A fashion shoot in Afghanistan, 1968 (via Fred Maroon)

A fashion shoot in Afghanistan, 1968 (via Fred Maroon)

Facing Death, Afghan Girl Runs To U.S. Military : NPR

Sad to think that the “solution” in this story was that the girl had to marry. Afghanistan’s rural areas have a long, long way to go.

razistan: In the Wazir Akbar Khan enclave, impoverished Afghans dig through the garbage dumped by compounds owned by foreign NGOs, embassies, offices and wealthy locals. Photo: Mikhail Galustov The war in Afghanistan is not over. Help us tell the story. Fund our Kickstarter.

razistan:

In the Wazir Akbar Khan enclave, impoverished Afghans dig through the garbage dumped by compounds owned by foreign NGOs, embassies, offices and wealthy locals. Photo: Mikhail Galustov

The war in Afghanistan is not over. Help us tell the story. Fund our Kickstarter.

Why no Afghan female I’ve talked to is supportive of the Taliban coming back into power, and why young Afghans talk about 2014 with fear, not relief. inothernews: From the Washington Post: Every morning in this mountain village in eastern Afghanistan, four dozen girls sneak through a square opening in a mud-baked wall, defying a Taliban edict. A U.S.-funded girls school about a mile away was shuttered by insurgents in 2007, two years after it opened. They warned residents that despite a new government in Kabul and an international aid effort focused on female education, the daughters of Spina were to stay home. For a while, they all did. Then two brothers, among the few literate men in the village, began quietly teaching math, reading and writing to their female relatives in a living room on the edge of town. They wanted to keep the classes small, they said, to stay off the Taliban’s radar. That turned out to be impossible. The United States and its allies have spent millions of dollars on female education in the past decade, and Afghan and Western officials have pointed to the issue as one of the most hopeful changes of the post-Taliban era. Female enrollment in public schools has risen from 5,000 under the Taliban to 2.5 million, according to the Afghan Education Ministry. But Afghanistan is rife with places like Spina, where formal efforts to educate women and girls have crumbled. About 2 million Afghan girls do not attend school. …The insurgency had already forced the closure of dozens of girls schools beginning in the middle of past decade, when insurgents started to return to Afghanistan. Many of the schools were built and funded by the United States, and many never reopened. In some villages, the schools have gone underground, hidden in living rooms and guesthouses, as they were during the Taliban’s reign. “It’s risky for the teachers and it’s risky for the students, but these underground schools show the thirst people have for education under the Taliban,” said Shukriya Barakzai, a parliamentarian who ran her own underground school when the Taliban held power in Kabul in the 1990s. “It doesn’t feel much different from those years,” said one of the brothers in insurgent-infested Spina. “We live in a community very far from democracy and freedom.” A reminder of the good we’re trying to do in Afghanistan, and of what heinous, terrible, tyrannic people the Taliban are. (Photo of girls attending an “underground” school in the insurgent-infested town of Spina, Afghanistan — in defiance of a Taliban edict against educating women — by Kevin Sieff / The Washington Post)

Why no Afghan female I’ve talked to is supportive of the Taliban coming back into power, and why young Afghans talk about 2014 with fear, not relief.

inothernews:

From the Washington Post:

Every morning in this mountain village in eastern Afghanistan, four dozen girls sneak through a square opening in a mud-baked wall, defying a Taliban edict.

A U.S.-funded girls school about a mile away was shuttered by insurgents in 2007, two years after it opened. They warned residents that despite a new government in Kabul and an international aid effort focused on female education, the daughters of Spina were to stay home. For a while, they all did.

Then two brothers, among the few literate men in the village, began quietly teaching math, reading and writing to their female relatives in a living room on the edge of town. They wanted to keep the classes small, they said, to stay off the Taliban’s radar. That turned out to be impossible.

The United States and its allies have spent millions of dollars on female education in the past decade, and Afghan and Western officials have pointed to the issue as one of the most hopeful changes of the post-Taliban era. Female enrollment in public schools has risen from 5,000 under the Taliban to 2.5 million, according to the Afghan Education Ministry.

But Afghanistan is rife with places like Spina, where formal efforts to educate women and girls have crumbled. About 2 million Afghan girls do not attend school.

…The insurgency had already forced the closure of dozens of girls schools beginning in the middle of past decade, when insurgents started to return to Afghanistan. Many of the schools were built and funded by the United States, and many never reopened. In some villages, the schools have gone underground, hidden in living rooms and guesthouses, as they were during the Taliban’s reign.

“It’s risky for the teachers and it’s risky for the students, but these underground schools show the thirst people have for education under the Taliban,” said Shukriya Barakzai, a parliamentarian who ran her own underground school when the Taliban held power in Kabul in the 1990s.

“It doesn’t feel much different from those years,” said one of the brothers in insurgent-infested Spina. “We live in a community very far from democracy and freedom.”

A reminder of the good we’re trying to do in Afghanistan, and of what heinous, terrible, tyrannic people the Taliban are.

(Photo of girls attending an “underground” school in the insurgent-infested town of Spina, Afghanistan — in defiance of a Taliban edict against educating women — by Kevin Sieff / The Washington Post)

The Taliban have taken responsibility for the attacks – while we celebrated Samanak, this was their “spring offensive.” The panicked conversation among staff and clients throughout yesterday’s terror was about how meaningless it is to negotiate with the Taliban who stand against peace, against human rights, and whose language and currency is terrorism.
Manizha Naderi, Executive Director of WAW (Women for Afghan Women)

(Source: landofthelions)

Sun

I love spring. It’s usually something like 23 days straight of consecutive blue skies and sunshine, when everyone dusts off their grills, invites three dozen of their best friends over, and BBQs til the wee hours of the evening. Day trips to Istalif and Lake Qargha, sitting in the garden of Flower St for hours on end, and general drunkenness outside.

Kabul’s nice in the springtime, which makes for the perfect backdrop to saying goodbye. For some reason, international organizations and embassies seem to do their reassignments around the summertime, which usually means months on end of Thursday night goodbye parties.

I wonder if I’ll be one of them.

richfoto:

How to use an Afghan box camera “kamra-e-faoree”

The Afghan Box Camera Project provides a record of the kamra-e-faoree (instant camera) which as a living form of photography is on the brink of disappearing in Afghanistan.
In this video, Qalam Nabi, one of the last two remaining box camera photographers in Kabul demonstrates how to use his camera.
For more information and videos and a downloadable instruction manual on how to build an Afghan box camera visit http://www.afghanboxcamera.com

Hah. Nabi’s like, “That’s it?”

Australian news broadcast of the Kandahar incident.

Robert Bales’ smarmy lawyer: “There’s no forensic evidence. There’s no medical examiner’s evidence. There’s no evidence about how many alleged victims, or where those remains are… So, it’s fascinating from a defense lawyer’s perspective. Prove it.”

Kandahar Massacre: Their Disregard and Our Hypocrisy | Kabul Perspective

A great post on the Kandahar shootings over at the Kabul Perspective:

The US military and civilian officials have responded irresponsibly to this tragic incident. Regardless of the controversy that Robert Bales was alone or it was a group of soldiers who went to the houses and killed 16 people, it would have been proper if some senior US officials had joined the Afghan delegation to offer condolence to elders of the area during the funeral. I wonder what the cultural and religious advisors of the US military do. Later a group of area elders and family members of the victims were invited to Kabul by President Karzai. The US military and Embassy officials did not bother to meet them for a formal condolence offering. It might sound ridiculous from an ordinary Western perspective, but it got symbolic and traditional importance in our part of the world, when the guilty side visits the victims during funeral and offer sincere apology.

Investing in Afghanistan

I’m reading the 2005 UNDP Market Sector Assessments survey. Really fascinating look at the investment and growth potential of different sectors like poultry, cashmere, construction, gemstones. Given the distressing state of development in this country, I wouldn’t be surprised if the assessments made back then are still valid today.

The last few days has made me more angry and disillusioned about Afghanistan than anything in the past year. Fine that there are unemployed, angry, disenfranchised people out there. But to engage in violent protests, attack compounds, and threaten death and jihad? That is not ok. 

And the employed, educated* elites don’t seem to be doing anything to help. They — with their comfortable jobs, trainings abroad, heated apartments in the macrorayans — shamble off to their jobs at international organizations where they do shoddy work and complain about the foreigners. They hunker down during the protests and profess having nothing to do with the masses.

These are the uninspiring people poised to take the reins of this country when the foreign troops leave. So be it.

* If Preston University in Pakistan counts as higher education.

Afghanistan: Violating the prime directive again | The Economist


So, so very spot on.

In sum, we violated the prime directive. Violating the prime directive was, in fact, the entire mission: we wanted to fix Afghanistan. We were willing to spend a lot of money as long as it produced results. What we’ve learned is that development aid doesn’t work this way. You can’t get more definite results, or speed up the process, by spending more money. In fact, spending more money will most likely screw things up. We already learned this once, in Vietnam; now we’ve learned it again. Development aid will be successful where it takes a lower profile, doesn’t spend so much money, and sets goals for itself that are modest and achievable within the constraints of what the locals actually want to do and what they’re capable of doing. One other suggestion: it may seem sexier and more noble to develop a country that’s in the middle of a war, but it might work better if you try a country that isn’t.

somewhereinaburstofglory: Fashion designer Safia Tarzi in her Kabul studio, 1969

somewhereinaburstofglory:

Fashion designer Safia Tarzi in her Kabul studio, 1969

(via landofthelions)

Was $73B of Afghan aid wasted? | Politico.com

Oh goodness. The only reason SIGAR exists is because USAID institutionally sucks, can’t monitor its own projects, and needs to find a scapegoat. Everyone knows that aid in Afghanistan is wasted, and rather than fixing the problem, they just impose more rules and reporting and make their bidding process even more convoluted so that only very few companies bother. The same companies who are wasting aid money across the rest of the world.

If USAID really wanted to help the Afghan people, it would have hired Chinese and Turkish companies to build roads and power lines around the country. Circa 2004, the country would have had a transport network and electricity. Instead, they give development contractors like IRD and Louis Berger a $200 million check and say, “Spend it in a year and give us monthly reports on your successes.” Surprise, surprise that most people with Masters degrees in Development Studies who have never worked in the private sector before can’t actually spend $200 million dollars in one year.

My favorite quote of the year, from a former colleague. “They want us to spend more of our budget. Maybe we can buy more armored cars.”

watanafghanistan:

A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan

Support this project on Kickstarter at http://kck.st/pvYx32

Outsiders often see Afghanistan as a problem in need of a solution: a conflict region that needs more troops or another election. But in seeing Afghanistan as a problem, the people of the country, and their desire for self-determination, are often overlooked.

A Darkness Visible focuses on another story: one of ordinary citizens whose lives play out in the shadow of superpowers. There are stories of violence to be sure, but there is also friendship and love and even romance.

Based on 14 trips to Afghanistan between 1994 and 2010, A Darkness Visible is the work of renowned photojournalist Seamus Murphy. His luminous pictures chronicle a people caught time-and-again in political turmoil, struggling to find their own way.