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Other than a couple of military helicopters overhead once or twice. Not many American soldiers on the streets, but Afghan National Army and Police on every corner. Put on jeans and a tee-shirt and mind your own business, and in many parts of the you'll have no problem. Putting on a foreign uniform and carrying a weapon, though, is a challenge to the blood of all Afghans
The image of the little starving girl on the Youtube video haunts me. How can that be after the U.S. had a full five years to stabilize the country, with the run of the countryside while there was no real insurgency to speak of? IEDs against U.S forces were almost non-existent until 2005. Journalist Ann Jones says that after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, people were full of hope and ready to work, to build their country, finally, after 30 years of war of one kind or another. And then...nothing.
A British Lord in 1919 asked, after the Empire lost interest in Iran after Czarist Russia withdrew, why "Persia" should not be "left to rot in picaresque decay." It seems the same colonial attitude prevails among American policymakers, who refuse to see the connection between abject misery and the insurgency. Everyone here is hungry, but they don't complain. The lessons of the Marshall Plan after World War II have been lost. For every man, woman, and child over $500 dollars was spent for four years after the shooting stopped in Europe, compared to $50 per person in Afghanistan. It's a myth to say the reconstruction failed because of corruption. It never arrived in the first place. Corruption, both internal and in the very structure of how reconstruction contracts are managed by foreign contractors, got a good chunk of what little aid did arrive.
Steve at dinner says this war is crazy. Give them jobs and we could pull out. He's a journalist who has been in-country for five years and has worked for USAID. We went to the Intercontinental, where NGO and some contractor types hang out, practicing their smatterings of Pashto, although some ex-patriots have become quite fluent.
We talked to some men digging trench for telecommunications cable on the side of the road. They said the pay was $4 a day. Everything needs doing. Everything. Sidewalks need to be built, open sewer trenches need to be put underground, and the roads, wow, the roads. Even in Kabul going down a side street can be a jarring experience. And Kabul has the good roads. The ones in the countryside on which much of the population depends to bring their produce to market or their children to clinics are like one big rut with a few level spots.
Afghanistan has some of the sweetest, tastiest fruit in the world. For lunch I had a mango drink, and it was wonderful. But much of the harvest rots in the countryside for lack of roads you can drive more than 15 miles per hour on. Some cold storage centers would fix the problem, but we can't afford to give them these, although we can afford plenty of tanks and Humvees.
The way your reconstruction money is getting spent in Afghanistan is now getting hammered out in a conference committee on War Supplemental Appropriations bill, co-chaired by:
Sen. Daniel Inouye, Ph: 202-224-3934 Fax: 202-224-6747
and Rep. David Obey. Ph:(202) 225-3365 Fax: (715-842-4488)
The key pressure points are manageable now, and you can make a huge difference by calling these two at this time, asking them to create jobs for Afghans. At 40% unemployment, it's the only thing that will stabilize this country and allow US troops to go home. Print out this Mission Statement, then fax it to them.
Ralph will be blogging from Afghanistan this week. You can follow it at JobsForAfghans.org.
Arrival at airport
Kabul's open-trench sewage system, one of the many works projects you could hire many men to put underground. During the rains it overflows with raw sewege
View from hotel room
Starvation in Kandahar
