the very people whom Kandaharis with Raziq because he provided immediate trusted least: ruthless warlords who had been security gains. He controlled the vital border thrown out by the Taliban. (One Kandahari crossing, and he had done this job effectively: once joked to me that the United States had As the rest of Kandahar became increasingly brought demoorcracy into his city, purposely violent, the border town of Spin Boldak was an mispronouncing the English word by inserting island of relative calm in late 2009. a Pashto word in the middle that means, roughly, mother-f***ing.) Which is why, after we left his office, the U.S. military officials I was with told me that One of those warlords is Abdul Raziq, a local Raziq was an example of what was going police commander who at that time controlled right in Afghanistan: a strong commander Spin Boldak, the crossing between Kandahar bringing peace to his little area. America and Pakistans Baluchistan province. I met him needed Raziq because he could produce quick on Christmas Eve 2009. results. But by prioritizing short-term security gains, the United States is risking Kandahars You are welcome anytime! he greeted us with long-term stability. The Taliban originally a slightly squeaky and much younger voice than gained their popular appeal by opposing the I had expected. Despite his position of seniority, ruthlessness of leaders like Raziqs uncle. By he was only 30 years old. The embassy has in helping install Raziq, the United States given us a lot of money! Come, sit! became associated with such discredited sources of power. Raziqs boyishness hid a ruthless history. Western officials -- speaking only on Like the characters of Titus Andronicus, the background -- have, for years, accused him United States was seduced by those who of helping run drug rings, private militias, could provide immediate satisfaction: ease smuggling rackets, and his own prisons in the gnawing vulture of thy mind, by working Kandahar. They accuse him of helping to fuel wreakful vengeance on thy foes.

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Recently, the U.S. military stopped handing over detainees to Raziq until it can be confident he is not secretly torturing them, as his critics allege. But his power has only grown since I met him at the tail end of 2009: U.S. forces have increasingly teamed up with his men throughout Kandahar province, and U.S. commanders have praised him as a go-to leader. Today, he has moved up from his position on the border. He is the now the police chief of Kandahar city. In December 2010, I sat in a small guesthouse in Kunduz, Afghanistan, near the border with Tajikistan. The owner was an affable GermanAfghan who had made a lot of money working with the cash-rich coalition and ran small hostels on the side. On this night, we sat around a wooden table below a single light, powered by a generator, that illuminated a meal of fried fish, the local specialty. I sat with my ABC News colleagues and the owners guest, a thin, 30-something contractor who worked at the local NATO base staffed with German troops. The guesthouse was unmarked, and men with automatic weapons guarded the front gate. Security in the city was not good. The guest was a serious, well-read Afghan from Kunduz who lamented the state of the once-peaceful north. He believed the United States had squandered the support Afghans initially provided. Eight years before, when the war began, most in the country had welcomed the young Americans who threw out the Taliban. Afghans heard U.S. promises and dreamed into the future, expecting Americansponsored beneficence and development.

In early 2002, President George W. Bush promised to rebuild Afghanistan in the tradition of the Marshall Plan. Slowly, some things improved: The number of Afghan children in school is, today, seven times what it was on 9/11; almost eight times more Afghans have access to health care, compared with 2001; and womens gains have been especially inspiring. As Habiba Sarabi, the only female governor in Afghanistan, once told me while we overlooked gaping holes in the rock where the Taliban had blown up Buddha statues in Bamiyan: Women were deprived for a long time -- deprived of education, deprived of facilities, deprived of rights. I can be a role model for other women, and other women in society can see that if a woman can be in a higher position like a governor, they will feel more comfortable and gain self-confidence. But over time, the United States failed to deliver on that Marshall Plan promise. Just as people in Peshawar saw their lives worsen after 9/11, many Afghans feel let down by the lack of improvement in their lives in the last decade. The guest in Kunduz, after we ate our dessert and drank our tea, recalled a story that helped summarize the United States failures. He remembered that on a sunny morning, the troops he worked with stood proudly at a news conference, helping the local governor open a multimillion-dollar school that the troops had paid for and helped construct. But every Afghan there -- everyone but the foreign troops, the guest insisted -- knew the school wouldnt last. The foreign troops

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funds werent allowed to be used to pay for maintenance or teachers salaries. And the Afghan government certainly couldnt afford either. And so, eventually, the building deteriorated and the teachers stopped coming. The area where he worked became more violent, leading the troops to become more aggressive, leading to less education, development, and governance work. Dont build me a school, he implored. Give me a teacher. Thats how to pacify an area. It was a lesson I had seen for myself the year before in the poor province of Zabul, Kandahars neglected neighbor. Qalat, Zabuls capital, is filled with the same Pashtun ethnic population as Kandahar and Peshawar, but it has a fraction of the wealth -- or the charm of either city. Downtown, a simple market is filled with some cars and carts, but there are no tucked-away, middleclass areas. The city of 40,000 quickly becomes rural: Just a stones throw from the market, entire neighborhoods are composed of mud houses. But, like Kandahar, it has always been a key location on the road toward the Indian subcontinent. On the citys highest point sits the ruins of a 2,000-year-old castle built by Alexander the Great. Down the steep hill from the castle, the senior U.S. officer on Qalats Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) walked me through New Qalat City. It had been built in 2006 as a sign that the United States cared about Zabul province. It was meant to be a sort of Emerald City, with relatively modern buildings that would revitalize the town.

A new hospital. A new governors house. A fire station. A justice center. A visitors center. But there was a problem: Nobody ever asked whether the Afghans wanted those buildings, according to the 2009 PRT commander, Lt. Col. Andrew Torelli. And they never taught the contractors how to maintain them or how to use the Western construction equipment. And so, as we walked from building to building, each sat empty and crumbling. The power directors building had no water, so nobody worked there. The hospital was collapsing and reeked of urine. Most medical supplies were unused, as the staff had never been trained. The fire station was never going to be filled; Qalat had never had a single firefighter. I told that story to the dinner guest in Kunduz. He said it represented everything the United States was doing wrong. They never listen, he said of the West. They only did what they wanted to do. As Titus says when he feels his former allies have abandoned him: I tell my sorrows to the stones. For centuries, Titus Andronicus was neither popular nor particularly respected by critics, who believed the plays barbarity was overindulgent and implausible: After Titus kills the captured queens son, her other sons rape Tituss daughter and cut off her tongue and hands; Titus kills her after she is raped; and the list of brutal, violent acts goes on. T.S.

Eliot called it one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written. But in 2011, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this revenge-driven cycle of violence does not seem so far-fetched. In this post-9/11 world, where we have seen so much barbarity, Titus is less shocking than ever. In many ways, Titus Andronicus is a play written for today, as the director Julie Taymor put it -- and that was back in 2000. In one of my first interviews in Pakistan, in 2008, Gerald Feierstein, then former U.S. deputy ambassador to Pakistan, made it clear to me that revenge was not a solution for Pakistan and Afghanistan -- that kinetic activity, as the military calls offensive actions, was not going to be enough. What we need to do is give people an alternative narrative for hope for the future. And thats really much more important in terms of how were ultimately going to achieve success in that part of the world than anything were going to do in terms of kinetic activity, he said. What we need to do is prevent them from being drawn into extremism in the first place, and you do that through education

and economic growth and other kinds of development activities. But three years later, it seems the United States is no closer to this ambitious goal. And on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan and Afghanistan are suffering from continuing cycles of violence. I am making the final edits to this piece late at night in a hotel with failing Internet on a trip to Peshawar. It has been a long few days. On Wednesday, Sept. 7, in Quetta, militants stormed a military officers house and killed his wife and 22 others, including two children. A few days before, in Kabul, police picked up the body of an American civilian working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He had been strangled to death. Julie Taymors film adaptation of Titus Andronicus ends when Tituss grandson walks out of the Coliseum where much of the action takes place -- suggesting that the next generation of Romans could exit out of the cycle of revenge. But nobody expects a Hollywood ending for Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Nick Schifrin is the ABC News correspondent covering Afghanistan and Pakistan. This article first appeared at www.foreignpolicy.com

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The 2001 invasion up close and personal


Reaching the front line by any means possible, Julius Strauss looks back on the early days of the 2001 invasion when, for a veteran war reporter, the reality in Afghanistan was as exciting as anything that had gone before

Northern Alliance visa, another $100. With two or three dozen journalists in Dushanbe all trying to achieve the same, competition for the few seats into Afghanistan was fierce. But after 48 hours a few of us stood like a herd of sheep on a deserted piece of Soviet tarmac waiting for our passage to the unknown. An hour or two later an old propeller airplane drew up. It was one of the saddest looking machines I have ever seen, its fuselage punctured by bullet holes. It rolled to a halt and the main rear door slowly lowered. The Russian officer in charge began to read out names. One by one we were summoned to load our bags and climb aboard. I waited. Three of us left. Two. Then just me. The Russian officer closed his book and began to walk away. Wait, I shouted. There must be a mistake. Ive got to get on that plane. Nyet, he barked. I must, I said. Nyet. His hand went to the pistol at his waist. The Afghan pilots began to close the hydraulic cargo door and the propellers began to rotate. I couldnt believe my eyes. I felt my heart sink. In one final desperate effort, I slung my pack over the closing cargo door, then darted around the Russian and headlong for the sidedoor just as the plane began to roll. An old friend, a photographer who was already on the plane, tried to hold the door open for me as one of the Afghan flight crew attempted to lever him out of the way. Run,

Julius, run, he shouted. I ran, straight through the scorching exhaust blast of the engine towards the side door. With the plane gathering speed my friend pulled me in and we were on our way.

hen the first airplane struck the World Trade Centre a decade ago, I was on a break from assignments. I had recently been covering the small war in Macedonia and the end of the Milosevic regime in Serbia. At first, like many, Im sure, I couldnt quite believe what had happened. I phoned the foreign news desk at the Daily Telegraph where I worked. I can get to America, I said. The airports are closed, they answered. Ill go through Canada, I ventured. Theyre closed too. After that we didnt talk for several days. They were busy in London and I was at something of a loss. Id spent the best part of a decade covering wars in the Balkans but I knew now that period was over. What, I wondered, would be the fate of a wandering reporter in the post-9/11 world. A week or so later I was on a plane to Tajikistan, the forgotten, desperately poor

country on Russias underbelly, that is the gateway to northern Afghanistan. About a dozen other reporters, many of whom I knew, were on the same flight from Munich. We landed at about 4am. There was the usual third world scrambling and bribery and each of us huddled around those colleagues who spoke Russian. They seemed to have a better chance of greasing the right palms. The land border to the south was closed and, in an odd hangover from the Cold War, still controlled by Russian troops. The only way to get into Afghanistan from the north was to shoe-horn my way onto an ancient paratrooper plane owned and run by the Northern Alliance. It was no mean bureaucratic feat. First I needed Tajik accreditation. That cost $20. I ponied up $40 and persuaded the oily official to give me an express variety - two hours instead of two days. Then I had to get a

In late 2001, Afghanistan was still a Holy Grail among aspiring war reporters. We had been brought up listening to Old Timers tell of the Afghan-Soviet war in the 1980s and the months they spent trekking through the Hindu Kush with the Mujahideen in the days before satellite phones and laptop computers. Then there was the romance and savagery of the 19th Century uprising against the British when the Afghans massacred the entire garrison in a long bloody retreat to Jalalabad. Some of the journalists I most admired were Afghan veterans at a time when being a war correspondent was a brutal and usually thankless calling. After a few drinks they sometimes reminisced and talked quietly among themselves about ambushes in the passes, Soviet reprisals and close calls in the mountains. Then, in the mid 1990s, the Taliban arrived in their long, flowing, black turbans and lunched war by pick-up truck, a modern and Islamic equivalent of the blitzkrieg. The reality, when I arrived, was as good as the myth. Within a week I was off on a

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long tortuous drive across the north with a colleague, two photographers and a translator I had found in the market. He could barely speak any English, we could speak no Dari. On the third day we drove into a small dusty compound. I knew immediately that this was where I wanted to stay. The compound belonged to a local warlord, a bearded Mujahid who had fought the Soviets. He was an avuncular and kindly man. How were our families keeping? he enquired politely. All well, we answered. Would we drink tea with him? We would. Would we like walnuts? Surely. Did we have any wishes?

Can I stay here? I piped up. The commander hesitated barely a second. Of course, he answered graciously. You can stay with my soldiers. The next day I asked for a horse and he brought me one. My very own little warhorse, a smallish mare but feisty and fast. Each day for weeks I would ride up to the front line to talk to the soldiers, drop in on local commanders to get the latest news and write my dispatches for the newspaper about the preparations for war, the arrival of the CIA paramilitaries, the refugees and the hopes and fears of a thousand down-trodden civilians.

In the shadow of Qala-I-Jangi


One of the first foreign reporters into Afghanistan after an anachronistic alliance of CIA operatives, American air power and Northern Alliance militiamen launched their onslaught against the Taliban, Lynne ODonnell recalls the heady hopes and vicious fighting of the early days of the invasion

he siege of Qala-I-Jangi on the outskirts of Mazar-I-Sharif in late November 2001 resulted in one of the most horrific war atrocities of the modern age.

Julius Strauss reporting in Northern Afghanistan Photo: Julius Strauss

fortress, where they had fled after escaping custody. Others were burned to death when Northern Alliance soldiers sprayed fuel from tankers on a school building where they were hiding, and then sprayed it with gunfire The massacre raised questions about the to set it alight. Many more were locked in commitment of Afghanistans new rulers and containers to suffocate in the stifling heat their international sponsors to the rule of law, or to be dropped from helicopters to another and cemented General Abdul Rashid Dostums form of certain death. The foreign fighters reputation as a brutal and ruthless warlord. reportedly killed those Afghans among them who wanted to surrender as the eight-day Hundreds, possibly thousands of Taliban siege dragged on. fighters, mostly from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and the Arab states, were killed There was no mercy shown during that week when the US fired missiles and dropped I spent crouched outside the Qala-I-Jangi, bombs on Dostums 19th century mud feeling as if I was living a George MacDonald

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Fraser novel and half expecting to see Harry Flashman slithering through the dirt to save his own hide. British Special Forces roared around in utility trucks, threatening to shoot journalists who filmed them; US Special Forces holed up in the sprawling compounds of minor warlords in downtown Mazar, living on their own readymade rations; B2 bombers circled overhead; and armed CIA agents strode the walls of the fort barking orders in Uzbek at the Northern Alliance soldiers under their tutelage. Dostum flew north to Uzbekistan while the fighting raged, but rushed back when the coast was clear. He invited the international media into the Qala-I-Jangi, and sat on a high-backed chair as he surveyed the destruction of his HQ, strewn with Taliban body parts, and claimed victory. It had been obvious when the invasion began on October 7 that the Talibans autarkic regime would soon crumble into the dust. Hope had been evident in the wave of an elderly Afghan man who stood on the bank of the Amu Daria watching the barge that brought me, and a crowd of other foreign reporters, down the river into Afghanistan from the horrible Uzbek border town of Termez. It was like stepping through a tear in the fabric of time, back to the 13th century a sensation not dispelled by the dignified gent in a tall, grey Astrakhan hat who stood at the door of my guesthouse and tried to force me into a burkha each time I left. He also

brought breakfast of bread, apricot jam and an enormous pot of tea to my room at 6 oclock each morning. Hope was alive in the heart of the mother of five I interviewed a couple of days after sitting at Dostums knee as he extolled the virtues of the new, free Afghan state. She had been a university lecturer before the Talibans misogynistic time, and then while forced inside her home by the cane-wielding vice police, had taught her four intelligent daughters to tile kitchens and bathrooms, and weave carpets, so they would not starve should the nightmare never end. In those heady days of early December 2001, as the defeated Taliban made their way across the border to their Pakistani refuges, she had already abandoned the burkha and was looking forward to going back to work and getting her girls back to school. Life was, once more, theirs for the taking. Or so they believed. Now, after 10 years of mistakes and misrule, the Talibans footfall is again heard across the north, and fear encroaches on the hopes of ordinary people to live ordinary lives. The women of Mazar-I-Sharif are once more taking refuge behind the veil, dressing for the return of the illogical hatred they have already known and had thought they were well rid of. Ten years after eyebrows and ire were raised worldwide at the tactics used to get rid of the murderous brutality of thugs hiding behind religion, smart Afghan people talk of

the Talibans return as inevitable, and clever commentators seem to delight in the apparent failure of efforts to graft modern democracy onto the ancient Afghan body politic. Many of those with money and connections are leaving their country, hoping to secure a future abroad for their children as Afghanistan appears on the verge of collapse and the prospect of civil war looms as an encroaching reality. Amid political gridlock,

financial collapse, endemic corruption, and never-ending violence, few want to believe that we are witnessing the last desperate gasps of a failed and dying insurgency. What even fewer want to acknowledge is that Afghanistans blood- and tear-stained soil is the battleground for a hot war between the United States and Pakistan. As the light of hope dims, Afghanistan is again one of the saddest places on earth.

Lynne ODonnell covered the Qala-i-Jangi siege for The Australian, for whom she was China correspondent from 1998-2002. She was Kabul bureau chief for Agence France-Presse 2009-2010.

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In the first person


David James had his first taste of Afghanistan with the British Army in 2002. Six years and a second tour later, he returned as a social entrepeneur based in Ishkashim, at the foot of the Wakhan corridor, before finally succumbing to the bright lights of the big city. Here he describes that journeyand why hes optimistic about Afghanistans future

had my first experience of Afghanistan in 2002 as a soldier in the British Army. Although fearing the worst I had an incredibly positive experience. The sense of optimism was endemic and I became incurably infected. Despite the many setbacks and missteps over the intervening 10 years Im still a chronic optimist about the opportunity for Afghanistan to finds its feet as a nation and fulfill its potential. On that first tour I fell in love with this extraordinary country that is like nowhere else on earth and developed a deep respect for the Afghan people. On my second tour in 2004/5 I became convinced that 80 percent of Afghanistans problems were economic. People grew and invested in opium and took part in other illicit activities

because it provided the best and safest return on investment. In 2008, I set up a social enterprise to provide marketing and communications support to economic development initiatives in the Wakhan Corridor. I lived in an Afghan village on the edge of the Wakhan in a house with no mains electricity, running water, armed guards or blast walls. I drank tea on my veranda with my Afghan neighbors and we talked about the future. Our focus was on getting more international expeditions to visit this remote, beautiful, peaceful and desperately poor corner of Afghanistan. We got hundreds of international visitors to see for themselves this other Afghanistan one which bore no resemblance to anything they saw in the international media.

Wakhi farmers threshing with donkeys Photo: David James

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One of the most memorable and talked about parts of each visitors trip was experiencing Afghanistans legendary hospitality. The visits shattered any preconceptions of who the Afghan people were. The hardest part was trying to get anyone from the international community to support this success and having spent around $30,000 of my own money I decided that sustainability had to start at home. Last year I moved to Kabul recognizing that this was the strategic centre from where the money for positive change would come. I found a job with Lapis, a communications agency that is part Afghanistans largest media group. With 97 percent local staff producing 15 hours of original content every day the Moby Group is a true Afghan success story that has captured the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. We produce a whole range of shows and campaigns that are changing the way Afghans think about themselves and their place in the world. One of my favourites is On the Road a show that turned one of our presenters, Mujeeb Arez, into one of the most loved personalities in Afghanistan. The show has a simple yet incredibly successful format. Mujeeb travels around Afghanistan visiting the local people and shows the rest of the nation the history, culture and lifestyles of their countrymen. In each place he visits some of the myriad of development

projects that are taking place and shows the audience how life has been changing and improving with the help of the international community. Over two seasons Mujeeb has visited 32 out of 34 provinces, which has created an extraordinary body of work that showcases Afghanistan as its seen by Afghan eyes. I believe that it is actually a better reflection of the daily realities for most Afghans than anything we see in the international media. The reason I bring this up is that Mujeeb would always come back saying, We need to do more programs on business and economic opportunities. There is, he explained, a real hunger among the Afghan people to find new business opportunities and ways to improve their situation. As we move towards transition, this hunger aligned with a strong media industry presents us with a fantastic opportunity. We are in a great position to open a dialogue between Afghanistans entrepreneurs, the international organizations involved in economic development and the global business community. Ive had the privilege to meet up with some of the stakeholders at The Afghan Investment Support Agency, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and many others who have provided great insight into Afghanistans economic opportunities. Although, as previously stated, Ive always been optimistic about Afghanistans potential Ive been genuinely shocked about how much

The author with (left to right) Amruddin, Gorg Ali and Malang, three of the Afghan mountaineers who successfully climbed Noshaq in 2009 Photo: David James

good stuff is going on that we never hear about. Marketing communications and the media have the potential to bring to the fore some of these great Afghan success stories and to help them build brands and market awareness. There has been this overwhelming urge by many to focus on Afghanistans problems but maybe now it is time to focus on the solutions. Wherever we find a success

we should reinforce it, replicate it and communicate it. We can all come up with negative scenarios for how the transition will play out, and if we focus our attention and resources on those scenarios they will come true. If we really want Afghanistan to be a success then we need to help the Afghans develop, articulate and communicate their positive vision of what Afghanistan will be in 2017. Once that vision has been articulated we can get behind a new generation of Afghan leaders who, with our help, can make it happen.

David James served on two tours of Afghanistan with the British Army. In 2008 he returned as a social entrepreneur living in the Wakhan Corridor and working on economic development initiatives. He is now a Senior Strategy Manager at Lapis

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Where to stay, where to eat, where to Shop. And how to pay for it. Afghan Scene Making Life Easier
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A-One Bottom of Shar-e Naw Park Chelsea Shar-e Naw main road. opp Kabul Bank Spinneys Wazir Akbar Khan, opposite British Embassy Finest Wazir Akbar Khan Roundabout Fat Man Forest Wazir Akbar Khan, main road. Enyat Modern Butcher Qala-e Fatullah main road, Near street four

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But there can only be one Afghan Star. The most watched show in Afghanistan returns for its 7th season - bigger, brighter, and with more surprises along the way. Join the exciting journey when Afghan Star debuts in November 2011, and see whos got what it takes to be Afghanistans next singing sensation. Premiering November 4 on TOLO TV.

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