A backseat view of Afghanistan
A bread shop in Kabul. Photo by F. Brinley Bruton
Is it my imagination or are the beggars on Kabul's streets more insistent this time around? Some have taken to pounding on the window of my car with their palms. When I was here just over a year ago their fingertips tapped gently on the glass.
"Boro, boro!" Aziz, the driver, tells the beggars. "Go, go!" Men missing limbs, small children, and women clutching babies ignore him. A blind man, his pupils turned up at odd angles, stands insistently next to the car.
Poor Aziz, I think. He's already stressed about getting stuck in the city's hellish traffic jams - a running cheetah emblazoned on the side of a nearby Toyota mocks us. He's also worried that we'll come too close to military patrols, popular bombing targets.
On my first day we got stuck between two patrols in stand-still traffic next to the American base. The one in front of us stopped a Toyota. A soldier in beige fatigues slowly approached the driver, a young man wearing a white skullcap. Aziz did a quick U-turn before I saw what happened next.
He has become markedly more aggressive since we met five days ago. He drives too fast and regularly goes down the wrong way on one-way streets. "Khareji," or foreigner, he says to an irate traffic cop who stops him after one of his antics. The policeman waves us on. It's depressing how well that word works.
So I've experienced Afghanistan mainly from the backseat of a car as I'm ferried to and from appointments that will hopefully give me access to "real life". Being in Afghanistan has been great - I've seen good friends and caught a glimpse of an important and often distressing story. But it has also been incredibly frustrating - getting an idea of what's really going on here is hard, like reading brail through thick rubber gloves.
Security worries, a language barrier and a war-weary population tired of being talked at by the international community all stand in my way. When I first came in 2004, I worked alongside Afghans and my reporting involved travelling out of Kabul. I didn't know then how lucky I was.
Take the guesthouse where I'm staying - it's safe and even pleasant. We have hot water, electricity and pretty good Internet access. The relative luxury was so unexpected that on my first night I watched "House" on my laptop in bed because I hadn't noticed the television and DVD player in my room. On Friday, the traditional day of rest, three aid workers spent around an hour practicing their golf swings in the rose-laden garden outside my bedroom. The problem, of course, is that I could be in almost any sunny, dusty city.
One reason I moved here is that it really isn't very expensive. It also has United Nations security clearance. As a freelancer, nobody's looking after my safety so I'm taking more precautions than I might otherwise.
The first few nights I stayed at an expensive guesthouse with oodles of character that usually attracts a stream of foreign correspondents and film-makers. It also serves alcohol - an increasingly precious commodity. Ah yes, this is the other reason I moved - a full third of my bill at the first guesthouse went towards wine.
I felt more plugged-in journalistically at the first place. One large crew of journos prowled around like caged cats as they waited for the official go-ahead to do a two-month-long assignment in the south.
One charming BBC journalist showed me his scars - shrapnel wounds on his hands and back. He tried to talk me into finding an embed in order to get a jump on the next hot spot.
"Go with the Americans," he said, "It really isn't that dangerous."
I'm finding that many of us foreigners spend a lot of time talking about Afghans. What Afghans think, what they want, what they're doing wrong. At a recent talk entitled "The Taliban Resurgence" a mostly foreign crowd discussed the causes of the renewed fighting. It soon became clear that most of us didn't know the people we were talking about. It's easy to understand why foreigners aren't flocking to the south to have tea with Taliban fighters, but it doesn't help us understand the spiralling violence any better.
I've tried hard to get beyond this bubble, with varying success. For example, I'm reconnecting with some of the young journalists I worked with in 2004 and 2005 at Pajhwok Afghan News, the country's largest independent news service.
Also, with the help of International Medical Corps (IMC), which among other things trains midwives around the country, I got access to the Rabia Balqi women's hospital. One of the stories I'm most interested in is the battle to reduce maternal mortality rates, one of the world's worst. UNICEF says that 40 percent of the deaths among women of child-bearing age are due to preventable pregnancy related complications.
But more on mothers and midwifes later - the subject deserves more than a mere mention at the bottom of a blog.
So Happy Eid, the holiday that comes at the end of Ramadan. Around the guesthouse celebratory firecrackers pop, sounding enough like gunfire to make the people sitting in our garden jump. Next week, Insh'allah, I will be writing from somewhere other than Kabul.
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Reuters.
8 responses to “A backseat view of Afghanistan”
Please note that comments should not be regarded as the views of Reuters.
Leave a Reply
When you submit a comment to us we request your name, e-mail address and optionally a link to a website. Please note where you submit a website address, we may link to it via your name. By sending us a comment, you accept that we have the right to show the comment and your name to users. Although we require your email address, this will not be published on the site, and is only required to enable us to check facts with you, e.g. if you are making a claim we can not confirm easily. Additionally, if you would like your comment removed at anytime, you'll have to use this e-mail address when you contact us. To remove a comment at any time please e-mail us at blogs-(at)-reuters-(dot)-com (address obscured to avoid spam) specifying who you are and what you would like removed. We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the post directly or with relevant tangential information. We reserve the right to edit comments in order to maintain the quality of the comments, and may not include links to irrelevant material. We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous. Reuters will use your data in accordance with Reuters privacy policy. Reuters Group is primarily responsible for managing your data. As Reuters is a global company your data will be transferred and available internationally, including in countries which do not have privacy laws but Reuters seeks to comply with its privacy policy.
F. Brinley Bruton is a freelance journalist working in Afghanistan. In 2004 and 2005 she trained journalists at Pajhwok Afghan News, the country's largest independent news service. Since then she has written about Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen and focused on economics, security and humanitarian issues.
25 Oct 2006 10:50:38 GMT
"Go with the Americans," he said, "It really isn't that dangerous."
sure...! keep up the good work.25 Oct 2006 16:34:02 GMT
Tremendous writing that creates focused mental images, such as "...like reading brail through thick rubber gloves" or experiencing Kabul from the bckseat of a car. Overall, you point to the incredible difficulty of providing a "true" story of Afghanistan when access is layered like an onion that sounds like it may be rotting fast.
25 Oct 2006 16:34:40 GMT
What happened with that Toyota when he did a quick U turn before he could see what happened next? I think Afghanistan should be recognized as an important culture for their textile and fashion industry, like it should be right up there with India and Europe, and allowed to compete in the fine commercial arts.
26 Oct 2006 12:43:46 GMT
looking forward to hearing more about the visit to Rabia Balqi and the plight of the women there.
26 Oct 2006 12:44:35 GMT
Thanks for this reporting. We count on folks like you to get us beyond the platitudes.
26 Oct 2006 12:46:03 GMT
Dear Sir, Please take great care in your travel around Afghanistan, I'm sure you are. I would like to understand what the children of afghan would like for the future?
Let the US send tv's and start a childrens show that would depict a positive future and bring hope to the country.. Start young when they are pure at heart. That is if we can establish constant/assured electricity to that Nation. God Bless, Respectfuly26 Oct 2006 16:17:14 GMT
With reference to Afghans' Afghanistan, I hundred-and-one percent agree with this gentleman, "most of us didn't know the people we were talking about."
Interestingly, the range of Afghan views is as diverse as their races and regional hailings are. An Afghan could itself be divided very simply into many categories on account of gender, age, education, professional background, religious commitment, expatriate and another category, commonly called as second generation Afghans and so on. Perhaps, i need to go a long way bfore i could get, what do make Afghanistan's Afghans? This blog has tempted me to recall my experience of being in Kabul in September last year, when war-wary Afghans witnessed their first election in almost last 30 years. Just to remind, Election passed realtively quietly, rather in a festive mood in Kabul. To cover the elections, alongside few journos from the East like me, a large number was there from across the Western world, living in comforted guest houses and filing their colourful pieces about polls across the country. Throughout the period, and even after that, though then i got busy with PAKISTAN Quake, i didn't see any single article revealing any inside story, of why the results took months to come out. [Mega apologies, even if everything was engineered, the media should have come up with some insight what happened]. What a festive atmosphere was there around the hall where JEMB chief was used to address the media! Scores and scores of young European girl-students were employed in the process of counting of votes. Months took for the preparation of all this drama, but couldn't the UN or other INGOS find enough educated Afghans to involve in the election process so to boost local economy but more to give them a sense of ownership. Through the entire media handling, except a couple of senior people like Sultan Baheen, then JEMB spokesman for internal media, i couldn't c a handful of people at some responsible positions, but as low-key manual workers. Is this the way, we want to empower Afghans? Is this the way to make them realise that beyond this conflict, they do have a promising future in a progressive modern world? Journalists of powerful nations of this world only write teh stories, which serve their political interests. They don't bother to display much regarding the actual scene on teh ground, if this would ahve happened, we could never have caught into threat of facing another Taliban rule. Over last five year, there has not been much aid chaneled to real Afghans. True enough. But whatever was channeled, has it not ended back in the West through their fabolously-paid consultants, directors and otehr staff, which are most of the times not aware of ground realities of what makes Afghans' Afghanistan!06 Nov 2006 09:53:49 GMT
Oh I hope you write the article on maternal mortality in afghanistan. I am interested to know specifically the breakdown of "preventable pregnancy related causes of death": infection? amateur abortions? blood loss during childbirth? inflated c-section rates? Interesting to see then how the interventions coorelate--and be sure to compare to US maternal mortality rates which are also high worldwide--some great irony potential there. How has the maternal morality rate changed during the various changes in power over the last 35 years? The extent of the midwifery training and who is providing it--would they be qualified to train midwives in other countries? Also medical supplies--for example if post partum bleeding is a leading cause of death will the midwives have legal and practical access to ptossin injections? or more fundamentally blood pressure cuffs? stethoscopes? doppler fetal heart monitors? measuring tape? gloves? suture kits! ? betadine? Are these deaths higher in a particular region of the country? What is sanitation like--can midwives in the most depressed areas wash their hands well? Is there ice available for post partum perineal swelling to prevent infections? In the hospitals, are they equipped to perform c-sections? How have hospital staff (numbers and training)changed? very interesting!! ganbatte!