KABUL, 14 September 2003 — The scene could not have been more idyllic. A full moon shone from a clear sky. Dim lights flickered from the cluster of houses along the mountains which rise up like teeth protecting Kabul’s edge. The Afghan capital was asleep, silent and at peace.
I was at my dingy and over-priced guesthouse, using a head-torch to read a book because the bulb hanging from the ceiling shed about the same amount of light as a candle.
Then — boom.
The sound was loud and unmistakable. This city has been half-wrecked by bombs and missiles in the last two decades; residents will have been in no doubt this was the din of conflict.
It was a rocket fired at a base housing German and Canadian soldiers from the NATO-led international force, assigned to keep the peace; no one was hurt by this attack, or by the two other rockets that landed well short of bases on the same night.
But it was another jolt, another reminder of the fragility of the peace in this city, that was shattered in June by a suicide car bomb that killed four German troops. In contrast to the US forces — who are regularly rocketed — it was only the second attack on peacekeepers this year.
It is easy to be deceived by post-Taleban Kabul, to be dazzled by the bustle in the marketplace, where the money-dealers know exchange rates by heart, where carts creak under the weight of apples, where stalls are piled with toiletries and trinkets. It is easy to be misled, too, by the new signs advertising Internet cafes, restaurants and mobile phones, and to forget these luxuries are affordable only to a few.
Newspaper articles on the reconstruction of Afghanistan describe the thriving capital. But for all the warmth of its welcome, and for all its assurances that it wants foreign forces to stay, Kabul is what it always was — ambivalent, at least in part, about intruders.
“This is a damned dangerous place,” an American ex-Vietnam vet working for the US military told me the other day. “I would not dream of going anywhere without this.” He whipped out a 9mm pistol. He said he wouldn’t think twice about using it if he had to. I did not doubt him.
The city is also still a mess. Potholes yawn in the pavements. For long periods of each day, there is no electricity. Those businesses that can afford use generators; others just make do, and lose income. It is not possible to walk more than a few hundred meters without being accosted by beggars. Kabul has changed, for sure. But not as much as some have suggested.
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Meet the Afghan cartoonist Parniyan. During the Taleban years, Parniyan — real name, Muhammad Zia Kosha — and a friend secretly produced a hand-written magazine lampooning the government. It was hugely dangerous.
The magazine, Carriage of Sorrows, was passed among close acquaintances, like the “samizdat” produced during the Soviet era. Now, working from a clapped-out studio, the 44-year-old primary teacher is wielding his pen anew, this time taking to task the US-backed interim government, corruption, crime and countless social ills.
The magazine is published openly now, and sells to about 4,000 people. A warm and smiling man, he is remarkable not only for his courage but for his optimism. “We believe that we now have a future; that’s the difference from before.”
