Back from Jalalabad + What Veiled Chunk Actually Does

Sorry for not posting yesterday (I'm sure the two people reading it who I've already spoken to via email REALLY missed my post! lol).

Left for Jalalabad at 5AM, which wasn't as awful as I thought it would be (waking up, I mean), and I was looking forward to a nice 2.5 hour drive East towards the Pakistan border. You can see from this map (sorry that it's a bit out of date) that we drive East through the Southern part of Laghman province and into Nangarhar province almost up to the Khyber Pass. I was given a wakeup call at 4:40 from the driver (but I was already awake! ha!), and we were on the road 20 minutes later, a cheery bunch -- me, the driver, the translator, and the security officer.

As with most places in Afghanistan, there is a short way, and a long way, and both ways are long. We had quite a struggle, even with our official *government* documents from our office, getting permission to travel the short route. The skeptical part of me (read: the part of me that lives in Egypt) thinks that these police officers are just hoping we'll bribe them for entry. To be fair, though, all the officers we meet who discourage our travel make safety arguments, and I think it's pretty obvious that we are not going to be paying any bribes (nor has anyone ever asked).

This is an argument that I won't really develop, here, since you are supposed to be reading about Jalalabad, but I do think that in Afghanistan, and probably in a lot of other places dominated by NGOs, IGOs, and Coalitions of all sorts, there develops (in addition to a grotesque parallel economy that has me paying $1800/month for a tiny room in Kabul) a security structure that employs SO many people -- local and foreign -- that it is easy, and profitable, to support a fear mentality that is not always justified by the situation. Only very rarely are people abducted or killed (outside tribe/family disputes) in Afghanistan, and most of the violence is restricted to Zabul and Kunar. My translator argued that it is BECAUSE of the apparent and excessive security that nothing is happening, but I'm not sure that deterrence is really the issue. My argument about the restricted violence is actually supported by a recent article in The Economist (July 9th-15th issue) called: "Zabul's no Kabul," (ok if you read it, it actually makes Afghanistan sound pretty bloody, but it does, at least, single out Kunar and Zabul as places where violence is focused). EDIT: Well, I don't take back what I've said about the security apparatus, but there were 5 people killed yesterday in Laghman (we only drove through the very Southern tip of this province, which is probably why we didn't hear anything) -- check out this BBC article for more info.

Back to Jalalabad --> The security concerns on this road are pretty interesting ("interesting" sounds like a stupid way of describing it, but I don't know what else to say!). You might recall that two weeks ago, an Afghan was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a London court for overseeing the kidnapping and torturing of people along the road from Kabul to Jalalabad (see this BBC article for background). Although the checkpoints between Kabul and Jalalabad are now controlled by legit police (including the ones who tried to stop us from taking the road), there is concern that, in light of Zardad's recent sentencing, the area might be particularly sensitive and violence-prone. Zardad operated through several checkpoints both in the mountains and valley, but there was a headquarters at which many people were kept, and many, according to my colleagues, killed. I got a photo of this checkpoint on the way to Jalalabad, but on the way back to Kabul, we actually had to stop there. It was really freaky (gosh I'm full of great descriptive words tonight!) driving INTO the checkpoint, because everything (as you'll soon see in the photos that I'll post) is sort of metal and run-down -- like a ghost town for robots or something...even the entry gate is this arched metal gridlike structure. Very strange. My colleagues told me that people would have to pay bribes to pass, and that many people who refused to pay, or couldn't pay, or who had other conflicts with Zardad and his group, had their throats slit and their cars stolen on the spot. You can also SEE in the hillside, there, some of the tunnels in which the Taliban operated; it's really amazing to see a tunnel literally stretch for SEVERAL KILOMETERS through the hills. I can only imagine what Tora Bora is like!!

In the end, we got approval to take the "short" way after the driver surrendered his ID and swore his first born son (not really) that if Taliban shot at us he'd be responsible, and we set-off. The drive was absolutely stunning. I have started to sound like a broken record when it comes to the beauty of Afghanistan, but I'd say that it's easily more beautiful than already-stunning Tunisia, and I have to say that (although quite different) it's competing quite fiercely with Lake Ohrid on the Macedonia-Albania border (beware: the second link, there, has cheesy music).

The road, which was originally built by the Russians, is now undergoing badly-needed repair by Chinese contractors. We were practically the only people on the road, and we went through a mountain pass that is so indescribably beautiful, you'll just have to check out my photos when I post them (hopefully tomorrow). As could be expected, there were some stops for construction along the way, and it's very common, here, for them to repave one side of a road at a time, in which case they alternate traffic direction every 15-30 minutes (to allow both directions to use the open side). After the mountains, you drive through a beautiful valley called Serbie, which used to specialize in coconuts (yuck). We arrived at our Jalalabad regional office at about 8:30AM -- not a bad drive.

I should say one thing about the weather. It was SO hot. I mean...I didn't realize it was that hot until I got back and had a call from Wong: "Was it really 116?" I don't whine about the heat, and tend to sweat and bear it, but after talking to MW, I checked online, and actually it was 117 (47C!). It makes sense, then, why, when we were stopped with sun beating-down for 20 minutes waiting for our direction to open-up, or for a Chinese tractor to re-fuel, I would notice the sweat so thick on my forearm that it would be dripping down the door handle, where my arm was resting, and running down onto the floor of the 4X4. It is also relevant info that neither our car nor our office have air conditioning.

So, other than sweltering heat (to be honest, I didn't notice it being THAT much hotter than a normal day), the visit was a success. The office director, whose name means "White Mountain" (hope that isn't saying too much...) was very helpful, despite the fact that he didn't know until 8AM that a "delegation" was arriving from Kabul (HA! I'm a delegation!). I did 4 hours of interviews with him and with the director of the Monitoring & Investigation team before having lunch.

Many people ask me what exactly I'm doing, and while I don't want to betray privileged or confidential information either in a blog or in personal conversations, I can tell you generally what I'm studying, which are the existence and root causes of pattern violations of human rights. We study a range of human rights issues, but it is clear that some violations occur with a regularity that points towards system weaknesses in the human rights protection apparatus. My goal is to identify some of these weaknesses, and propose prescriptive solutions to correct for them. I have decided to focus on illegal detention/imprisonment, personal integrity (torture/rape), and arbitrary execution. I also study Coalition violations and (inevitably) women's rights issues. Beyond my study of rights violations, I also inquire about the reporting and methodology of our organization, and am particularly concerned with systematized complaint responses that can be utilized by all our offices. GOT IT?

While I can't talk a lot (or at all) about specific cases, I will say that the similarities and differences between regions are really fascinating -- you see some factors that seem to be omnipresent, and others that are very personality-specific. Since this is not information that is related specifically to any of our cases, I can talk about this --> In Jalalabad, for instance, there are two particularly active warlords, and one of them -- Khan Zelai -- has actually established a false border with Pakistan though which he can profit from bribes paid for the illegal exporting of wood. I think the name Khan Zelai is really a beautiful name (especially the "ai" in Zelai) and my colleagues were joking on the way home that I am the "good" Khan Zelai ("we shouldn't have trouble with the police on the way back, if we tell them that you are Khan Zelai!"). So that factor, for example, is very specific to Jalalabad...something like violations against women that are linked to traditional gender roles are (sadly) country-wide.

One difficulty I am having is in distinguishing, for discussion purposes, the difference between execution and murder. It's something I'd never even thought about back in Kabul, just looking at the data, but when I made my first field visit (to Gardez) it became quickly apparent that murder and execution are very difficult to distinguish. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears :)

The interviews ended, lunch was eaten (and it was again confirmed for me that every regional office has better food than we have in Kabul...or maybe that's just because my DELEGATION eats with the director...), some documents were collected for me, and we headed back to Kabul at about 3:00PM.

The drive back to Kabul was a little bit awful, but still, in the end, fun. It was sort of awful having to wait, in the baking sun, with no air conditioning and no water (I brought water, but I was sharing it with my colleagues and got weird about cooties), for our direction to open, and this happened several times (I have a photo from one of these waits, and you can see what kind of traffic we were sitting in). At each stopping point, the translator and security officer would get out of the car and run to the front of the barrier, communicating the latest to the driver via walkie-talkie. We were able to reverse the flow of traffic at one of these waiting points when the translator and security officer successfully halted the progress of about 20 huge cargo trucks going the other direction, by telling the lead driver that they had a sick passenger in their car; he, and all the trucks behind him, stopped, and our direction was allowed to go -- I think I blew our cover when, not knowing about the lie, I smiled and waved (camera in hand) to the truck driver...but no worry.

Once we neared Serbie and the mountain pass, we seemed to enter into endless negotiations with highway police about using the short route. It's interesting how often being a foreigner ("khariji") gets things or places you wouldn't get as a local, as well as how easily it can have just the opposite effect. In this case, they did not want to risk the safety of a khariji on the short route. At one particularly important checkpoint (second in importance only to our stop at the actual Zardad HQ), an officer asked me if I spoke English and I said yes. He asked where I came from, and (taking a gamble, considering many friends' -- including Afghans -- advice, and knowing from personal experience that no one here speak Arabic) I said "Misr" (Egypt). OOPS. The soldier starts speaking to me in flawless Gulfi Arabic, telling me that it's not safe for our car, etc. etc. I could understand, but I couldn't reply, so then I say in English: "But our car already passed on this road earlier and we know that it's safe..." and he interrupts: "Say it in Arabic, Chunk." (SHIT!) ...in Arabic: "I speak Arabic only a little." "What is your nationality?" "My mother is French and my father is American" (oh GOD! I screwed it up! I always say my FATHER is French, because then everyone says: ok, he's French, and legitimately VC's name and French blood is from HIM). I then say (still in Arabic): "But my house is in Cairo. I live in Cairo. I am a student in Cairo." (the word for student being, ironically, "talib"). He walked away in disgust and was yelling at the security officer about how he didn't want to talk to an American and how I'd lied to him. What FINALLY convinced them to let us go was the security officer showing that he had EVERY communications technology implement under the sun (I was shocked! He had all these hidden pockets and just kept pulling out phones and stuff!) and the ever-trusted Thuraya phone finally convinced him to let us pass. 15 minutes later we were at Zardad's HQ where we had more Thuraya-resolved negotiations, and picked-up an army escort for part of the way (who actually just wanted to be dropped-off at the next checkpoint).

At one point, they decided to repave both lanes of the road, and the traffic was held for 3 hours while they got deliveries of dirt, dumped everything, and steam-rolled it (we were there only for the last 45 minutes of the 3 hour wait). There was a critically ill man (who looked to be about 100) who I gave our water to (I didn't tell him it had cooties!). This stop was interesting for security reasons, because we were the first car let through after the paving was complete, and my driver stopped after a few hundred meters waiting for a few cars to pass us. I asked him what he was doing and he said that after a 3 hour wait, with no traffic in either direction, you don't want to be the first car to drive through a pass where Taliban could have been summoning their efforts for the past 3 hours waiting to pick-off the first car in clear shot. I would *never* think about these things, but these guys are really good.

So that is a pretty comprehensive description of the awful parts. The fun parts were just us listening to music, joking around, and enjoying the scenery. The security officer is a backseat photographer, and enjoyed telling the driver when to slowdown so I could take exactly the photo HE wanted (sometimes, on our way to Jalalabad in the morning, even getting out of the car to pose in his own shot). One really funny incident occurred when we were (again) stopped -- this time because they were, for some reason, exploding part of the mountain. I was standing on the wall overlooking the river, peacefully taking photos of the beautiful nature around me. You can imagine my shock, then, when I was framing a photo of the craggly rocks right in front of our line of cars, and just as I'm about to press the button, the exact area I was photographing explodes into the sky (I actually have a photo with all the smoke and debris in the air!).

I got a photo, at the same place, of two little girls leading their goats through a mine field. The translator was telling me (who knows the origins of these stories) that after the Russians withdrew, they were asked if they left anything in Afghanistan, and they said: "Yes. We left a great legacy in Afghanistan that it will take them more than 100 years to fully discover," (talking about the mines), and many people think it will take that long or longer to clear the landscape of mines. The Pakistanis apparently said something similar, that their legacy was to make it impossible for the Afghan army to ever control its own territory, again. Anyway, I'm not 100% convinced that there were mines in this part of the mountain, because even if the girls learned, since they were old enough to walk, which shrubs and rocks indicate safety, surely the goats can't know where to walk. Nonetheless, I got caught photographing them by one of the little girls, who then sat on a rock and asked me to keep photographing her (I don't know how she could see me, as even with full optical zoom she was like a dot in my lens, but we said hello and thankyou with hand gestures and she and her goats continued on their way).

We were having SO many problems getting stopped -- both by police and construction workers -- on the way back, that I took the opportunity to practice my Dari and tease the translator. As you might know, there are cleansing rituals required of Muslims after sex, ablutions known as ghusl, that must occur at specific times and in specific sequences. It's believed, by some, that failure to reinstate cleanliness after sex through proper ghusl leads to bad luck. For that reason, people sometimes joke, in Afghanistan, that if you are having terrible luck, you are unclean -- "jeynoub asti?" ("are you dirty?" -- literally: "are you south?"). I joked with the translator that we were having so many problems because he was jeynoub, and everyone got a huge kick out of it.

The last obstacle we had to face, before arriving home, was really unbelievable. There was a wall, of about waist height, that I *vaguely* remember us driving DOWN to get to Jalalabad, that you have to drive UP to get back to Kabul. It was dark, and the rather ineffective ramp that had been fashioned out of stones found on the path barely made it up part of the wall. To make things more complicated, the wall was built at an angle against the mountain, on one side, that forces you to turn towards the cliff as you drive up, and then ends at the plummeting cliff on the other side. What this means is that you have barely more than a car length after driving up the wall to turn back towards the mountain and away from the cliff without driving off. It was really bad, and I thought we would have to turn back. There were 3 cars ahead of us (remember -- we didn't want to be the easy target), and none of them could make it. Eventually, EVERYONE from more than a dozen cars got out and, in the dark, gathered stones and helped out (sorry, by "everyone" I don't mean me -- I offered but was strictly forbidden, so it was just me and women like the one in the car next to us, who was fond of opening the window, pulling back her Burqa, and blowing snot rockets...I'm not joking...not helping out). The cars were still getting stuck, though, sort of balanced ON the wall with the bottom of the vehicle beached on top of the wall. Everyone would them get together and LIFT the back of the vehicle over! Anyway, the driver and I got ready for our turn, prayed to Allah, and went for it. THE ONLY CAR TO MAKE IT ON ONE TRY WITH NO HELP! It goes without saying (even though we said it...repeatedly...) that we only made it up the wall without problems because the jeynoub translator wasn't in the car with us, lol. Anyway, this goes in the "fun" category and not the "awful" category, because there was just SUCH a sense of community -- everyone helping everyone out and NO one being negative or complaining, just heads down and get it done (GOD this is not Egypt!).

Ended up getting home at 9PM, which means 16 hours of "trip" for 4 hours of interviews. The human rights world is SO efficient!

Inside my room, so not veiled, just chunky,

VC