Frontier Dispatches

Kabul Diary, June 2012 Monday

I have already overstayed by several weeks my planned journey of only a few days, sucked into the Kabul vortex. Despite the fact that it’s a war zone and talk is of the country going to hell in a handcart, life is good.

It’s probably really good for those who are laundering money, and a lot of that goes on. My flight from Dubai is full of men wearing piran tomban, and oddly all carrying matching briefcases. They could have attended the same conference, but I suspect they are returning having deposited cash in the emirate, where so much of the wonga goes.

Tonight I am invited to dinner. My host is a member of the former royal family, an oaf of a man with unflattering aristocratic pretensions. All over the walls of his house are pictures of Afghans from decades and centuries ago.

‘Who are they?’ I ask.

Kings, prime ministers, more kings and princes, he says. Unfortunately, all men with mustaches look the same.

I must take better care to vet the people I hang out with. A sinewy French woman with the harsh potato-eater features of a Van Gogh peasant gives massages in another room. By the time it’s my turn, she’s too tired. She teaches street children circus skills. I am actually here to work, something I try to slip into my very active social life.

Over many years, I have written for the UK’s Mail On Sunday. I happened to be living in Dubai when I got a call from them saying that a British woman had been kidnapped. The paper asked me to go to Kabul as soon as possible. I needed a visa — easy to get at that time — and arrived the next day.

Of the story this is what I know so far: in the Faizabad office where Helen Johnston and her Medair colleagues work, there is a wonderful view on to the rough and wild river. The two-storey house stands on the long and wide main road in the provincial capital of Badakhshan, and has a verandah in the front. Take the recently paved highway and you will be in China. This is the ancient Silk Road. In many parts of this remote Afghan area, things have not changed for hundreds of years.

The terrain is so rough and villages so isolated that the only way to reach them is on horseback, and as the sun was setting Helen Johnston and her three colleagues rode to the isolated villages where they work — Yawan, Raghistan and Kohistan. At the top of a mountain, this time three armed men appeared in front of them on the path, and one pointed a gun.

Tuesday

The Kabul social scene moves at a hectic pace. Tonight there is a screening of a film, Reel Unreel, at the bombed-out cinema called Behzad, in the old city. What an astonishing place. The peeling paint is from decades ago and an ugly, faded, hospital green. There is exposed brick and craters in the concrete. Red fold-up lawn chairs are set up under the open air (the roof having collapsed long ago) in front of a large screen. This is one of the most extraordinary events I have been to.

An Afghan-Swiss photojournalist snaps pictures for the New Yorker, policemen in Clouseau-like uniforms watch as locals — women in burqas and children — as well as expats gather.

I catch the tail end of the movie, which doesn’t get great reviews. It runs for just over twenty minutes and is about a boy rolling an old metal film reel through the streets of Kabul. Dinner after is held at the Queen’s Palace, meticulously restored by the Aga Khan Foundation. Lanterns hang from trees and people sit on large Afghan rugs ringed by large cushions known as toshaks. It is quite exquisite.

Afghan food is served. Usually it is heavy and swimming in oil, but tonight it is not only delicious but the orange rice is delicate and lightly fragrant. It is a small gathering during which I talk to Zolay, still tiny, still trilingual, still designing the same things and still lovely. I still hate the clothes.

Medair, a small Christian organization, worked among Salafis, radical Islamists. In its lemon-coloured offices this did not seem to cause problems. As one Afghan remarked,‘It has taken fourteen hundred years and we are not yet real Muslims, so how can a few bibles convert us to Christianity? We’re not afraid.’

My friend Zaman helps me identify the Afghan men who were kidnapped and finds out as much information as he can for me. We arrange to interview them by phone. Zaman speaks to them and provides me with some great information about where and how they were held, what happened during that time. He has a fairly good idea who the kidnappers are. The released men are anxious, worried and still recovering from their ordeal. Zaman has excellent sources and deep knowledge, which he freely shares. His life has been spent traversing the country. It is pure serendipity that we met, through another Afghanista friend helping me with the story. The ability to make incredible contacts has always been one of the great bonuses and necessities of journalism.

Ironic that a few months later Zaman found himself in the same hostage situation.

Wednesday

dOCUMENTA (13) comes to Kabul. It is the first time that this prestigious international contemporary art project has been held in a war zone.

Established in 1955, it takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany (as well as Banff and Cairo/Alexandria). It has been brought to Afghanistan by the Goethe-Institut, and they have chosen the Queen’s Palace for the exhibition, an astonishing location, with views over the mountains that form a daisy chain around the capital. Five international Afghan artists were selected in the process, which began two and a half years ago.

Zolaykha Sherzad has made an over sized chapan, the coat that Karzai wears. Zalmai, the Afghan-Swiss photographer, photographs transformed weapons of war.

That night, like every night, the lights across Kabul illuminate the mountains surrounding the city. Certainly, this is progress. But the electricity comes from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. ‘They can just switch it off any time they like,’ says a friend.

A helicopter lands on top of a steep, treeless mountain in Badakhshan. The valley is silent. Fifteen minutes later a second helicopter lands. Nearby, two more hover overhead, ready to provide air cover. The SAS prepare for the rescue of Helen Johnston and the others.

Thursday

My new friend Habib, whom I met at dOCUMENTA, picks me up in his 1966 Russian Volga, and takes me to a school where thousands of children go every day, studying in two- hour shifts. He wants to show me the appalling condition it’s in. What he is most incensed about is the toilets. They stink. They stink because there is no money to take away the waste. They cannot afford toilet paper. There is no water.

Kids wipe their hands on the walls. It does not bear thinking about.

As we talk, a boy of about sixteen makes a rude hand gesture to my female American friend who has joined us on this mission. She is now furious and tells Habib and the acting principal, who is with us.

They catch up to the boy and reprimand him. ‘This is what is wrong with Afghanistan,’ she says. ‘They have no respect for women. Nothing will change if this continues.’

She talks to another boy, who complains that there is no discipline in the school, and she says he must set an example. She asks, ‘Why do you boys do that? You have mothers and sisters and cousins.’ He looks sheepish.

A few hundred dollars would fix the bathroom situation for six months, but more would be needed to put glass in the windows. People on an individual basis want to help, but no one is interested in changing the system — not USAID, which funds many projects, or the Ministry of Health or Education. Too complicated. Short-term is better than long-term, like Orwell’s four legs are better than two.

I tell Habib that I will do my best to write about this.

Under cover of darkness the SAS mobilize. By the time the rescue ends, five Afghan guards lie dead, including Commander Mahajer, the former Hezb-i-Islami member who had masterminded the kidnap.

Workers know that almost 100 per cent of the danger doesn’t come from the villages, where communities protect them, but on the journeys to and from them. Badakhshan is the same province where Karen Woo was killed. They were luckier than Karen and her group.

Friday

It’s the weekend and brunch is the main activity on a Fri- day. In the spring and summer, what better way to spend it than outside eating at Le Jardin, which has recently opened its very large premises and vast garden. By this time we all know that the troops will be pulling out, that the numbers in the international community will shrink, and that the vast amounts of floating cash will dry up. Opening a restaurant of such colossal proportions doesn’t make any sense to me, nor does the continued building of vast mansions which people hope to rent out at inflated prices to NGOs and the like. Never mind. I order salade niçoise, although the Afghans I am with don’t trust the cleanliness of the salad leaves, and they go for omelettes. Someone orders a giant raspberry- coloured macaroon with vanilla ice cream. A little chewy, but remarkable all the same.

Later, we call a jeweler who comes to the restaurant with his rings and things. Mafias control the lapis and emerald mines, and it is actually cheaper to buy Afghan stones in London than in Kabul as they are smuggled out.

The jewelry is very nice and a frenzy of consumption begins.

The Taliban were never able to take over Badakhshan, but now mullahs educated in Pakistani madrassas return with much more fundamental views and preach against foreigners, saying they are spies. What have foreigners brought but war, they ask.

Zaman has opened a café in Faizabad and wants to start a debating society — we are looking for people who could participate.

Saturday

A case of beer now costs US$140. It’s getting more and more difficult to source. The dealer who delivers the alcohol, at some risk, has so many people to pay off. He leaves my friend an enormous chunk of hash, although my friend doesn’t smoke, and stays to watch TV with a group of us for a while. He is getting married on Monday, although he wasn’t even engaged a few weeks ago. Tajik vodka is read- ily available, if you are brave enough to try it. The shop at the corner sells it.

Speaking of marriage, I use Trust taxis to get around the city. There are a number of car services that cater to foreigners. They know where everyone lives, know the gossip, and can tell you who goes where.

The drivers speak English, and are great. One conversation is about the pull-out. There is anxiety about the future. Where will money and jobs come from? We get on to this topic talking about weddings. Karzai has banned big weddings due to the outrageous expense, but no one seems to take any notice. The figures are mind-boggling. It’s not unusual for these affairs — deadly dull by all accounts — to cost US$30,000. That includes renting the wedding hall, food, inviting everyone you have ever known and spending literally thousands of dollars on gold jewelry for the bride. People are in debt for years.

During the kidnap Helen Johnston had apparently kept very calm and was said to be strong and unafraid. Most of the time in captivity the four hostages remained silent.

Sunday

It is difficult to convey how extraordinary life is for those of us privileged to be in Kabul at this time. I imagine Saigon at the end of the 1950s, when the French left Indochina, when colonialism and communism clashed, must have had a similar atmosphere.

In 2012 Kabul restaurants aren’t quite as busy as they once were, the big projects supported by institutions like USAID are losing their funding, people are leaving, heading for the next big story. The large poppy palaces that have mushroomed over the past several years, built in a Pakistani style, have For Rent signs stuck up.

House prices are down significantly from even last year. A friend is selling an old family house that he has restored. He has had to pay a US$16,000 bribe in order to process the sale. If he hadn’t, he was told he would have to wait two years before the sale would be allowed to go through.

Security in Kabul is reasonable. Things are fine until they aren’t, but the mood is fairly gloomy. Again it reminds me of Vietnam, but another era, more like the fall of Saigon in 1975, when everyone was waiting for that last chopper flight out before the city went dark.

Helen Johnston did not give us an interview.

This article was originally written by Heidi Kingstone as a part of the book “Dispatches from the Kabul Cafe”. It is a collection of short stories on life as an expat journalist in Afghanistan, which is about sex, drugs, ‘locationships’, life in the ‘Kabubble’, Afghan women, counterinsurgency, power showers, death and the adrenalin-fuelled existence of living on the edge of someone else’s war. It is published by Advance Editions and is available on Amazon.