John Cook

The convoy of seven vehicles pulls off the main road and drives slowly over the hard, broken ground and gets as close as possible to the refugee camp. This one has about two hundred people; men, women and children of all ages. The soldiers that will provide security quickly get out of the armored SUVs and form a protective ring around the other vehicles. To call it a refugee camp does violence to the word camp. This place is not a camp. Its a few acres of hard dirt that has no value to the owner right now. The people on it have nowhere else to go so they have gathered here, made some pitiful attempts to make it habitable and we call it a camp because there is no other word that comes close to what it really is. There are no walls to protect these people; there is no electricity, no water, no toilets, no grass or trees; just a few mud huts and a scattering of tents. Often, if the people are nomads such as Kuchi, there will be a few animals tied to stakes in the ground.

These camps are not hard to find on the outskirts of Kabul; they are everywhere. There are no plans to move these people anywhere else because they are of no use to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. They have no money, no political power, no connections, nothing. Lacking all of these things, they are little more than an embarrassment to the government. So they will stay here until they are forced to move and then they will find another miserable piece of ground to occupy and the cycle goes on. But for now, this is the closest thing they can call home and it is here we come to hand out clothes, blankets, toys and food. There is a Ministry of Refugee Affairs here that has the mission of taking care of people in this situation but that doesn’t mean much in Afghanistan; there is also a Ministry of Counter-narcotics.

The official explanation for so many refugees here is the war but that’s not exactly true. Many people show up in refugee camps as a result of tribal fighting, land disputes or simply to settle old scores that may have festered for decades. There are always widows in the camp with two or three children. Having nowhere else to go, they end up here.

There are no schools for the children which mean they will soon join the ranks of an adult population that is eighty percent illiterate. There are no medical facilities to treat simple illnesses which will eventually develop into life threatening conditions. Some of the children already bear the marks of war that they will carry forever—a foot missing here, a hand there, a blind boy holding his sister’s hand.

Each Friday, the chaplain at Camp Eggers organizes these mercy missions to the camps to hand out the things Americans have sent him. The program is known as Voluntary Community Relations with the emphasis on the volunteer part because no one at Camp Eggers is compelled to go on these missions. However, the chaplain always has more volunteers than he needs. This is what Americans do and have always done for people in desperate need. Rank is of no importance on these missions; colonels, sergeants and civilians work side by side to make the operation a success.

Official, high ranking delegations from Washington and other capitals come to Kabul in a steady stream to assess the situation and to find more, and better, ways to save Afghanistan. They travel to a couple of provinces, visit a training center or a new ministry in the making, initiate a new initiative and maybe have lunch with the president. But their very tight itinerary never seems to have time for a visit to a refugee camp. Perhaps it’s just as well; these camps do not easily lend themselves to a photo op and there is no way to spin them into a good news story.

For security reasons, the chaplain tries to limit the time at the camps to about an hour. On this day, we arrive late in the morning and the cook fires are already going. A dirty blue, hazy, cloud of smoke hangs over the camp from the wood fires. The winter is the worst season for the refugees because the only source of heat for warmth and cooking is firewood and it is always in short supply. Most of the trees in the Kabul area have been cut and burned. Now, firewood has to come from the north or Pakistan and it is not cheap. While one group of volunteers hand out toys to the children, another group unloads the donations from the back of a box truck to the adults lined up to receive them. When everything has been handed out, we say goodbye to the refugees and load up for the return trip. Next Friday another camp or orphanage will be selected and the volunteers will be back in action. There is no shortage of places to visit.

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American strategy in Afghanistan is built around an army of advisors. They are the key to every initiative and program here and they are everywhere, from the very top of the government in Kabul building ministries and infrastructure, all the way down to the districts building bridges and roads, to the battlefields in Helmand and Kandahar building effective Afghan fighting forces. There are thousands of them scattered across the country and, due to the increased emphasis Afghanistan is getting from the US government, thousands more are on the way. Officially they are known as mentors or “partners” but their principal duty is to offer advice and assistance to their Afghan counterparts. And the Afghans are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their new advisors. In fact, nothing pleases Afghan officials as much as getting new advisors fresh off the plane, eager to save Afghanistan. The new advisors hit the ground ready and willing to support their Afghan counterparts in any way possible and the Afghans make sure the possibilities are endless.

They come from all branches of service-Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines- and civilians as well as officers from Europe, Canada and Asia. They bring a wealth of experience and expertise in a variety of fields. They are fully prepared to do post graduate work with the Afghans but soon discover that their counterparts are stuck somewhere between elementary and junior high school. However, most quickly get over this initial reality check and press on. After all, this is Afghanistan, and a few bumps in the road are to be expected, right? Thirty years of war, and all that, can explain a lot of short comings and the Afghans are only too quick to point out all their shortcomings-Afghanistan is a poor country; the Russians were bad, the Taliban were bad, everything is broken, we need everything and you, my new advisor/mentor/savior/partner must help me!

Conventional wisdom has always held that it will take time and money to save Afghanistan. What this really means is the advisors supply the money and the Afghans provide the time. We now have all the ingredients for an informal agreement that will be the foundation of this relationship until the advisor leaves-the advisors want to use as little time as possible and the Afghans want to use as much time as possible. Time is critically important to the advisors because they have so little of it, usually only a year. The Afghans, on the other hand, have tons of it, hundreds of years in fact. Time is unimportant to them but money is in short supply so, being pragmatic, they have altered the conventional wisdom of time and money to time is money. The longer the Afghans need help, the longer the advisors will stay. The longer the advisors stay the more money they will spend. Of course, the relationship is never specifically framed this way because that would be bad form on the part of both parties but it is always there, just below the surface.

With each new crop of advisors there are lots of new ideas. The Afghans love new ideas because they always evolve into new programs employing lots of Afghans. Once a program is created, it takes on a life of its own and will survive several generations of advisors. Often, the same idea is recycled several times under a new name and a new sponsor.

The Afghans have carefully studied the life span of an advisor in Afghanistan and have worked out several methods of extracting the greatest amount of money and equipment in the shortest possible time. It all starts with the first meeting over tea, preferably three cups. The Afghan will tell the advisor how delighted and honored he is to have a new counterpart. He will then proceed to tell the advisor that his predecessor was a good, dedicated, hard working professional who really tried but, well, wasn’t quite able to deliver whatever it is the Afghan official desperately needs to save his country.

This is the honeymoon phase of the relationship. The advisor leaves this initial meeting with a list of needs, a fire in his belly and a burning in his brain. He is filled with an inspired sense of purpose. He will not, cannot, fail! Afghanistan needs him and he will deliver! And he does. He satisfies the initial list of needs. And the next. And the next. He has now entered the “Dances with Wolves” stage, also known as “going native.” Often, he will start speaking broken phrases of Dari, wear the traditional Afghan man-scarf and maybe even the distinctive Masood hat. He is bonding with his Afghan brother and this is the most productive phase for the Afghan. The goal is to keep the advisor in this phase as long as possible. The irony is that all of the very qualities that make for a great advisor-initiative, passion, positive attitude, dedication, and strong will to succeed-also makes him vulnerable to the slow roll.

But there are always more requests, more needs, more lists. He now starts to question if he will be able to save Afghanistan after all. When he gets here, he is in the questioning phase. Slowly, over several months, he enters the inevitable disillusionment phase where he must confront the truth that he was used. Now, as the end of his yearlong tour approaches, he is filled with many emotions and they are all bad-anger, disappointment, resentment, guilt. The Afghan, on the other hand, is already looking past our hero to his replacement who will be arriving soon. When this happens, the Afghan resets the clock to zero and the cycle will repeat itself.

You may well ask how could this be happening to the coalition forces with eight years experience in Afghanistan trying to save the country? The hard truth is we don’t have eight years experience here; we have one year’s experience multiplied eight times and, while the math works, it’s really not the same. Each year’s class of advisors basically starts over and the Afghans have learned to exploit this weakness. With no clear vision of what victory will look like, victory becomes difficult to visualize and impossible to achieve.

To a large degree, the coalition has created the conditions that lead to this. By being overly sensitive to the possibility of appearing heavy handed in dealing with the Afghan government, the coalition has adopted the mantra of “Afghan solutions to Afghan Problems,” along with “Afghans in the Lead.” This briefs well and sounds good at a press conference. For the tiny percentage of Afghans fortunate enough to rate a coalition advisor, this is a wonderful attitude to adopt. President Karzai heartily approves. However, for the rest of the country, mired in poverty and despair, stuck somewhere between the 7th and 19th century, life goes on as before; nothing changes. In the meantime, the senior leadership of the coalition is busy preparing briefings and information papers that paint a very rosy picture of what the future will look like, long after their replacements have safely arrived in country.

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Ahmad Faisal is a 29 year old Afghan who lives in a rented apartment in downtown Kabul with his pregnant wife, Sara. Like many Afghans his age, he has witnessed the horrors of the Taliban first hand and has spent much of his life in neighboring Pakistan. We often talk about that period in Afghanistan’s violent past, how he wore a fake beard because men were supposed to have real beards and he couldn’t grow one, and how his family had to hide their small TV in a hole in the yard during the day. He cannot remember when Afghanistan was at peace because there has been no peace in his lifetime. So far, there is nothing remarkable about any of this since it is the story of countless young people here caught up in the modern Greek tragedy that is Afghanistan.

However, there is much more to this particular story because Ahmad Faisal is exceptional by any measure. He is a neurosurgeon, trained here and in Pakistan. In a country that is desperately short of doctors, Ahmad Faisal does not practice medicine. Not anymore. Instead, he works for me as my interpreter and translator, and accompanies me whenever I go to the Ministry of Interior to meet with Afghan officials responsible for building the Afghan National Police. So, why isn’t he working in downtown Kabul as a neurosurgeon? The answer is both simple and extremely revealing; he could make perhaps $200 a month as a neurosurgeon here, compared to $800 a month hanging out with me. This is one of the strange things in Afghanistan but Dr. Faisal’s story gets much stranger.

As an interpreter supporting the US military in Afghanistan, he can also take advantage of a little-known special immigrant visa program administered by the US State Department. By supporting the US military here for two years, Dr. Faisal will be eligible to take full advantage of this special program and leave Afghanistan with his family and make a new life for himself in America. This program is a very powerful magnet and it attracts the most highly qualified Afghans from across the country. While this program was probably not designed to create a “brain drain,” the old saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions applies here, because that is precisely what it has become, with the best and the brightest in Afghanistan applying for entry into this very special program and winning a free ticket out of the country.

Since this program is highly competitive, the cruel irony is this; only the very best are accepted, which means only the very best will be leaving. These are the same people that are needed to fill key positions if Afghanistan is ever to become a real, independent, self-reliant and self-supporting nation. The Afghans applying for this program includes the most motivated, intelligent, educated Afghans here-doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, scientists, software developers. Their communication skills, both verbal and written, are superb. All of them must be fluent in English as well as Dari and Pashto and must be able to accurately translate very complex documents. In a country where illiteracy is as high as 80%, this is quite an accomplishment. Faisal and I discuss this issue often. One of our typical conversations will go something like this:

“Tell me why you want to leave your country,” I asked on the way to the Ministry of Interior the other day.

“We have had this conversation many times,” Faisal replied wearily. “You know why.” That’s true; we have talked about it many times but it still fascinates me.

“Tell me again,” I insisted. “Make me understand.”

“I need to make a better life for my family. Life is very hard here. This is not a good place to raise children.”

“It might be hard in America. The economy is bad. Many Americans have lost their jobs.”

“Yes, I know, sir. But I am strong and I will work hard. You will see.” Without question, this is a true statement. Otherwise, he would have never gotten this far.

“We can save Afghanistan, Faisal. They will need you when the war is over. Things will get better. We will win.”

“When will we win? When will the war be over?”

“Soon, Faisal. Many more Americans are coming. And the Afghan army and police are growing every day. You know all this.”

“Of course, of course,” he told me smiling patiently, the weariness returning to his voice. “You are a very good advisor. Afghanistan is very fortunate to have you.”

“But I need you with me. We are trying to save your country, Faisal. We are doing this for you! Not for us, for you! Do you understand?”

“No sir. You are not doing this for me.”

“Of course I am. You are Afghan!”

“Ah, that is the problem, sir. I am Pashtun. We were Pashtuns before there was an Afghanistan and we will be Pashtuns after Afghanistan is gone.”

We rode along in silence for a long time, watching the snow come down, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts. We are a very good team and have profound respect for each other. There is no topic we do not discuss at length. Politics and religion are two of our favorites; every topic is fair game, even this one.

On this day, we will be meeting with senior leaders of the Afghan National Police, and Faisal will faithfully translate what they want today; more policemen, more weapons more radios more Ford Rangers. The snow is still falling as we get out of our mini-van inside the Ministry of Interior compound. We will continue the conversation on the return trip to Camp Eggers. Deep down, Faisal knows that I am right about his leaving Afghanistan, but he will not tell me; he is stubborn that way. However, there is another side to this coin; deep down, I understand his position and I know that he is right as well. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and he’s not willing to roll the dice by gambling on Afghanistan’s shaky future. In the end, we are both right and that is the real tragedy.

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Mao-tse-Tung once quipped that all political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Apparently, he never spent much time in Afghanistan. Here, real political power neither comes from the barrel of a gun nor from legally established bodies such as the Afghan parliament or the office of the president. There are no pure political parties here, at least not ones that would be recognized as political parties by Americans. Here, raw political power is based on tribal identity. In essence, the various ethnic tribes that inhabit Afghanistan are the political parties and elections will always follow tribal lines just like an earthquake follows fault lines. Tribal identity is much more powerful than national identity. Nationalism, as Americans understand it, doesn’t mean much here become the concept of one nation united doesn’t mean much here.

Nations come and go in this part of the world, borders are drawn and re-drawn, names change. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan clearly illustrated this because the border, drawn in the late 19th century by the British, is an arbitrary, some would say imaginary, line that was supposed to separate what was then India from Afghanistan. Now, what was once western India has become Pakistan and neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan recognizes the border, known as the infamous Durand Line.

The problem with the Durand Line, then and now, is it slices through the largest and most powerful tribe in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns. As a result, Pashtuns to the east and west of this line simply ignore it, crossing back and forth at will, just as they have done for centuries. They know something that the diplomats and foreign ambassadors fail to grasp; that such arbitrary lines, drawn by foreigners, are trivial irritants that will pass with time. While the average Afghan may not be well versed in the intricacies of power politics, they do understand that, in the outside world, far removed from the rugged mountains they call home, there are no permanent alliances, only permanent interests, and that they, the Afghans, are pawns in this great, timeless game that world powers play. Under these conditions, blind obedience and loyalty to a nation created by foreigners that may not exist next year seems silly indeed.

To even call Afghanistan a nation is stretching the definition of what it means to be a nation. At best, we can call Afghanistan a loose federation, or holding company, of various tribes. One of the key characteristics of a nation is a common language. That characteristic does not exist here. There is no common language that unites the people of Afghanistan. The various tribes, such as Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Harzaras speak different languages, such as Pashto, Dari, and Urdu as well as countless dialects and sub-dialects, each as different from the other as English is from French. Neither is there a shared value system. This usually comes from a strong sense of nationalism and a deep respect for the nation’s laws. None of this exists here. Another characteristic of a real nation is a shared system of values. There are no shared values here.

After the Afghans defeated the Soviets, the warlords filled the power vacuum and total anarchy swept over the country. During this period, survival was the primary objective. Then, when the Taliban seized power, a brutal form of totalitarianism ruled the country with an iron fist. Again, the name of the game was survival from one day to the next. Under these conditions, with no consistent, reliable government in Kabul providing anything approaching leadership, the people turned to the only source of direction and guidance they knew and trusted-the tribe. The tribe has always been there and always will be. Unlike governments and foreign powers that come and go, the tribe is eternal. The tribe never fails. When you have nowhere else to go, the tribe must take you in.

Now, there is a new foreign power in Afghanistan that wants very much to bring freedom and democracy to this broken, war-torn country. The idea is to show that a strong, effective central government can diminish tribal influence and lead to a successful, prosperous, united Afghanistan, complete with national elections, resulting in one big happy family where everybody loves everybody. Last year, this coalition of idealistic nations was determined to show the world that Afghanistan was capable of holding a nation-wide election to select a president and members of the parliament.

Last spring, 43 presidential candidates registered for the August election. Most never had a chance, many were illiterate and some were criminals. The ones that posed the greatest threat to the incumbent, President Karzai, were picked off, one at a time, with offers of a governorship in any of Afghanistan’s 34 states, or a cabinet post as a minister.

The August 20th election eliminated all opposition except one, a highly-respected former minister named Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. Since neither Abdullah Abdullah nor Karzai got the required 50% vote plus one, under the election rules a run-off election was scheduled for November. The coalition and the international press hyped this coming showdown as if it were the Super Bowl. Thousands of polling places had to be secured across the country. Most of the Afghan National Police and Army were diverted to performing election security. Foreign news services devoted whole broadcasts to the speculation that Abdullah Abdullah would defeat Karzai. It was a heady time to be in Kabul and possibly witness the iron grip of tribalism finally defeated by the people.

The Afghans, on the other hand, were not buying into the election hysteria. They listened to the news reports and read the papers and smiled. A lot of the polling at the time showed that Abdullah Abdullah was ahead. Polling data was new to the Afghans and they didn’t really understand it. What they did understand was Karzai, as a Pashtun, represented 43% of the population and Abdullah Abdullah, a Tajik, represented only 26%. Democracy may be something new to Afghans and they might not understand all the subtle nuances of the rights of the minority but they have the basics of “one man one vote” down pat —three lions and a goat vote on what’s for dinner.

In the end, the much anticipated showdown never happened. Three days before the run-off, Abdullah-Abdullah, the wonder boy who was going to shatter tribalism, saw the handwriting on the wall and suddenly withdrew, claiming voter fraud and a lot of other bad things. The diplomatic community was in a tizzy for a couple of days because nobody knew what to do. Was Karzi actually the winner? Would there be an unrising? Riots in the streets? Finally, a special representative from the UN declared Karzai the winner, everybody breathed a sigh of relief and the international community put the best face possible on the whole, ugly episode.

So now, the Pashtuns, who have produced the kings of Afghanistan for the past three hundred years, are still in power and are officially determined to defeat the Taliban and bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan. At least that’s what President Karzai told the London Conference last month. And the Taliban? What’s their tribal affiliation? If you guessed Pashtun, you’re correct. The overwhelming majority of the Taliban are Pashtuns. The outlook for goats in Afghanistan is not good.

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These are President George Bush’s words, not mine. I wish they were mine. They are from his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention in 2004. The point he was making concerned the sorry state of public education resulting in a high rate of failure. He believed American educators had set the achievement bar too low due to the mistaken belief that some students simply could not perform.

The same can be said about our present situation in Afghanistan. We have set the performance bar for the government here very low and the expectations are what one would expect which are very low indeed. As a result, we are seeing a self-fulfilling prophecy-if you are will to settle for so little success, that is precisely what you will see.

At the recently concluded London Conference, the international community pledged additional support to the Afghan government. The Afghan National Police will grow to 109,000 this year and the Afghan Army will grow to 134,000. Added together, this will require Afghanistan to add some 30,000 additional police and soldiers to the nation’s defense forces. For a nation of 33 million, on a war footing, struggling for survival, this should be relatively easy, considering that the international community is paying the total bill for salary, training, equipment, everything.

If you believe this you would be wrong because Afghanistan is decidedly not on a war footing. After eight years of war, the Afghan government has not gotten around to passing any legislation that remotely resembles a draft or compulsory national service. As a result, recruiters must scour the countryside looking for new recruits. This is not an easy job in Afghanistan and recruiting 30,000 in a single year is a tall order.

Even assuming a very good year and the recruiters actually recruit 30,000, only about half this number will be added to the force; 20% will fail drug testing, another 10% will not show up at the training centers and another 20% will simply walk away after drawing a couple of paychecks. The abnormally high attrition rate is due, in large part, to the fact that there is no retribution for leaving the force. No Afghan is ever punished for desertion. So to add 30,000 to the force, the recruiters need to actually recruit 45,000 and this will be a bridge too far in a single year. However, none of these troubling details were fully examined during the London Conference.

To be fair, not everything could have been discussed at London. The diplomats there had important business to discuss such as making overtures to the Taliban to come down from the Hindu Kush and join the Afghan government. President Karzai offered the Taliban jobs and money to lure them out of the mountains. He called these offers an incentive; others called them a bribe. In any event, the Taliban were having none of it, waiting, no doubt, for a better offer. As a result, there were no great expectations for resolutions to be found for every problem or for everything to be covered in great detail. A prime example of issues not resolved at the London Conference is the poppy problem. Right now down south, in Kandahar, Helmand and Nimroz provinces, a half a million acres of poppies are sprouting in the fields. They will be ready for harvest in late May and it looks like another bumper crop in the making.

Without question, the poppies represent Afghanistan’s major export. The country produces 97% of the world’s supply of opium. The poppies are the single biggest source of corruption in the country and represent some 90% of the Taliban’s funding. They could easily be eradicated by aerial spraying, thereby ending the cancer of corruption on Afghanistan and dealing the Taliban a crippling blow at the same time. However, aerial eradication is not even being discussed. Rather, the United States is following a policy of interdiction rather than eradication, opting to somehow intercept the processed drugs along an endless number of smuggling routes, rather than destroying them at the source, in the fields. Such a policy is the intellectual equivalent of attempting to destroy a missile in flight rather than blow it up on the launch pad.

To the surprise of no one, President Karzai agrees wholeheartedly with this strategy. He claims that he has encouraged the poppy farmers to give up growing poppies and grow legal crops instead. However, he says the farmers will not listen to his pleas and there is nothing he can do. The fact that growing poppies is illegal under the Afghan constitution is conveniently forgotten whenever this issue is discussed. In fact, the Afghan constitution elaborates in detail as to the illegality of the drug trade. So the American policy is to engage in interdiction and the Afghan government’s policy is to somehow convince the poppy growers to voluntarily stop growing the most rewarding crop known to man, a crop that can bring the farmer a tenfold greater profit than wheat or cotton. As long as the poppies are here, there will be money for the terrorists – terrorists that threaten the lives of our soldiers and our nation. This fact should be obvious to all parties but it is not. Maybe Keats had it right when he wrote, “Autumn slumber – all drowsed with the fume of the poppies.”

No doubt, the 30,000 man surge pledged by President Obama will help in the war on terror. Neither can there be any doubt about the performance of our magnificent military on the ground here, clearing areas that were once Taliban strongholds and showing the Afghan security forces how to both fight the enemy and win the hearts and minds of the population. These points were never open to debate. However, as America begins the ninth year of combat in Afghanistan, no one knows for certain how it will all end. The questionable commitment of the Afghan government, coupled with the American strategy of demanding so little from it, is troubling. At some point, the Afghans are going to have to want to succeed at least as much as America wants them to succeed. Unfortunately, we have not yet reached this point nor can we see it anywhere on the horizon. In the meantime, this year’s crop of poppies is doing quite well in the south and the soft bigotry of low expectations is alive and well in Afghanistan and the great halls of the coalition forces.

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There is no place, anywhere, quite like Camp Eggers in downtown Kabul. Home to over 1,600 military and civilians, Camp Eggers is also home of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan as well as the newly-formed NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan. Both of these organizations are commanded by LTG William Caldwell. In very simple terms, the mission of these two commands is to show the Afghans how to save their country and provide them the tools to do the job. The camp is named in honor of Captain Daniel Eggers, a Special Forces officer killed in action here in May, 2004.

Camp Eggers is a fifteen-acre parcel of once-prime real estate in the heart of downtown Kabul, very near the U.S embassy and the presidential palace. At one time, when Kabul was a civilized place, this area was home to members of the diplomatic community. Several of the stately buildings inside the perimeter had swimming pools, servant quarters, and magnificent, manicured lawns. Today, very little is left of this Eggers of a bygone era.

Now, large, metal shipping containers rest on top of the empty swimming pools, providing office space for the new tenants. The lawns are long gone, replaced with concrete slabs that serve as the foundations for even more shipping containers converted into living quarters. It is this eclectic blending of past and present that gives Eggers its unique charm.

Gator Alley is the main street of Camp Eggers, running north from the main gate and terminating at the front of Warrior Gym, one of two well equipped athletic facilities available for the troops. Before you get to Warrior Gym, you will come to the Post Exchange, or PX, on the right. The PX is where the residents and visitors do their shopping. For the most part, it is adequate for finding essential items such as soap, shaving cream, toothpaste, teapots and the like. However, there is one major exception. Listerine is almost always missing from the shelves. The PX carries their own brand of mouth wash, euphemistically marketed under the brand name SELECT. The label proudly announces that “SELECT compares favorably to Listerine.” It doesn’t, of course; Listerine is the real deal and SELECT is a knockoff.

Unlike Listerine, there is always an abundant supply of early pregnancy tests, carried as a courtesy, no doubt, for the ladies assigned to the embassy since the underlying cause for needing an EPT is banned by the Army’s infamous General Order One. In the back room of the PX, there is a nice selection of DVD movies. You can pay $19.95 for one of these or you can buy the same DVD at the Eggers Bazaar on Friday for $2.00; the choice is up to you.

If you turn left off Gator Alley just past the PX and make a right turn when you get to the Goat Mess Hall, you will wind up at the Green Bean. The Green Bean is Eggers answer to Starbucks back in the world. The Green Bean serves the same kind of assorted, exotic and very much overpriced beverages that Starbucks offers. However, the Green Bean has something very, very special to the residents of Eggers. It houses the only ATM on post. Here, you can get cash for items at the PX and the all-important Friday bazaar.

Going to the Friday bazaar is the high point of the week. This is the one day of the week when the camp commander allows local merchants into Eggers to display a wide variety of items. Since the residents of Eggers are not allowed to go downtown and shop, the merchants bring their wares to the customer. Aside from the $2.00 DVD movies that are still being shown in theaters around the world, there are silk scarves, fake Rolexs, hand made carpets, IPODs, cameras, precious and semi-precious gems, knives, swords, antique rifles, mink jackets, cell phones, paintings, onyx chess sets, and hundreds of other treasures awaiting the residents and visitors to Eggers every Friday. Haggling over the price is all part of the process and the only rule is “buyer beware.” A genuine emerald from the Pansier Valley will look a lot like a fake. Both are readily available at the bazaar. Often, the vendor doesn’t know the difference. The bazaar opens at 11 o’clock and closes sometime close to 4 pm. Experienced bazaar shoppers will wait until closing time to close a major purchase. The odds are you’ll get a better deal. If not, there’s always next Friday to score a great price on a Coach handbag knockoff.

The Friday bazaar is both a microcosm and metaphor for Afghan-American relations at all levels in this broken country. The Americans insist on ground truth and the Afghans smile and say they’re getting it but ground truth is in short supply everywhere here. So, perception becomes reality and you cut the best deal you can and move on, hoping to God that the emerald in your pocket is real and not a piece of green glass.

No matter what kind of day you’re having at Eggers, you can always count of getting three great meals a day at either on two mess halls, officially known as dining facilities. The Marshall and the Goat both open at 5:30 am for breakfast. The quality and variety of food at these facilities is first rate by any standards. Add the fact that we are in a combat zone, and this accomplishment becomes remarkable, considering that everything is transported across Pakistan and there is very little storage space here at Eggers to stockpile food. It must come in every day, rain or shine, Taliban or no Taliban. Both dining facilities are operated by KBR and everyone here that depends on these facilities know that the folks that keep these facilities humming are the real heroes. On Friday, we get steaks and lobster for dinner. The Friday night meal is truly something to look forward to after a hard day of bargainning at the bazaar.

The new week starts all over again on Saturday morning as Eggers comes alive before daybreak. Long before sunup, the Afghans line up at the gate, ready to be X-rayed and patted down before they move into the camp to assist the military in a hundred different way in keeping Eggers running. Convoys form up in Gator Alley, ready to take members of the command group to various meetings around town. At 9 am, the PX will open. Today, we might get lucky. Maybe, just maybe, Listerine is in the overnight delivery. If it is, it will be gone by noon. Best to be there when they open.

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Of all the challenges facing Afghanistan, suicide bombers are in a class all by themselves. The idea of a man strapping on twenty pounds of explosives and walking into a crowded marketplace with the sole purpose of killing as many people as possible is beyond comprehension in a civilized world. There is nowhere to put this kind of behavior, even in combat. Yet it happens in Kabul with regularity. If the Taliban decide a bigger bang is called for, they will pack a non-descript Toyota Corolla with a couple hundred pounds of explosives and go cruising for a high value target such as a coalition convoy, a foreign embassy or a government building. We use acronyms to distinguish one type of suicide bomber from another. VBIEB means vehicle borne improvised explosive device. If the bomber is on foot, he is referred to as a BBIED—body borne. These terms only allow us to classify these people, not explain their behavior.

Seven of them struck downtown Kabul Monday afternoon, just before 10 o’clock. President Kazrai was in the palace, swearing in the newest ministers that will form the basis of his new administration. This event, no doubt, was the catalyst for this attack but the suicide bombers had other targets in mind, such as the Ministry of Justice and the Serena Hotel. The most luxurious hotel in downtown Kabul, the Serena is a favorite target for the Taliban because it symbolizes everything the Taliban both hates and fears. There is no place for the Serena Hotel in their vision of a 7th century Afghanistan.

When something like this happens in Kabul, the first reaction is over-action and the first reports are always wrong. Monday was no exception. The Afghan Army and National Police raced through the city, stopping traffic and shutting down intersections. Wildly exaggerated reports of a hundred civilians dead and the grounds of the presidential Palace penetrated spread like wildfire. In a way, some of this confusion was understandable. Columns of thick, black smoke filled the sky above central Kabul and merged with the ever-present layers of pollution. Gunfire could be heard from several areas of the city, giving the impression that the Taliban had managed to launch a major attack.

For awhile, the attack on Kabul managed to push Haiti off CNN and FOX. A BBC reporter, holded up in a bunker in central Kabul, reported rumors and speculation as fact for over an hour because facts were in short supply. As the day wore on, the gunfire ceased and what actually happened begin to emerge. Only three of the suicide bombers managed to blow themselves up. The other four were shot dead by the Afghan Army and police. This time, the much maligned Afghans performed well, preventing a much larger death toll than the relatively small, officially reported number of twenty dead, including the bombers. They paid a high price for the courage shown because six of the victims were members of the Afghan security forces.

Considering the grim calculus of suicide warfare, this attack was actually a defeat for the Taliban and a much needed victory for the Afghan security forces. They did this on their own, with no coalition assistance, demonstrating that they are capable of enormous courage under fire. When all is said and done, this is the message that should emerge, loud and clear from Monday’s attack, and this is the story line the media should follow. Scores of innocent civilians are alive today because the Afghan forces did their job and held the line.

Sadly, it will not be reported this way because no credit will be given for what didn’t happen. Instead, the media will ask how it is possible for the enemy to launch “complex” attacks inside the city? Wrong question. The much larger question that should be asked is: what motivates young men to use their bodies to deliberately blow up innocent civilians? Until the civilized world understands, and changes, this evil behavior, the attacks will continue with brutal regularity because there is no technological or military counter to them.

By the afternoon, when it became clear that the Kabul attack was not a major story, Haiti returned to dominate the airways. That is as it should be; Haiti is a true natural tragedy on a massive scale, while the Kabul attack was man made. Haiti can be explained by seismologists and geophysics, involving forces far beyond man’s control. No such rational explanation yet exists for what happen in downtown Kabul.

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Kabul is unlike any place I have ever seen. The streets are rutted, lined on both sides by open sewers. Driving through the city is like driving back in time. At first glance, it appears that the city is blissfully unaware of the fact that the world is in the 21st century. In front of a meat market, every animal, except for pigs, is hanging from a hook, completely dressed out with no where to go. Customers surround the fly-covered carcasses, pointing out the cuts they. If will all be sold by nightfall because the shops have no refrigeration. Neither do the customers. Men dressed in long trousers and long sleeve shirts, buttoned at the throat, offer a constant stream of instructions to the butchers. Most have something on their head. The air above Kabul is the most polluted in the world. The pollution hangs in the air like a giant cloud and refuses to go away. People either wear a surgical mask or wrap pashmina scarves around their face in an effort to keep from breathing in the pollution. Swine flu has now arrived in Kabul and the people are terrified; not so much of dying but mortally terrified of dying from anything connected to a pig.

Contrast between the ancient past and the present is everywhere. An old man standing by a tired-looking donkey hooked to a cart is hawking satellite phone cards because phone lines are practically nonexistent. Next to the old man, a young boy is selling oranges from Pakistan. And they stare at you with a blank, empty look. It’s as if they have seen every evil, inhumane act imaginable and they have no emotion left to show.

As you look closer, you notice that the contrast is not so great after all; there is a very dark thread that runs through the city and that thread is survival. This is a city with little hope or energy left. The people you see on the street are doing all they can to get through the day, to survive. The empty look in their faces is all you need to know that they have little faith that things will be better tomorrow. They are resigned to the reality of where they are and they are just trying to survive because that’s what people do, automatically, when the hope of a better future is gone. They do this instinctively. We are born with this desire and it carries us through unbelievable tragedy. Then you see the beggers everywhere. Some blind, some missing limbs, one man with no hands. These are the casualties of a war that has been raging in this shattered country for more than thirty years. This is what war does to people and it makes no difference if the damage was inflicted by the Soviets, the Taliban, or each other; the end result is always the same and the survivors, with nowhere else to go, end up on the streets of Kabul.

When you see women, they are all wearing burkas, the long, blue shroud, symbolizing their repression, that covers them from head to foot. And the ones you see are almost always widows, often holding infants, standing in the street, reduced to begging, because they are barely hanging on to the ragged edge of human existence. They beg on the streets of Kabul because this is the last stop on the road to survival. There is no social safety net under these women because they have little value in this male dominated society. In a country where virginity is highly prized, they are damaged goods, expendable. After thirty years of war, Afghanistan has produced a half a million of them but they are not a high priority to the Karzai administration or the international diplomatic community here.

Official Kabul has issues other than the widows to focus on now, such as the additional 30,000 American troops scheduled to begin arriving soon. President Karzai is desperately putting together a new government that will be acceptable to both houses of the Afghan parliament. Billions of dollars are flowing into the country to re-build Afghanistan. Congressional delegations on fact-finding tours are a daily event in Kabul. They receive briefings that stress the progress that has been made and listen intently to the plans for even more progress.

There are lots of nations here involved in the nation building process. They all mean well. However, there is no common vision of what a free Afghanistan is supposed to look like. They all have a vision but it is not a shared vision. Like so many people trying to interpret an ink blot, they see what they want to see and ignore what they don’t want to see, and act accordingly. It’s as if Afghanistan were a giant blank screen and you could write anything you want. If it’s your story and your vision, then it will come true—to you.

Back on the streets, the widows continue to work the flowing traffic. They cradle the infant in the left arm, leaving the right free to hold out to the passing traffic. The heavily armored coalition convoys pass by quickly. They have to. Stopping, rolling down the window and giving them anything would be a security violation. A grenade could easily be tossed inside. Occasionally, an Afghan driver will stop and offer the lucky widow a ten Afghani note. Twenty cents. Not much but if she can find four more generous donors on this day, it’s enough for her and her baby to survive one more day and survival is the name of the game on the mean streets of Kabul now. This is one of life’s great ironies-those least able to be generous are often the most generous. And all of this takes place less than three hundred yards from the Presidential Palace.

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