![](\"\/sites\/default\/files\/pnl\/images\/afghan-streetkids.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\norphaned children. Besides the three orphanages we visited,
\nwe also encountered numerous other kids going from car to car
\nbegging in the dense stop-and-go traffic. We\u2019ll never know what
\ntragedies they have endured…
\nand can only shudder to think what their future is likely to be.
\nPhoto: Jacob George.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Note: As I finalize this article the Associated Press [9\/14] reports that the US Embassy in Kabul has been shelled by rocket-propelled grenades and has \u201ccanceled all trips in and out of Afghanistan for its diplomats, and suspended all travel within Afghanistan.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n
Few here in the States have firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan. Few have any idea how the Afghan people have suffered from the ten-year invasion and occupation. Few have any sense of the absolute failure of the war\u2014by any standard except that of generating mega-profits for certain \u201cdefense\u201d corporations.<\/p>\n
Haunted by this gap in my own education, this summer I spent 30 days in Afghanistan\u2014or more precisely, in Kabul. I was part of a small Voices for Creative Nonviolence [www.vcnv.org] delegation.<\/p>\n
Nervous Armed Men<\/b><\/p>\n
Kabul is a city of sandbags and nervous, armed men, both on foot and in big, shiny, urgently-honking vehicles. In Kabul life is lived opaquely\u2014behind thick metal doors and high walls topped with barbed wire. Approach the airport and soldiers will have you out of your vehicle three times, patting you down before you even reach the parking lot.<\/p>\n
Early on we are told that, according to the Red Cross, security is worse here than it\u2019s been in the last 30 years. Those with a stake in the status quo dread the talked about departure of the US forces and their allies. (The US is quietly lobbying the Karzai government to agree to permanent US bases.) Some we meet prefer the devil they\u2019ve come to know this past excruciating decade to other devils harder to identify, harder to predict.<\/p>\n
Our delegation is restricted in our movements. Do we avoid venturing forth from the clipped lawns and rose gardens of our guest house compound? Hardly. But we stay inside those high walls until our driver arrives and we quickly hop in his van. Our unflappable driver, with preternatural reflexes, plunges us into what must be some of the densest, scariest, least-regulated (no traffic lights) traffic on the planet.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re off to visit a primary school, an orphanage, a women\u2019s co-op, a photo gallery, a de-mining museum, a refugee camp. Or we see the zoo \u2013 with its pack of scrawny wolves and its flock of vultures. On one of the few evenings we stay out after dark, we attend a US Embassy-sponsored film festival showcasing young Afghan filmmakers.<\/p>\n
Our most vibrant visit is to Skateistan [www.skateistan.com]. Brandon Gomez, a recent Syracuse University grad, enthusiastically shows us around this volunteer-run indoor skateboarding\/basketball\/rock climbing arena. Brandon is one of several young internationals who coach teenage boys and girls and provide obligatory courses in art and environmentalism.<\/p>\n
We have 40 or so meetings with teachers, journalists, editors, social entrepreneurs, and with the staff of various NGOs \u2014 internationals, Afghan-Americans, and Afghans. Whether guarded or candid, perplexing or illuminating, each encounter provides a piece (a figment?) of the puzzle. We glimpse complexities and contradictions\u2014and tragedies\u2014some beyond our sheltered imaginations.<\/p>\n
I journeyed to Afghanistan hoping to hear what Afghans think about Reaper drones. I<\/i> think they are cowardly. Syracuse\u2019s Hancock air base trains Reaper personnel and from there some of these robotic hunter\/killers are piloted over Afghanistan. Thus the air war in Afghanistan operates in part out of my back yard.<\/p>\n
So I thought I might meet with drone survivors. But staff at Kabul\u2019s no-questions-asked Emergency Hospital (specializing in war wounds) tell us that drone victims would be cared for elsewhere, if at all, closer to where drones prey. And where we westerners dare not go.<\/p>\n
Few of our contacts in Kabul are interested in drones. One human rights NGO staffer allows that, yes, drones kill civilians, but\u2014ta da!\u2014they also destroy madrassas<\/i>. I wince at this functionary\u2019s equanimity: rural Afghans may be rather less cavalier about such aerial terrorism.<\/p>\n
Some of our meetings are inspiring. We spend an hour with Malalai Joya (her pseudonym). Malalai, a young woman barely five feet tall, only survives by moving with her guards from safe house to safe house. She was elected to Parliament froma remote region, but was drummed out of that august body for publicizing the war crimes of several of her parliamentary colleagues. While this notoriety led to international speaking tours, it also led to assassination attempts.<\/p>\n
Getting our directions via cell phone, we don\u2019t know where we\u2019ll meet Malalai until moments before we arrive. We enter one of those unmarked compounds on a nameless street (typical of Kabul) and are met by two armed men. One stands a few feet off, gun in hand, while the other frisks us\u2014and has us snap photos with our cameras and write with our pens to confirm that these aren\u2019t disguised weapons.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t space here to go into Malalai\u2019s remarks, or to convey the care and courage she radiates. Suffice it to say Malalai is not one of those who see their interests entwined with those occupying her country. Check out her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords<\/i> (Scribner, 2009).<\/p>\n
The Elephant\u2019s Trunk<\/b><\/p>\n
To begin understanding this harrowed land you must see its teeming capital. Yet Kabul provides only an incomplete and, indeed, distorted picture of the country as a whole.<\/p>\n
Given how tense and militarized the city itself is, we choose not to disdain whatever security it does offer. But such constraints reveal how illusory any US military claims of \u201cprogress\u201d have been over these past ten years\u2014despite the hundreds of billions of dollars squandered. Not to mention all the orphans created and the thousands of limbs and lives lost.<\/p>\n
From our glimpses of the Afghan countryside, it\u2019s clear that Kabul bears little resemblance to the hinterland. One might as well try to imagine an elephant having only seen its trunk. Or one might seek to understand the US by visiting only Washington or New York\u2026or Syracuse.<\/p>\n
Swollen with internal refugees, Kabul is said to now have about a fifth of Afghanistan\u2019s population. Kabul\u2019s social structures are not those of the countryside. Nor do urban agendas and interests\u2014or security issues\u2014reflect those of the rural areas where most Afghans live.<\/p>\n
I belabor this point because I was taken aback by how many of those we met in the capital favor an ongoing US military presence. Some fear chaos if the US leaves and its corrupt puppet government dissolves (\u201cwithin three days,\u201d as a former US Embassy contractor told us). They fear the ensuing civil war\u2014as if for years the invader hadn\u2019t been supporting fundamentalist warlords, fostering corruption, promoting ethnic hatred, paying off the Taliban, making night raids, detaining and torturing young men\u2026and testing its high-tech weapons systems.<\/p>\n
Some, especially among the NGO strata, have a stake in the status quo. Why not? It seems to work well enough for those with internationally-derived incomes. Without the invader such perks would vanish. But I keep wondering how rural Afghans\u2014already savaged by the occupation and<\/i> by those resisting the occupation\u2014would see things. Confined to Kabul, how are we to know?<\/p>\n
My few weeks in Afghanistan pound home what I already know: US taxpayers must face our complicity in the terror of US militarism. As the war on Afghanistan now enters its eleventh year, we must break out of our bubbles. We must stop averting our eyes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In early November, Ed will be one of over 30 activists prosecuted in Dewitt town court for having protested the Reaper drone by \u201cdying-in\u201d last April at the main gate of Hancock air base. For speaking engagements, reach him at edkinane@verizon.net.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
30 Days in Kabul\u2026or, Afghanistan Through a Keyhole Delegation member Nancy Gowen with surprisingly cheery street kids. Kabul is said to have an uncountable number of homeless and orphaned children. Besides the three orphanages we visited, we also encountered numerous other kids going from car to car begging in…<\/p>\n