Life on the Shamali Plain

The road to Kabul has changed dramatically in the few months since I last took it. The road itself is still in very poor shape, but the landscape has transformed. Back in February I would have bet nothing ever grew on that barren dirt expanse. Now there is a carpet of green interspersed with wheat fields and occasional groups of purple thistles. The nomads who were below the Kabul gorge have moved onto the foothills between Bagram and Kabul city. They tend their flocks of goats with donkeys and camels wandering around their encampments.

Closer to Kabul we came on the brick kilns, black smoke drifting down the valley from the tires they burn as fuel. This is the cottage industry in the valley. As we drove along there are a number of walled compounds that appear empty. These are basically land claims. The Afghan’s are prolific wall builders. Find a little spot you want just build a wall around it. These are almost always a square or rectangle. Not the greedy grab of all available land that one might expect. It makes for good business for the kilns. All but a very few walls are made of the mud bricks they produce.

Shops outside Kabul look like roadside shops in so much of the 3rd world. Small cinder block or mud shells crammed full of stuff for sale, sodas, snacks. These seem to cater to the road traffic, mostly truckers. Closer in we come into the industrial area of Kabul. I’ve been here before. This is a place of fuel farms, factories, trucking firms, military posts. Eventually we ended up on the main road into town. Traffic is crazy by western standards. One of my Afghan colleagues said that while in most of the world pedestrians are afraid of vehicles, in Afghanistan the reverse is true. It’s an odd place to travel. We even saw a cyclist riding toward traffic in between lanes. No concern on his face.

The presidential election is in August and the security in Afghanistan is being stepped up considerably. There are numerous police checkpoints all around Kabul. They pull cars seemingly at random to check credentials. We were even stopped once or twice. An Afghan driver in a suit and tie, two westerners dressed like contractors in a black Lexus LX570, so much for profiling the Taliban. The heart of Kabul is not so very different from other cities in much of the world. They have small supermarkets, malls, car dealers, butcher shops with dressed lambs hanging for inspection, fruit peddlers with carts pushing their way along with the cars.
It’s quite impressive how much reconstruction has taken place in Kabul. This city was ground zero during the civil war between the Taliban and Northern Alliance. A good deal of the city no longer bears the scars of war, because it’s new. The old Soviet built apartment blocks are a notable exception. Heavily bullet pock marked. You get an idea just how fierce the fighting was. One of the few complaints about Ahmad Shah Massoud was that during the civil war he freely shelled Kabul after loosing it to the Taliban. Even so, there is a large monument to him on the outskirts of the diplomatic area of Kabul.

I feel fortunate having the opportunity to travel about like a civilian. Moving about anonymously, rather than up armored and in full battle rattle, allows you to get much closer to Afghanistan. I like this country. I like these people. I hope to return one day.