Is there a doctor in the house?

One of the good things about being an expat in a place like Kabul is that even the most banal of chores can seem exotic or take you down some unexpected paths.

Six months on and the 10-minute drive to work still enchants me with its seemingly endless display of life - bike repair shops; vegetable stalls; chickens in cages; dozens of young girls in school uniforms, Hello Kitty backpacks and loosely tied headscarves; the freshly skinned carcasses of i don't know what hanging up for sale; tailor shops with gaudy ball gowns in the smeared windows; mosques; cyclists; a Taliban in a black turban; taxis overflowing with passengers, or goats; young boys herding sheep with the most wobbly bottoms imaginable.

We shop for groceries and furniture, go to the gym, swim, play squash. We get our hair cut or go to the doctor. We make friends and date, we go out to bars and restaurants or have parties, yet none of these bares any resemblance to what they were back home, or anywhere else really.

No where else would I invite someone round to my house for dinner, who I have never met, purely on the grounds that a friend said, "you should meet so and so, they'd be a good contact". Nor would I have agreed to go on a blind date with a French bodyguard who spoke no English. I have been to parties where there are 200 people and a live band, and I have hustled my contacts to get on a guest list. 

Today, I met a friend for lunch. This entails calling a cab half an hour ahead of time, even though the cafe is just a 10 minute walk away. In the garden of the Flower Street Cafe, over a spinach, walnut and blue cheese salad, I whine about the dull thud of a headache that has now spread to my cheekbones.

My friend says that the head of her NGO is a doctor. It seems that getting a medical degree and then going into the better paid development industry is par for the course here.

I am slightly sceptical, but figure it can't be any worse than the Lebanese doctor I went to see for a breast lump scare who refused to examine me but insisted I leave for Dubai immediately, claiming there were no treatment facilities in Kabul. Luckily I decided to get a second opinion at the German clinic, where I sit for half an hour surrounded by women in burqas and their multiple children before I am seen by the lovely Doctor Maria, who  examines me, declares me fine but "knotty" and refers me to local hospital with a mammography machine (although most of the time it doesn't work).

So my friend gets her boss on the phone and he asks me the usual bunch of questions, where does it hurt, how long has it been like that, am I allergic to anything.
Cassie, I am writing you a prescription for some antibiotics and antihistamine, he says. Ann will bring it round.

When I get home that night, the guard at my front door hands me a large white envelope. Inside is my prescription.

For some reason, I had thought it would be written on a doctor's pad, with an authoritative sounding name imprinted across the top. Instead, it was a bit of scrappy paper torn from a small notepad with the names of two drugs scrawled across in thick black pen, and a line on how and when to take them.

Tomorrow, I might venture to the pharmacy.

Pumping Iron in Kabul

Today, I spent the morning editing a feature on how bodybuilders in Afghanistan are so desperate to gain the title "Mr Afghanistan", that they are taking anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, which are leading to severe health complications.

No one can really prove that they are taking the drugs, or indeed dying from them, as there are no testing facilities here. But anecdotal evidence from bodybuilders themselves, doctors and trainers all points to this being a worrying trend among the young. Those youngsters, always wanting to get somewhere fast, says one of the trainers, lamenting the days when athletes would bulk up with eggs, honey, dates and macaroni.

Yep, he did say macaroni. I asked the translators, and yes, they do have it here, although first they told me it was spaghetti but then showed me it's length, like a finger. Macaroni, all right. But then they said it was twisty, just a bit, and I was on the verge of saying, well if it's twisty, it's not really macaroni, but then decided that it wasn't affecting the nature of the story so left it. If there is an editor goddess, she will surely understand.

I also had to check with the reporter about the names of some of the drugs, none of which matched anything I could find on the Internet, and asked him to add a few lines about the popularity of bodybuilding in Afghanistan.

Apparently, it is one of the fastest growing "sports". Which is not surprising really when you look at some of the other popular sports in Afghanistan such as Bushkashi, polo with a goat carcass, wrestling, and warlording.
There are 200 gyms  in Kabul alone, and about 1,100 across the country, there is even one for women in a province outside Kabul. Most have posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger plastered across the walls, I'm not sure what's on the walls of the women's gym. Even during the Taliban era, bodybuilding was popular, with old Soviet tanks and weapons put to ingenenious use as weights. Men, however, had to work out in their shalwar kameez as nakedness was considered un-Islamic.

So where do they get the drugs? I ask. The reporter laughs. It seems any chemist will sell you a pack of outdated steroid pills intended to muscle up an old person - or anything else he has stashed in his shop.  But why do they do it, I want to know, why is it so important to have these gargantuan bodies? Is it to impress women? The translator giggles.

The reporter doesn't flinch. He also doesn't look me in the eye, but then he hasn't since I nixed his dream to become security correspondent by recommending he be given the sport and culture beat instead.

So back to the why. Is it money I ask, do they win a lot in competitions? No he says, it's fame; they want to be popular. So is this what it's all about then, the decades of war and this constant fight for power among jihadi leaders, powerbrokers and the Taliban? It's all because they want to be popular, a desire for adulation. 

As for bodybuilding, it must be for the fame, as when I do some research I find that last year's Mr Afghanistan, walked away with a tracksuit and plastic trophy.

So attached is a link to some wonderful pics, not ours sadly, of Afghan bodybuilders.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/22/pumping_iron_in_kabul

Two days before the election

News list from today's editorial meeting (in no particular order):

-          The National Directorate of Security has asked all the media not to report on incidents of violence during the election.  No one thinks we should pay any attention to this.

-          A TV channel in Baghlan has run an interview with a parliamentary candidate in violation of an election law which prohibits campaigning 48 hours before the election.

-          The Ministry of Interior, the Independent Election Commission, the Free and Fair Elections of Afghanistan, the defence ministry,  security officials in northern Takhar and Kunduz provinces, southern Kandahar province and the half-brother of the president, Ahmad Wali Karzai, are all having  press conferences.

-          There will be no voting in two districts of northern Jawzjhan province because of the security situation

-          Shamshad TV station has also interviewed an election candidate, but did not ask him anything about the election

-          Police and election officials clash in southern Helmand province

-          In remote areas of Helmand, IEC workers complain there are no facilities for them

-          Weekly economic report (tea up, petrol down)

-          11 Taliban surrender in northern Baghdis province

-          Regional study centre releases report on US-Afghan relations

-          Five construction workers killed by the Taliban in southern Ghazni province

-          Taliban to close roads in all districts of Ghazni to prevent people voting

Kalashnikov and an education

 My colleague Naseh was telling me today about his village in Kunar province, in the east, where the mountains are "more green than anywhere else in Afghanistan and the air is so fresh".

His village is in a valley between jungle-clad mountains where Taliban and militants from Hizb-i-Islami (the second biggest insurgent group in Afghanistan) hide out. Every other day there is an attack on a NATO convoy from the mountains. 

During the Soviet occupation, Naseh's uncle was a commander in the biggest jihadi group, Jamaat-i-Islami. Naseh's father gave up his own education so that he could pay to put his younger brother, the jihadi commander, through school. Although Jamaat went on to become part of the Northern Alliance which with the help of the US forced the Taliban from power, Naseh's village later allied themselves with the Taliban. The Northern Alliance  leadership was mostly Tajiks and Uzbeks and Naseh's villagers were Pashtuns. 

An alliance with the Taliban also gave them protection from the HIA with whom Naseh's village and family seem to have some long-term feud.

Today, they try to live in peace, although personal and tribal enmity are as much a problem as the insurgency.

Naseh tells me that on the 20^th day of Ramadan (that would be about the end of August), a lawyer who lived in his village was kidnapped by the Gujar tribe, a mountain-living group most of whom are members of the Taliban.

This lawyer, Naseh, says, is not like any of the other provincial lawyers. He does not own an expensive car or an apartment building. He cuts his own firewood and grazes his cows himself.

One day, he was approached by a member of the Gujar tribe who had been accused of stealing some cows. The lawyer was asked to make the case go away in return for a sum of money.  The lawyer, who had never taken a bribe in his life, refused and the cow rustler was sent to jail for 4 ½ years. However, because he bribed the judicial department, he spent only one day in detention.

So of course the cow rustler wanted his revenge. And a few days later as the lawyer was travelling to the provincial capital in a minivan, the Gujaris ambushed the vehicle. The tribesmen had rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns, and the lawyer had, according to Naseh, just a pistol. He weighed up the situation, reasoned that he could probably take out one of the Gujaris, but it would mean everyone else in the minivan would die with him. So he gave himself up.  

Naseh's villagers were of course enraged. They went to see the district chief and told him they wanted to launch their own rescue attempt. The district chief agreed: "What do you need," he asked them. "Weapons"? 

Naseh's villagers declined, not as I thought because they wanted to launch a non-violent rescue, but because they already had their own weapons – everyone has a Kalashnikov.

What they wanted was assurances from the US military that there would be no aerial attacks on the Gujar tribe while they were attacking. The district chief set up a meeting with the US adviser in the district who asked how long it would take to rescue the lawyer. 

Two or three days Naseh's villagers estimated, but the US adviser refused, saying that was too long to remove the threat of air strikes.

So Naseh's villagers decided on another tactic.

They set up a road block along the road running down from the mountain past their village and stopped every car, checked every passenger and anyone found to be from the Gujar tribe was detained. In total they detained 10 people,who have spent the past week, including the festival of Eid, in jail.  

Over the past week there have been multiple shuras -- tribal councils -- involving tribal elders and religious and village leaders from all districts of Kunar province to try to resolve the issue. Naseh is convinced that the lawyer will be released and in return they will release the 10 Gujaris.  You will notice that police were not involved, nor was the central government.

For hundreds of years this is the way that Afghanistan has governed itself, through tribal shuras, negotiation and of course, the Kalashnikov. 

My Day

Random conversations throughout the day

Cassie, Do we have any other words for disabled? I have just finished a story about a candidate for elections who has one leg and one hand and wants to help the disabled. Can I say Disabled Runner Vows to Work for Disables?

Cassie, what is an epidemiologist?

Cassie, what is the name for a glove you wear when you have a bath?
me: is it rough?
colleague: It's called rough?

Cassie, do you know this word sona?
Me: No. What is it?
Colleague: Ok, so if you are very tired you go to a bathhouse and it's very hot and you feel better.
Me: Erm .. a sauna?

Cassie, what can we say where one disease is passed to another person?
Me: Infectious, contagious
Other colleague: Can't we also say communicable?
Me: Yep
Other colleague: And what is the difference between contagious and contiguous?

Cassie, sorry for disturbing you.
Me: It's ok, what's up?
Colleague: We should offer condolences to Muzhary.
Me: Why, what happened?
Colleague: He lost his mobile phone (rest of the office falls about laughing while I sit there thinking, I really don't get this .... )

Cassie, sorry for disturbing you
Me: It's ok
Colleague: Muzhary is going to his home in Ghazni this weekend
Me: Yes I know
Colleague: He isn't afraid of the Taliban
Me: Oh, and why is that?
Colleague: Because Taliban don't need to be afraid of Taliban

Cassie, if a person likes a sport, like cricket, do we have any word for this?

Me: Who wrote the headline "Air strike blows up house-borne IED in Kandahar"?
Colleague: Yes, it is me. What is wrong?
Me: It makes no sense. That's what's wrong. You're saying the house carried the IED.
Colleague: No, it means the house was rigged with bombs.
Me: No, it doesn't. What you have written is grammatically incorrect and impossible.
Other colleague: But Cassie,  every thing is possible in Afghanistan.
Colleague: maybe it's a military term.

Me: (bangs head on the desk several times)

Food for thought

Because I am a bit odd this way and I like to spend time in the kitchen (probably more than most) I often find myself staring at the contents of my housemates' food cupbords, trying to see what, if anything, it tells me about them. Of course it would be easier just to have a conversation, but like I say, I'm odd like that.
See what you think. One of them, is of course, mine.

The four men were dressed in Afghan police uniforms, innocuous enough until one blew himself up at the gate of the hotel. Another threw a grenade into the outside screening room, and a third ran into the car park where a guard shot him, causing his explosive vest to detonate.

The fourth went on a shooting rampage, pushing through the 15-foot carved wooden doors and into the marbled lobby of the capital's only five-star hotel, the Serena, where that night, as most, a bevvy of journalists, aid workers and diplomats were eating drinking and working out.

The gunman made for the gym, down the stairs lit by tea candles and scented with rose petals and into the spa, where he shot the Filipina receptionist. Another five people were killed that night, including a Norwegian journalist.


That happened in January 2008, but you can't help but relive the story each time you visit the Serena, still the capital's most luxurious hotel.

I thought about it last Friday as I slipped my bag onto the conveyor belt and watched it go through the xray machine and as I submitted to a pat down in a curtained room by a female guard; I thought about it when a heavily-armed guard opened the inner security door leading to the car park; and as I pushed through the carved wooden doors and into the cavernous, cool luxury of the hotel lobby. But mostly I thought about it as I walked along the marbled hallway and down the stairs lit with tea candles and scented with rose petals and as I handed over my US$32 to the Filipina receptionist so that I could have a swim in the hotel pool.

There are many surreal experiences in Kabul. A trip to the Serena is one of them. When you push through those grand wooden doors, it's like finding the back of the wardrobe and stepping into Narnia. The first time I went, I sat in the garden with a friend, people watching. A Japanese man, about 70, walked up and down the path, his face covered with a surgical mask. Who is he, I thought? What could he possibly be doing in Kabul?

Last Friday, a friend and I made a date for swimming. She picked me up in her SUV. I was so excited at the thought of going for a swim, that even her personal guard, an AK-47 on his lap, couldn't knock my mood.

After we paid our fee, we entered the spa area/changing room. Beautiful oak lockers, rain forest showers and an area with sunbeds, just to laze and read a magazine. We got changed quickly and headed out to the pool. It was 9:30am, but already half of the two dozen sunbeds had been taken; mostly by thin pale European women in bikinis. Three people were doing laps in the pool and Ann, my American friend and I, dumped our stuff on two sun beds on the grass and joined them.

The water was cool, but not chilly, the sky above was a turquoise blue and bougainvillea was growing on trellises that hid the 20 foot blast walls. And although it's a terrible cliche, as I scythed up and down the lengths of the pool, in between two tattooed Americans, I almost forgot where I was; so much so that when I plumped back down on my sun bed, I slapped on some suncream, pulled out Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall and put my Jackie O sunglasses on.

The facade lasted until the first helicopter buzzed low in the sky.

I was in Kabul, land of dirt, poverty and insurgency, not at a beach resort. I should be covered up, reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars or Butcher and Bolt, about the history of foreign intervention in Afghanistan.

The sunglasses had to go ... and even Wolf's magical book about Henry Tudor and Thomas Cromwell, after a few pages, found its way back in my bag as Ann and I chatted about the challenges of living and working  in Afghanistan (yes, I do see the irony of talking about how hard life is while lazing by a pool).

I could have laid there all day, but Ann had told her guards to pick us up at 12:30 and we still had to go for coffee and croissant in the hotel cafe.

As I was getting changed, it finally sunk in that what I was looking at in two corners of the changing room were Kevlar bullet proof vests. I wondered which of the pale European women in bikinis they belonged to.

Keeping it real

Today I asked my team what they thought I should include in my next set of training sessions, if there was anything specific they wanted me to focus on. One of them replied he would like to know how to better structure a story so that it was easily understood by everyone.

He sent me the below link as an example:

www.idristawfiq.com/index.php?news=43

What expats are talking about in Kabul

random messages on an online bulletin board

-------------------------------------

A friend of mine is looking to export pomegranates to some connections he has in a few gulf region arab countries. Does anyone know if US Army flights that leave back to their respective bases in the middle east have any kind of program were some of the cargo planes which leave here empty could be loaded with some fruit? It would be a great way to support the agriculture industry and the efforts to boost Afghanistan exports. Just a thought, let me know if ya'll have any info! 


------------------------------------

I have access to six hercules C-130, all of them airworthy, available almost immediately.

The best one only has 6000 hours, others are less attractive, but all are airworthy.

Interested, email and I'll refer

---------------------------------------------

We have a Yamaha console piano that is desperately crying out to be tuned. Is there a reputable, experienced, piano tuner scratching out their existence in Kabul?

-------------------------
Hi - my 15" Macbook Pro went down and I need to find some Mac OS X install disks to get it working again, I rather foolishly left them in New York. So if you'd like to be dear and help a poor working hack out, please drop me a line at matt.aikins[at]gmail.com. My computer is a late 2008 model, but I think the disks for any 15" intel processor MacBook Pro from 2008 on should work.

--------------------------------------------------------------

A friend of mine brought some useful equipments from Dabui for sell.

Helmats, goggles, boots, body armours and etc.

if you need more information or want one of these tools, kindly call at

--------------------------------------------------------

Cute little puppy needs a home! Puppy is a female, white, maybe 2 months old and very friendly.

Found her in front of my door and am unable to leave her on the street again. Since I have 3 dogs already, I cannot keep this one. Please help me find a home for her.

--------------------------
A course designed for people working in Afghanistan (or a hostile environment) who may not be allowed to carry a weapon due to their work, organization, company policy or position.
When all around you are dead or dying, what do you do? Pick up a weapon and try to defend yourself, or just die?
We know from experience in Kabul that insurgent-led “complex” style attacks have increased and leave individuals with difficult decisions to make in a life or death situation in the heat of a moment.
Have you ever fired a gun before?
This new Kabul-based course covers the basic everyday weapons found in Afghanistan and used by security personnel.

Each person on the course will handle the weapons on a dry run (no actual firing) to familiarize themselves with the "feel" of each weapon.

Optional actual shooting can be organized at a later date.

---------------------------


 A chevy Camero Convertible 1968 for sale. for more details contact us.


-------------------------------------------------
Hi everyone, we are going to come to Kabul for a six months period and my wife is wondering if there is a chance to have a haircut, manicure, refill for gel nails in Kabul. Can anyone answer this questions? Thanks
------------------------------------------------

Lost in translation

Maftoon is our logistics guy – actually he's the logistics assistant in charge of organising the drivers – there are about six of them. He's probably the tallest Afghan I know, super friendly and for some reason I always seem to interrupt him when he's eating, with my usually pathetic foreigner concerns. In the morning, as he's eating his breakfast of fried eggs (still in the frying pan), I burst into his office complaining that Fazil, my driver, approaches check points way too fast. I try to explain that we could be shot at; he sagely nods his head, smiling.

In the afternoon, just as he is about to dig into Kabuli rice, with its great big gristly bits of meat, I wave my printed schedule of pick up times at him. Fazil routinely comes to pick me up at 8:30 on a Saturday, despite not started work at 10:30 for the past three months. Hopefully, I say, this will make sense. Maftoon takes my sheet of paper and stares at it for a while. Then invites me to eat some rice with him.

I call him in the mornings, before he's even at work, to make sure the reliably unreliable Fazil will be picking me up (thus the printed list of pick up times); in the evening, after he's gone home, to find out where the hell Fazil is.  Fazil, although sweet, speaks no English, although yesterday I did find out that he knows the word "Finest", the western supermarket near my home.

Each time I call, or burst into his office, Maftoon stands, smiles, extends his hand and before we even address my issues, go through the several greetings that are part of Afghan culture.

"Hello Cassie, how are you?" (Stands up, extends hand, shakes hand several times.)

"I'm fine Maftoon, thank you, how are you?" (hands still pumping away)

"I am fine, Cassie, Thank you .. are you well?"

"Yes, Maftoon very well, about Fazil ..." (detaching hand from his to indicate serious business now) 

"Oh yes, I will help you .., how is your family Cassie? How was your evening, did you rest? Please join me for some breakfast."

Argh!!!!

Maftoon's English is also not so good. The other day when I arrived back from the UAE, I called him while standing in the immigration queue to make sure that there was a pick up for me.

"Hello Cassie, how are you?"

"Hi Maftoon, I'm fine thank you, how are you?"

"Thank you Cassie, yes, I am well. Are you ok?"

"Maftoon, I am at the airport, is there someone to pick me up?"

"Did you have a good trip Cassie?"

"Yes, it was a good trip, thank you."

"Oh good, good. Are you at the office now?"

 "No, Maftoon, I have just arrived. I am at Kabul international airport. Is there a driver?"

"Cassie, I am in Jalalabad, (a town in the east). But I will call the driver to see if he is there."

Thank you/ You're welcome/bye/bye.

Two minutes later, Maftoon calls.

"Cassie, Fazil is waiting for you."

"He is at the airport?"

"Yes, yes, I am in Jalalabad. How was your trip?"

"Maftoon, is Fazil at the airport?"

"Yes, he is there, he has been waiting for you."

"Great, thank you. How is Jalalabad?"

"No Cassie, Fazil is waiting for you at carpark B."

Was it really only this time last week that a friend  and I (who has asked that he be referred to on here as "the hot one") were sitting on the stoop at the back of my house (left); a quiet night, crescent moon and glass of red wine in hand, discussing if Afghanistan was finally going see peace.

At the jirga, the delegates had rubber stamped Karzai's plan to reconcile with the Taliban and other militants. Would they accept? Would Afghanistan's "angry brothers" lay down their arms and stop fighting in return for jobs and economic assistance? Would Afghanistan and Kabul finally have streets where people could drive without fear of an explosion? Could I buy a bicycle to ride to work? Would I be able to walk home, stopping along the way at the multitude of vegetable and fruit carts piled high with aubergines, courgettes, radishes and mangos and not worry about being a target?

The day before, after a workout at the gym, I  had taken a taxi back to the office. It was about 3pm and the girls were just getting out of school. It was a hot day, the sun was shining. Crowds of young girls in school uniforms, their white headscarfs knotted loosely under their necks and slipping off their heads, skipped down the pavement, chatting. On the road were a couple of street vendors. One with an old fashioned popcorn machine, another selling what looked like slices of a sugary omelette; a man with a cart full of ripe red tomatoes and cucumbers pushed past them. People were walking and shopping, getting their bikes fixed and chatting to each other.

The thought I might be able to participate in the daily life of Kabul was an idyllic prospect, but of course naive.

On Sunday, Karzai sacked his two top intelligence officials. The interior minister and the head of the National Directorate of Security, the spy chief. Officially both resigned to take responsibility for the attack on the peace jirga, but over the past week it has emerged that they were opposed to making peace with the Taliban.

For the intel chief, Amrullah Saleh, it seemed especially egregious as he had been part of the Northern Alliance which fought against the Taliban until they were toppled in early 2002. He has made it quite clear in a number of media interviews since his resignation that in his view, reconciling with the Taliban would erode any steps towards democracy and progress, not to mention women's rights, made so far.

My Afghan colleagues at first applauded the resignations of the two ministers. In the West, if there is such a lapse in security, then a minister would resign to take responsibility. But here in Afghanistan, people die all the time and no one ever resigns, said one colleague, a tough Pashto who is in charge of reporting on Afghanistan's southern region.  True, but it later appeared that the resignations were less about good governance and more about appeasing the Taliban.

Both Saleh and the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, were favoured by the West. Atmar lived in London before returning to Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban. Saleh was a former FBI man who was apparenly chummy with the CIA and MI6.

There is talk now that their removals/resignations/sackings were intended as an olive branch to the Taliban. But the upshot is that Afghanistan is now without its two top security officials as we go into what is supposed to be a bloody summer.

Dozens of international represenatives will be in Kabul to attend a donors conference on July 20, and elections for parliament take place on September 18.

According to the US, there's nothing to worry about. They are confident Karzai will pick competent, professional people, of which, one US official said, Afghanistan has plenty of. (Right, tell that to the NGOs). They inisist NATO has regained the momentum in the nine-year war, which has now made history as the US's longest war, while acknowledging that this week was one of the bloodiest for foreign soldiers. 18 were killed within two days.

And how has the Taliban reacted to this grand gesture by Karzai? They hung a seven-year-old boy for spying, and attacked a wedding party killing up to 60 people and injuring another 100 in Kandahar province, their spiritual homeland. When I spoke to the provincial governor's spokesman that day (I am constantly suprised by the level of English), he said the village was very anti-Taliban, but then quickly corrected himself by saying that not all Taliban were violent and that mostly the attacks was carried out by Al Qaeda and "foreigners" (ie: other Arab nations).

The bike will have to wait. So thankfully, I have found yoga in the garden!

The Jirga

For three days, the getaway car sat in our driveway. A white behemoth of the type the UN and their cronies drive around in, complete with satellite antenna and first aid kit, although minus the big blue insignia.

Crates of water were stacked in the kitchen and in the safe room and the cupboards overflowed with food; boxes of cereal, chocolate, juice and of course, ryvita!

On the evening before the start of the three-day peace jirga, a traditional tribal assembly gathering in Kabul to discuss how to reconcile the various armed opposition forces in the country, the international community was in lock down. NGO and governmental workers were told to stay at home. No movement outside the house; none at all. Even the gym was closed. Everyone thought this would be the time for the big compound attack - where the Taliban and other insurgents overrun an embassy or guesthouse.

But asisde from the dribble of rockets that fell miles wide of the jirga tent on the first day, and the gunbattle between security forces and suicide bombers dressed in burqas (which sounds more like a Monty Python sketch!), it all went, well, rather peacefully.  There are of course conspiracy theories that Karzai orchestrated the attacks to gain sympathy and support for his peace plan.

But, by the second day, my housemates were begining to show evidence of cabin fever; They had slept, ate, answered thousands of emails, baked cakes and plucked apricots from the fruit trees, and it seems grown tired of eachother's company. "When are you coming home?" was one plaintive plea I received via skype from a bored housemate. (I was lucky enough to go to work for the three days).

That evening the gin came out and the friends came round (some breaking curfew).
We never did use the getaway car - well except for Saturday, when we decided to go for a drive and to buy some plants.

As for the jirga, it got underway in a grand marquee on the grounds of the Polytechnic University (yep, that's its name) bringing together 1,400 delegates; tribal elders, MPs, nomadic chiefs, and women.

Hamid Karzai, the president, wants to bring low-level Taliban back into the fold and give them jobs and money. Sounds sensible. But unemployment runs at about 30-40 percent, just in the capital, and if they give jobs to Taliban and not ordinary Afghans, won’t the same thing happen again?

The money for the reintegration programme is reportedly coming from a trust fund that donors pedged at the London Confernce in January - $160 million.

Not to mention that both the Taliban and Gulbudin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islam Afghanistan - neither of which were invited to the party - have ruled out any peace talks unless foreign forces withdraw (that’s not going to happen).

Karzai summed it up in his speech at the opening day when he mentioned this stand off between the insurgents and the US-led forces, saying: "It seems they both want to torment us."

But while no one really believes the jirga actually achieved anything useful, other than to rubber stamp a plan Karzai had already run past the US and other international powers, it certainly did not bring the brutal reaction from the Taliban many were expecting.

We're still waiting.

Another week in Kabul

• NATO Fuel tankers bombed in Jalalabad
• Taliban take over a town in eastern Nuristan
• A suicide bomber blows himself up outside a military caterer in Kabul
• NGOs warned they may be the target of attacks due to proselytising Christians

I went to a party the other night. A correspondent who had written for me while I was at The National was having a barbecue. It seems like the thing to do here on a Friday – a barbecue in the garden. As we sat among the roses on Afghan cushions in the dimming light, eating burgers and salads and drinking beer from the can, a murmur went round. Heads started to turn and a whisper gathered voice: “legs” was all I heard. Then I saw her .... the woman in a skirt. It’s not that she had the type of legs that make men cry. It was simply that we could see them, from the knee down. I looked away almost embarrassed.

It’s strange how conservative we become when we live in countries where covering up is the norm. But we were at a party – where it was mostly internationals (the euphemism foreigners have awarded themselves here). There were no women in headscarves, although most had scarves draped around their neck and chest. There were tight jeans, tops that just skirted the hips, but nothing quite so daring as... gasp ... bare legs.

I never did get a chance to meet the bare naked leg lady but there were plenty of other interesting people. In fact, it is impossible to meet anyone boring (although it is possible to meet someone you don’t like) here in Kabul.

No one works in a biscuit factory – or if they do – they are making high energy biscuits for pregnant Afghan women, incidentally, one of whom dies ever half an hour due to complications.

There was the German woman working for a small Dutch NGO that helps refugees returning from Pakistan and the internally displaced with livelihood projects; the American woman who’s been here a dozen years and is a gender and environmental specialist; the Harvard fellow doing his Phd in nation building and who comes from Banda Aceh (my favourite place in the world); the Italian running an advocacy group; the Indian journalist who’s been here seven years and has found a house and a husband; and the girl like me - a British journalist who's doing some training.

Even my housemates are all quite fascinating (and should stop reading now); the country director of a German NGO who previously worked in Swat (the place, not the American crack police force); his colleague who gave up a lucrative career on Wall Street to do something good, his pregnant wife who wants to do a Phd on the structures of Pashtun tribal communities along the border with Pakistan; the Canadian lawyer; the ridiculously laid back 50-something German who's been here five years and can not only get his hands on a car, but into the ISAF camp for a booze run as well; and the young 20 something in her first month here who has lost one Afghan colleague in a plane crash and her boss in an attack on a project site in the north east.

I find myself saying "wow" a lot, bit like a teenager among really cool adults.

 Discussions are usually about, well Afghanistan.

 I met an American woman last week at the Grill, a Lebanese restaurant that serves hummus and falafel , and occasionally alcohol, although after the vice and virtue police cracked down last month, it is pleasingly dry. It was raining when I arrived - the garden empty. A few tables inside were full of Afghans and westerners. One (american)  woman was dressed in a red satin, sleeveless, strappy top.The woman I was meeting, an embassy official, was thankfully dressed in a jumper and jeans.

Part of her work here involves setting up prisons, training police and the judiciary. Not an easy task.
Illiterate villagers are given six weeks of training and a gun and told they are now police. They are also paid $185 a month. A translator at my office gets $400. A driver for the UN can make $600. No wonder there are problems encouraging locals to join the private sector when they can make so much money in NGO work. It's cannibalistic. The very money that is supposed to be furthering and developing the economy is stymieing it, as what educated Afghan will become a provincial judge on $150 a day if they can get 10 x that as a political analyst for the Canadian embassy? At some point the NGOs will leave and the economy will crash.

 The American woman I ostensibly work for, "the mother of Pajhwok" says that one of her greatest personal achievements was in making the staff at the agency believe in a future. How can you plan for tomorrow when your country is being torn apart by civil war, when you don't know if tomorrow you will be on the side of the victors or losers. How do you convince someone they need to make a plan, a system for hiring, for news coverage, for expansion, to prepare for a workshop next week even, when they don't believe in tomorrow.

So it was something of a personal moment for me when one of the editors I am training, who has for the past week or so been showing up in the last 20 minutes of my lessons, asked me yesterday morning, "so we have a lesson today Cassie?".

I told the American woman, who replied "Awesome! So do you think you'll want to stay longer?"

Mission Essential

So it's certainly been an interesting week.
First, I popped my suicide blast cherry. Last Tuesday, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a NATO convoy at about 8am. Most of those who were killed were Afghan civilians travelling on a passenger bus.  I was getting ready for work when I got the first text ....

"Explosion heard, please report your location."

Actually I was playing with the kitten and waiting for my ride, so didn't see the text until the next one came; 20 minutes later while I was in the work minivan chatting to the photo trainer about the ash cloud that had once again closed airports in the UK

"Suicide bomb Darulamum road. no movement until all clear. please acknowledge .."

Well, we were on our way to work, miles away from Darulamum which is the old presidential palace (incidentally already bombed out from the civil war), and so we continued down our street, famous perhaps only for its watermelon stands, oh and the lovely flower street cafe nearby.

Once we got to work, it was all about the story. What was the target, were there any casualties and what nationality? The usual stuff journalists crave.

So it wasn't until I started to wrap up to go home that I checked my phone again.

"New threat report indicates that other SVBIED ( for those not in the know .. suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device) are located in the city and looking for opportune targets. Restrict movement to mission essential over the next 24 hours."

A few minutes later a friend texts with yet another warning of attacks in specific areas of the capital.
I have to say it didn't really help that I had a terrible hangover. I got home, and went to bed.
The next morning, I wake up feeling bright and breezy to:

"Report from BEK and US Mil of imminent attack in Shash Darak district, also of insurgent attack in the area of Jalalabad Road. Limit movement to mission essential only."

It is my first day of training. I'm running a workshop on writing good ledes, so again, it's not really what I need to focus on right now. Plus, the only people going to Jalalabad road are either soldiers going to the ISAF base, or expats looking to buy booze from the ISAF base (more on this later).

But within a few hours, we have information that there has been an attack on the heavily guarded Bagram Airforce base just north of Kabul. At least half a dozen suicide bombers, some in cars tried to enter the base. Dozens of other militants fired grenades and small arms at the base. It was an unprecedented attack, but they never got further than the outer perimeter wall.  One US contractor was killed.

So the training went well and was a lot of fun, although one colleague showed up for the last 20 minutes and another for the last five, and one of the Afghan trainers "supporting me" hijacked the show. When I asked him if he wanted to comment on an issue, he pulled out a powerpoint slide show and began to give his 30 minute presentationon om ledes, all  in Pashto. But everyone enjoyed it - not to mention enjoyed the tea and biscuits which I think is the reason anyone goes to the training room. I have my own reasons to go to the training room, since the new 23-year-old Afghan assistant joined (more about that in another post, I think).

So its 5:30pm, when I get another text:

"Movements to Shash Darak can resume, but threats of a complex (that's attacks on a compound/guesthouse) tonight have not lessened. Palace, ISAF, Embassy have all been mentioned. Once home, stay home, no movement except in emergencies arranged by Des (I have no idea who Des is)."

 Well, that's OK as I like staying in my home, with its bottles of wine and gin, funny little kitten, rose garden and ever growing numbe of housemates (there are seven of us now, including a pregnant woman).

We're driving home in the van, and as usual it's dark and there are only one or two streetlights working. Afghans on bicycles appear out of nowhere in the gritty darkness, or run across the road. We drop one of my Afghan colleagues off first, but the other, who like most people at the office, seem to have at least two jobs, is heading to his other office to play pool. So there I am driving around the backstreets of the capital, looking for this guy's office when I get another text.

"Threat reporting from ISAF. NDS report insurgent planning SVBIED against Serena Hotel, MoE, KMTC (no idea what this is) German and Indian embassies, a guesthouse near US embassy & Parliament members using 2 motorbikes & brown toyota. advise Total lock down until 07:00hrs tomorrow when will be reassessed."

Needless to say I am now scanning before long, toyotas, the faces of everyone driving a toyota - and believe me there are many in Kabul - for signs of someone being newly shaved. Apparenly you need to be clean if you are going to martyr yourself. Some even shave off all their body hair.
I make it home safe and sound, and for once, everyone is home, with a couple of extras too. We break out the gin, the wine and someone makes pasta and heats up some leftovers. The kitten crawls on my lap, an Ipod plays in the background and brown toyotas and suicide blasts are left far behind.