Sesame Street comes to Kabul

A couple of great photos of Sesame Street coming to Kabul, courtesy of TOLO TV, the Afghan Ministry of Education, and the U.S. Embassy. Sesame Street's messages of love of learning and tolerance are as sorely needed in Afghanistan as in any of the other countries that broadcast their own versions of the show. And the additional push of Sesame Street to the very few classroom hours in the typical Afghan public school can't hurt. One wonders, though, how widely access to television is, especially in the areas where school attendance is lowest.

When life gives you pomegranates...

This video from USAID in Afghanistan shows a USDA employee working with pomegranate farmers to maximize the yield from their crops. I'm happy to see Embassy folks working directly on projects in the field, interacting directly with Afghans and, one hopes, helping them improve their lives.

I've always been impressed with USDA folks overseas. They add personal warmth to professional capabilities that other Embassy staff could learn from. Even in our training course, they really stood out.

In the context of genuinely nice people who contribute incredibly to Afghanistan's progress, I should also mention my former colleague Laura, the staff archeologist and cultural heritage manager for the Embassy. You can read about her work in an article in her hometown paper here.

Hair stories

The Wall Street Journal reported last month on a training program for Afghan businesswomen that brought one woman who runs a small beauty salon in Mazar i-Sharif to see how a top of the line salon in New York operates. The article does a nice job of showing the value of the visit from a business point of view (and fortunately it rather admires the work of the Afghan woman, when it could easily have sneered at the whole idea). It also gives a nice overview of professional exchange programs, complete with interpreters (not translators, WSJ), cultural activities, interaction with Americans, and the big hope, that "with her skills ... she'll make a difference in the lives of these women in Afghanistan."

One thing is certain: this story seems far more Afghan-focused, even though it takes place in New York, then the story of the Kabul Beauty School, run by an American. Somehow, though both are about training, respecting the talents of an Afghan and providing her with some opportunities is a much more successful approach than setting up a permanent aid station in the form of a for-profit business. (Photo from the NYT article.)

A beautiful film on Afghanistan

Do check out this film on Afghanistan, with beautiful and unexpected images.

Thinking about Kabul again

It's been quite a while since I've posted on this blog, but that doesn't mean that Kabul has gone away. The attack on the U.S. Embassy, for one thing, certainly gave me a kind of scare. It was never clear in the media reports exactly which building the Taliban were shooting from, but I've always assumed that it was the building up near Massoud Circle that I was told will someday be the Marriott Hotel of Kabul. A building that, for that very reason, seemed to be a source of great hope.

Then in another "you never leave your last post" moment (post being, in this case, the assignment, not the blog), I was able to join former Public Affairs Section colleagues to play Trivia at Tonic up the street. With great memories of the Red Tent on the Embassy compound and the fiercely competitive Trivia matches there.

And finally, an email from Ram, filmmaker, IT guy, and dedicated teacher. He was part of the International Writing Program group that came to Kabul in May and in between reading his own poetry, showing new techniques to film

students at Kabul University, and generally being the good guy that he is, he finished several video projects about the tour. I haven't yet seen the feature documentary, but here is a short video about the poet Nathalie Handal, with images of her workshops at Kabul University's English Department (here in the photo) and at the Education Faculty.

Ruling the airways in Afghanistan

David Ignatius has a good piece today in the Washington Post about Tolo TV, one of the first and possibly the most successful private television networks in Afghanistan. Ignatius says:

Reading the news from Afghanistan, it’s easy to think that America has been pouring money down a sinkhole, trying to help a country that is forever primitive. Some of that gloom is deserved. But a look at Tolo TV reminds me that Afghanistan is actually modernizing quite rapidly and that its reform-minded journalists and television producers are some of the smartest (and bravest) people I know.

Tolo pioneered the Afghan soap opera, the Afghan reality show (Afghan Star, modelled on American Idol), and the Afghan crime drama. Its mere existence drives the Taliban crazy. Also, Tolo journalist Ahmad Farzad Lameh, who tweets in English at @FarzadLameh, is a well-informed source about Afghan news and politics. Check him out!

The cats are back

You may be beginning to think I'm a little crazy about cats, but after my last post I found this set of photos from last year in the Washington Post. As you will see, the Marines are a lot more generous toward their feline friends than the diplomats. Stereotypes, be gone!

The Consul speaks

A colleague at Embassy Kabul explains why he likes his job.

Nothing is easy in Afghanistan, not even a simple trip down the street.
Even after 10 years into my career, I'm always learning something new here in
Afghanistan. It's both exhausting and inspiring, frustrating and uplifting. For
me, working in Afghanistan isn't just an opportunity to serve on the frontlines
of American diplomacy, it represents a chance to take on unique
challenges.

Read more here.

In search of an Afghan cat

Snow Leopard, a photo by Aamir Yunus on Flickr.

Apologies at the beginning, because the title for this post is a really poor pun on the title of this blog. (I tell you this in case you weren't really paying attention.) But cats have been in the news in Afghanistan recently. First, the good news. The snow leopard of Afghanistan, considered extremely endangered, turns out to have a surprisingly healthy population in the Wakhan Corridor, in the high mountains of northeast Afghanistan, according to a report from National Geographic.

On the down side, read this story from the Washington Post about the cat population of the American Embassy in Kabul. It is, by the way, absolutely true that the Embassy has a pretty big population of semi-domesticated cats that most people either like or tolerate. The account of the crisis in the Embassy is wholly accurate, I would say. I was in Kabul when the "cat town meeting" was held, and although I didn't attend the meeting, by all accounts it was raucous. Never get between a cat and a cat lover, is my advice. My colleague feels bad that Ambassador Keith, the Assistant Chief of Mission, was called out in the Post article. I just think that if you are an Ambassador, you want to get in the newspapers standing up to tyranny or at least welcoming Lady Gaga. Not for cat genocide.

Personally, I always thought the cats were non-offensive at worst, rather sweet at best. They certainly didn't deserve the threatening notices posted all around the cafeteria. Except for the black cat that all too often sat on the steps of the Old Chancery, where our offices were located. We were convinced that this one was the Iranian Spy Cat, and no doubt deserved deportation, though certainly not execution.

Turkish Airlines to fly to Kabul

THY Turkish Airlines has announced that, beginning today, it will fly from Istanbul to Kabul three times a week. Not only will that be a nice addition to the approved flights that U.S. Embassy personnel can use -- assuming that it is approved -- but it's an impressive vote of confidence in the Afghan market. Perhaps not what one would think given the recurring news of Taliban attacks.

Ariana Afghan airlines already has a flight to Istanbul, but it's not too reliable. Nor is the flight approved for Embassy personnel, since the airline doesn't meet international safety standards. Nonetheless, relieved that Ariana hadn't had a reported accident in decades, a friend took the Kabul-Istanbul flight a few weeks ago. Although we could get him reconfirmed for his flight, he reported that the airline was uninformative about its flight delay and made an intermediate stop in Ankara that wasn't on the schedule, thus causing him to miss his onward connection. Since THY is reported to be the best airline in Europe, perhaps these issues won't affect its Kabul flight. To be confirmed....

The hooch, revisited

All right, it has absolutely nothing to do with Afghanistan, but here is a beautiful house built in Costa Rica out of two shipping containers for $40,000. There's a whole photo gallery here. Do you think the Facilities guys in Kabul would be interested?

Skateboarding in Afghanistan

In honor of a certain skateboarder, here's the future of Afghanistan, on wheels.

Boing-Boing's caption says: "An Afghan girl takes part in a skate boarding competition to mark the third annual Go Skateboarding Day in Kabul, on June 21, 2011." Kabul's Skateistan skate park/youth development organization is featured in this Sundance 2011 documentary.

Graffiti art in Kabul

Check out this interesting story from the Guardian about graffiti artists in Kabul. It's fascinating that an American aid contractor asked the artists to do a project for them on gender awareness. I wonder what happened.

Qassem is one of a small band of graffiti artists in the Afghan capital who, encouraged by a group of western "art activists", are set on bringing tagging, wall-painting and graphic stencils to public spaces across the city. "I'm going to edit a few traffic signs. Write slogans in big, funky script. Even paint across whole streets. The idea is to make people ask questions," Qassem said.

Read more here, and don't miss the photos.

More about kites

Of course, after the real Afghan kites had been transported from Afghanistan and flown above both the parking lot of the diner and the beach at Sandy Point State Park, the kite master learned on YouTube that the same kites can be purchased on-line. Both mylar and paper kites are available for a couple of dollars apiece. Of course, the website sells them as "Indian fighter kites." Clearly not the same thing as authentic Afghan kites, hand-carried from Kabul. For so many reasons.

Still, that does not mean that Indian fighter kites wouldn't make a highly suitable present one day soon.

The kite arrives

You may be wondering what ever happened to the Afghan kite. Well, mission accomplished. Of course, as every Afghan told me, kites are available everywhere. However, thanks to our security protocols, I couldn't just go shopping. Try as one might, souvenir shopping just doesn't count as official business, and for the time being, trips off the Embassy (with very few exceptions) are for official business only.

So we turn, as we so often do, to the invaluable aid of our local staff, who not only know the place, but are often incredibly generous in helping us in many ways that go far beyond the official job description. Thanks to R., I ended up with a package with five kites - just big enough to be awkward to carry, way too big for the overhead compartments in airplanes, oddly shaped enough to attract the attention of customs officers, and fortunately just small enough to fit in the x-ray equipment at security checkpoints. I carried a big roll of scotch tape for possible emergencies caused by curious officials, but never had to use it. And I must say that flight attendants were uniformly helpful in finding a closet or other storage space to keep the kites.

On arrival at Dulles, the kite commander tricked us. I'm hungry, he said, can we stop somewhere and eat? Yes, we could, but first, what better place to fly a kite than in the diner's parking lot? And the next day, could we go to the beach at Sandy Point and fly kites? Yes, and yes again.

Rock and roll hits Kabul

NATO's news service reports that rock and roll is hitting Kabul's "growing number of music venues." That would be fun to see.

Check out the photos of Kabul Dreams, the first rock band in Afghanistan.

A view of Kabul

As seen from a rooftop at the Embassy, Kabul looks pretty green and verdant. It isn't really, though the city mayor with support from the U.S. Embassy and other donors is trying to restore the urban forest, badly neglected and much damaged during the civil war. The mountains in the background surround the city, which is already at 6000 feet.

Real estate boom in Kabul - buy now!

From the Daily Telegraph:

Kabul gold rush: western billions bear fruit in luxury property boom for Afghan capital
Kabul is witnessing an unlikely boom in luxury properties as the
billions spent in Afghanistan by the West begin to bear unexpected fruit.

I saw some of this, with new subdivisions with plots of land selling for tens of thousands of dollars and shiny new buildings. Can this really be sustained?

Read the article at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8543718/Kabul-gold-rush-western-billions-bear-fruit-in-luxury-property-boom-for-Afghan-capital.html

In the Embassy

Attending the U.S. Embassy Awards Ceremony, in the new Chancery building. The Embassy atrium features an Afghan tapestry based on the Jasper Johns painting of the American flag that you can see here. Thanks to Brian for my photo.

Why this all matters

I've been reading Fulbright applications this week. Nearly 1000 Afghans have applied for grants to sponsor their master's degree studies in the United States. Probably about fifty will eventually win scholarships, in fields from architecture and urban planning to financial accounting to filmmaking. These candidates are, by and large, pretty talented. They mostly come from the top of their classes at universities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or India; they mostly have responsible positions in government, NGOs, and foreign embassies and international organizations; their English is good (often excellent) and they speak Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi, French, German, Arabic, Turkish and who knows what else besides.

Yet it's not their academic qualifications that are so compelling or even their oft-repeated promises of service to their homeland. It's their personal stories. This generation spent its school age years in the Afghan civil war and under Taliban rule, or as refugees in Pakistan (mostly) or Iran. Their stories are of girls who studied secretly; of fathers who were shot by the Taliban for educating their daughters; of refugee families building their own houses out of mud in Pakistan. Twelve year old boys who sold fruit from carts while doing their homework, so their families could pay rent and school fees, in asylum countries that didn't allow Afghan refugees access to public schools. Mothers who spent half their tiny salaries on books and pens. Their personal statements weigh you down with sheer repetition of hardship and of courage.

What we do here matters. The modest contribution of the Fulbright student program in Afghanistan, which probably costs in all less than a couple of companies of American soldiers, is a bridge to a better future. Young Afghans know what religious despotism and terrorism are; they want no more of it. They ask for our help now, but don't expect it forever.

I for one am glad to stand with the teenager whose volleyball game was attacked as un-Islamic by Taliban thugs with rifles and who now is a journalist, with the 17 year old who was brave enough to interpret for American troops in 2002 and now helps lead an international organization's local office in his home town, and with the girl whose school was conducted in secret, but who will not give up until she is the governor of her province. What we do to support them, what we do to help them succeed: it matters.

Senator Kerry meets the press

A lot of Congressional delegations, or CODELs, come to Kabul. But when Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and best known here for criticizing Karzai for the corruption in Afghanistan, comes to town, the press turns out. The photo (by U.S. Embassy photographer Sheila Vemmer) shows Kerry with a journalist from Radio Azadi, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty service for Afghanistan. He went on to a press conference with all the international press - some 25 people. Kerry is a pro at this: he's got his message and sticks to it.

Public diplomacy a la francaise

The other day I went by Malalay High School, a public high school for girls in Kabul supported by the French Government. It turns out that Malalay was a young woman hero of the Anglo-Afghan Wars who, according to a website on the war, saved the day against the British Army at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880.

Malalai was there to help tend to the wounded and provide water and spare weapons. Eventually there came a point in the battle where the Afghan army, despite their superior numbers, started to lose morale and the tide seemed to be turning in favour of the British. Seeing this, Malalai took off her veil and shouted out:

"Young love! If you do not fall in the battle of Maiwand, By God, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame!"

This gave many of the Afghan fighters and ghazis a new resolve and they redoubled their efforts. At that moment one of the leading flag-bearers fell from a British bullet, and Malalai went forward and held up the flag (some versions say she made a flag out of her veil), singing a landai:

"With a drop of my sweetheart's blood, Shed in defense of the Motherland, Will I put a beauty spot on my forehead, Such as would put to shame the rose in the garden,"

Malalai was, I guess, the Barbara Fritchie of Afghanistan.

But what a perfect choice of school for the French to support! Not only does Marianne associate herself with an authentic woman hero, but she also gets to knock the British... ever so gently. Vive les droits de la femme! Vive la France!

Our interpreter

110508-S-1034V-471, a photo by U.S Embassy Kabul Afghanistan on Flickr.

Normally interpreters are pretty reserved folks, letting other people's words speak. But here at our roundtable for U.S. and Afghan writers, our interpreter Farhad got into the moment.

More about Buzkashi

Cowboy Visit, April 23-May 2, 2011, a photo by U.S Embassy Kabul Afghanistan on Flickr.

Here's a photo from my friend Brian of the buzkashi match at the Marshal Fahim Garden in Kabul on May 1.

Bus(kashi)boys and poets

I'm not sure what happened to my good intentions to write every day, but I see it's been a couple of weeks since I touched fingers to keyboard. So the question is... do I start where I left off and maybe catch up... or should I just jump up to the present? Here's my solution, yet another of my favorite kind of choice that involves not making a decision: Busboys and Poets.

If you know Washington, you know that the hip cafe/bookstore/poetry reading place is Busboys and Poets. Now it's a chain of three, though obviously the original on U Street is the hip one, and neither of the others is here in Kabul. But Busboys and Poets, as I will explain, are the bookends of the past days.

Sure, it should be Bus(kashi)boys. Buzkashi is (as I noted recently when editing a post that hasn't yet appeared on Dipnote) an exciting sport played throughout Central Asia that involves horsemen fighting over a goat carcass, which they try to bring to a goal area at one end of a field. (Stay tuned for a photo.) And I recently spent a Sunday at the buzkashi field with a group from the Wyoming-based organization Vista 360 watching a buzkashi match. Vista 360 is an NGO that promotes exchanges among rural people and mountain people in different countries and assists in economic development projects, especially marketing of traditional handicrafts. They've worked extensively in Kyrgyzstan so Afghanistan is a logical next point. So we had Gail the cowboy-poet and Linda the horse-trekker-musician meeting with Afghan chapandaz (horsemen) and traditional culture organizers and the like.

And poets: I've spent the last several days with my old friend Chris Merrill, director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and a group of writers from the program. We've traveled all over Kabul doing writing workshops for students at Kabul University and other educational institutions and readings with Afghan poets. The enthusiasm for their visit was palpable. As one young Afghan writer said, "After ten years of soldiers, it's about time you brought us poets."

First kites

As you know, I've been thinking about Afghan kites, and I finally saw my first one. I was asked to go to the new building for the Voice of America and Radio Azadi, which is just a few minutes away from the Embassy. There, hanging on the back wall of the garden, were their very own Afghan kites!

So, following the speeches, the ribbon cutting, the trek up to the rooftop terrace, the views over the city, the snacks, and all that, I got my kite, neatly wrapped up in a cloth bag and ready to go. I don't have a picture for you, but soon Radio Azadi kites will be flying over DC.

New citizens

Some of my colleagues went to Kandahar Airfield for a naturalization ceremony for 50 U.S. servicemen who became U.S. citizens. It turns out that DOD actively supports non-citizen military members who want

Untitled, a photo by U.S Embassy Kabul Afghanistan on Flickr.

to become citizens, and the U.S. CIS official flew in from their regional office in Bangkok to administer the oath of citizenship. The folks in the picture above are among our newest citizens. I wasn't part of the contingent, but I thought it was pretty moving.

Earth Day at Kabul University

Kabul University is surprisingly green, especially when you see how dusty Kabul is, and even more when you learn that the campus was a battleground in the civil war here. But even if the campus buildings are a little worn, the grounds are inviting. So the University was a good place for Afghanistan's Earth Day commemoration.

There were speeches galore, and important people, and even more than a few TV cameras. But most impressive were the five women students from the University's Forestry Department who came over to talk to our Ambassador. You can see them on the Embassy's Flickr page. Good English, check. Obviously knowledgeable, check. Utterly confident that they were going to make an important contribution to their country. That's the sort of thing that makes you feel that there's hope.

How it all started

Over coffee, naturally.

A friendly coffee in the State Department's Foggy Bottom cafeteria with an old colleague turned into, "Can I tell my boss that you'd consider going to Kabul?" And then a phone call from the boss turned into, "We could really use you." Though I think that "you" was a euphemism for "someone" or even "anyone: help!"

I've all too often found my jobs, not exactly through networking, but rather through serendipity. I tell people, and it's nearly true, that I joined the Foreign Service because it was raining one Saturday morning in Brooklyn, so I took the Foreign Service exam in the main post office, rather than get wet. It is the absolute truth that I got my first Foreign Service posting, in Ivory Coast, because it was the available French-language assignment, I spoke French, and, having recently finished graduate school, I had little appetite for a year learning, say, Czech or Mongolian. And when I left the Foreign Service, sure I would never return to the State Department, a phone call inviting me to work on cultural exchanges with Iran, a land that had always been mysteriously attractive for me, was all it took to entice me back.

So it was natural that when Kabul came calling, I went willingly, entranced perhaps by the mythology of the Silk Road and the curiosity of a huge Embassy in a war zone. My boss, who had served in Iraq, wondered why I wanted to go; his boss thought it would be a great adventure and learning experience; his boss (there's no shortage of hierarchy where I work) worried about who would do my work. And Fidy said, "Go!"

But the truth is, I was sent on a mission. Not a political or evangelical mission; democratizing the world was far from this commander's orders. My mission was simple: "Bring back an Afghan kite!"

By way of a beginning

This is a beginning from the middle. With all good intentions, I had planned this to be a travel diary, or at least a teenager's journal of random notes, fears and aspirations. Instead, I've been in Kabul a full week already without a single word posted. So, let's start from the middle...

From the "hooch" - which everyone except me knew was the basic lodging offered to Embassy staff. When I'm polite, I tell my family it's a trailer - and it is, in a way, with what I imagine to be all the comforts of a modest mobile home: bed, dresser, desk, sink, toilet, shower, microwave plus a big flat screen TV, all provided by the Embassy. And really, it's fairly comfortable if small. The hot water works 24/7, the toilet flushes, there are thirty or more stations of cable television.

The truth is, though, that the hooch is not a trailer. It won't trail anything; it never had wheels; it will never know the joys of the open road. It is not an RV just waiting to set out for the back woods of Afghanistan.

The truth is, the hooch is a container, fixed up and reconstituted for human life. It is utilitarian, without any hope of having an emotional connection with its occupant. It exists in vast organized rows, never to be alone. It is meant to be temporary (and indeed, a couple of dozen of them disappeared from their site the other day). The hooch is the empty shell on the beach, occupied by the hermit crab but eventually abandoned.