Z Rosenblog

Shallow Thoughts: Links 11/11/10

2010-11-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

This is who I am
I am bored but in control
Let me scan your bags

Greater Greater Washington, a city transportation/urbanization blog posts odes to security in classic haiku style.

While looking for the country's worst bridge I found this little Google Earth plugin some guy has made, which conveniently charts the data on a map. It maps only the lowest-rated 26% of bridges. Yes, that one bridge is on there. Yep, that one too. No, you shouldn't necessarily stop driving over them.

A guy from Oklahoma named Bob sends out occasional emails with some random facts that he found interesting, some pictures, his opinions, whatever. He's very into tech and copyright stuff, but it's still pretty interesting.

For some reason, a lot of the people I know in Afghanistan are photographers. It's a little odd, but I sometimes see their work. Some work for wire services, so their pictures are regularly picked up by media all over the place. Two friends, Massoud and Majid, are featured in Boston.com's Big Picture, a feature that regularly posts the best photos of a given topic.

And here's an unfortunately defunct but damn interesting website.

Mexico Drug War Primer

2010-11-05T08:31:00.001-07:00

First, today's headline. Some guys from Acapulco killed some Michoanaca tourists. It looks like his organization killed them for their mistake. They put the confession on Youtube.

A general introduction from a book review book review. And an illustration from The Guardian.

Here's a hardcore analysis from Center for a New American Security. As one might anticipate from a think-tank, this is a good analysis but biased in favor of certain conclusions. These conclusions seem obvious to me, so I can't account for my own bias, but it looks like the author does a good job gathering and interpreting evidence.

Finally, the translated editorial from El Diario de Juarez, essentially conceding defeat after yet another of their writers was killed. The editorial is titled, 'Que Quieren de Nosotros?' -- 'What do you Want From Us?' Mexico is one of the deadliest places in the world for reporters. I've never heard of anything like this, a prominent media organization openly begging for mercy.

An interesting facet of all this is that the Mexican drug cartels are long past communicating openly with the local population through prominent banners and notes on bodies. They are now posting the videos of people they capture directly to Youtube. Does this mean that in the information age criminal networks are under pressure to be more transparent, or is it just PR aimed at inciting more fear? There's an article to be written here, but damned if I'm going down there to write it.

Cool Links Today

2010-11-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've sort of abandoned this blog, but I shouldn't do that. There are interesting things happening all the time, no reason to neglect them. The world totally needs to hear my views on everything.

First, a cool link to the New America Foundation's Pakistan Survey, which has correlated opinion polls in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to drone strikes. NAF is keeping close track of drone strikes, and the correlations are fascinating, especially because you can sort the polls by income, education, etc. Turns out the drone strikes aren't necessarily totally unpopular. http://pakistansurvey.org/

Second, a live webcam showing construction of the next Mars rover, Curiosity. It's due to be launched in late 2011 and arrive on Mars late 2012. The cam is generally pretty boring, as you'd expect, but awesome. http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl. Incidentally, this is a mildly entertaining cam website, despite the advertisements. Here are Golden Retriever puppies (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/golden-retriever-puppies-webcam)

My First Ambulance Chase

2010-08-10T23:40:00.001-07:00

This is a transcript of myself and Dr. Karen Woo, a British surgeon, about her upcoming medical mission with an IAM Eye Care Team:

Q: Nuristan has a dangerous reputation, do you feel in danger? Is it optimistic to go there?

K: I don’t really know how to answer that question, because I’m, I don’t have a crystal ball. Do I believe in my heart that the situation – maybe this is naïve – is to do with outsiders versus insiders, and if you’re going to people who know you, and know what you’re trying to achieve, that that is the, that is the pass to allow you to travel safely in those areas. And you said, you know, the Russians, the Taliban, the Americans, but we’re none of those. We’re none of those. I hope what we, the flag that we will fly is a medical flag, that we’re there purely to serve the people that we encounter, people in Nuristan, to benefit them, and to bring them something that they don’t have easy access to. So the effort on our behalf is to gather together the goods that we take with us, the medicines, the treatments, etc, and to get it to them, and they live in such remote places that there’s no chance that they’re going to be able to come, to take time away from their families and work to travel long, long distances to get the medical care they might need, there just aren’t the facilities there. So, hopefully, somewhere along the line there’s a logic which says ‘they need us to be there, and therefore they will protect us as we travel.’ That’s what I’m hoping. Do I think there’s absolutely no risk whatsoever, no, it would be stupid if I thought that, but I don’t have any other way of knowing how to take this thing forward. I mean, we could stay at home, it doesn’t seem like an option to me *laugh.*

Q: Would you go there if you weren’t a doctor?

K: For some reason I feel, yeah, no I feel quite specific about it being a medical program, that that’s actually something that’s easy to understand, and that it – I’m hoping it’s something that cannot be misconstrued as something bad. Although I know that [??] it has to be taken because things can be misinterpreted, and that one small, uh, one small mishap could really endanger the whole mission and everyone that’s on it. So I’m very aware that we are low profile, that there’s no intention to offend, or to upset everyone, and to simply abide by what their rules will be and to be guided be those things, so we’re not there to try and force anything down anyone’s throat. And I hope that that will, that will take us through.

About three weeks after this interview, Karen and nine other team members were massacred in a Badakhshan forest when they stopped for lunch on their way back to Kabul. News reports indicate there were six gunmen with their beards dyed red, speaking a Nuristani dialect of Dari. This suggests that the team was purposely stalked by the the gunmen. The news organization's basis of knowledge is unclear; there was one survivor, who supposedly was spared when he began chanting Islamic prayers, who is being held incommunicado in a Ministry of Interior facility in Kabul. Supposedly at least one local saw either the shooting or the aftermath.

Both the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami (HiG, after its infamous leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar) claimed responsibility. The Taliban said they were NATO spies; HiG claimed they were missionaries with Dari bibles. Both claims are unlikely given how late they were issued. The local police said it was a robbery, but then they would -- a commonly whispered opinion is that whatever the gunmen left, the police probably took. Badakhshan was, until the massacre, considered relatively safe, but neighboring Nuristan very dangerous; to the best of my knowledge, no news organizations have any plans to go up there and nail down the facts.

The British press, especially the half-feral tabloids, have been jumping over one another to print the tenderest detail, the most revealing photograph, but they have been relegated to mining her blog posts and what her family says. So here I am, with about 3 hours of audio and 45 transcribed pages of the last interview Karen gave. Much of it is exactly the kind of thing those tabloids would kill for, a guided tour of her personal history, thoughts and philosophies. These were only tangents -- she's very engaging -- made suddenly relevant by her murder. I didn't know Karen well, nor did I know Glen Lapp or Brian Carderelli, team members with whom I also spoke. I sat across tables from these people and asked them questions, and though their deaths shocked me, they did not knock me back into existential crisis, and my mourning is over for now.

I want to write an article. I'm not interested in resorting to the salacious personal details or the sappy sentimentality that substitutes for real knowledge. To write such an article would be a disservice to everyone involved, especially the dead. Already the killings are fading from the news cycle (pushed, confusingly enough, by Naomi Campbell?). Pitiful though it is, the opportunity is open for someone to write an article the right way, New Yorker style, in which time and thought are taken, where everyone is interviewed up and down the line, in which as many pertinent factors as possible are tied together -- who were these people, what were they doing, and why -- really -- were they killed?

Both Taliban and HiG claims must be taken with a bigger grain of salt than usual -- not only do they conflict, they were simply too late. Robbery is possible, but it is well-known in most of the country that kidnapping is a more effective and lucrative business -- and the cars were still there. The Nuristanis are famously hostile towards everyone that comes into the area, but three IAM medical camps had been conducted there in previous years (though the last one was five years ago) and there were some local contacts. Had the temperature simply changed that much? This is a story that does not deserve the fast treatment it has thus far received.

My problems are resources and time. Many news organizations have contacts in Badakhshan and Nuristan. With a single email, I was able to get the phone number for the local police chief, and could no doubt get more if I pressed for it. Safiullah, the lone survivor, is being held incommunicado in Kabul, but that same email got me the phone numbers for people who could put me in a room with him if they were so inclined. These things I owe to my friends and acquaintances, who have better things to do. But I lack the personal connections to those people that really could get me into Safiullah's room, or into a conversation with the relevant Badakshis and Nuristanis. Crucially at this stage, I lack a translator that allows me to ask nicely, or the money to hire one. I am due to leave Afghanistan in just under three weeks, which gives me some time but not much. I'm probably not the person to be writing something like this, but I have in my possession something unique: Karen's last interview. Now what the hell am I going to do with it?

Kabul Without Prozac

2010-08-02T02:59:00.000-07:00

Long story short.

One day I got an email from a friend, one that contained an invitation to the most prominent expat party in Kabul, held once a year by a French NGO. Of course, I had to go. It was everything the invitation promised; free alcohol, hundreds of foreigners, dancing, etc. Kabul has no shortage of interesting expats -- A Brit that had just flown in to write about fly fishing in Badakshan, UN Office of Drug Control employee who cheerfully acknowledged a losing battle, a New York Times reporter, etc. I am well aware of my terribly awkward dancing, so I tend to dance fueled with prodigious alcohol and an embarrassed half-grin.

During the evening, a friend caught the attention of a Turkish embassy employee, who offered us a ride home in his heavily-armored embassy vehicle. On the way, he said, "would you like to see the embassy?" So we ended up inside the Turkish compound at 2am, hopping fences to reach the pool, examining the surreal livestock pens (containing a horse, two sheep and several geese). Then back over the fence we went and home just as the first call to prayer sounded.

The next day, my Austrian-Iranian friend and I went to interview the only rapper in Afghanistan, DJ Besho. After some negotiation (on her part--she speaks Farsi) we managed to get into the week's filming of Afghan Star. We claimed our front-row seats and wandered around, finding people to interview. While Austro-Iranian was engrossed in conversations, I was relegated to conversing in broken English (with some broken Farsi thrown in) to whoever I could snag. I got little out of the interviews; the language skills just weren't there. One guy I tried to interview immediately requested my notepad, where he wrote his phone number. He spoke no English so I had to have Austro-Iran translate. "Oh," she said, "he says, 'I'm just looking for a boyfriend'" The guy spent the entire rest of the afternoon blowing kisses, waving and winking at me, much to Austro-Iran's amusement. But she had her own problems: our informally-designated escort, a keyboard technician or something, had sat next to her and was not-so-subtly hitting on her, spreading his legs so her knee would be forced against his, etc.

Afghan Star, far and away the most popular TV show in Afghanistan, is directly comparable to American Idol. Afghans from all over the country come to compete; their success or failure is determined by regular Afghans, who vote by text message. This particular filming was a championship of sorts, a contest between only two contestants. But the show must go on, and the next five hours were excruciating: guest stars, unbearable tension building ("should we open the box? Should we? We open it after this break!"), tributes and more. It was like watching the Oscar awards or an NFL game set to bland and soulless Afghan pop -- lots and lots of filler. Our subject, Besho, came out only twice for a minute or two, and the post-show interview had to be postponed due to security problems -- an American embassy vehicle had run an Afghan car off the road, killing four and sparking a small riot. No taxi would come out to where we were, so we had to hitch a ride home with the keyboard tech and his friends.

Finally, we ended up at a restaurant to meet some other friends, where we saw a small, depressing fashion show, then went with a newswire photographer and a government spokesman to eat. After finishing our food we went home, had some drinks, and split up.

The next day my idiot boss was mercifully elsewhere, so I had an easy day of work before joining Austro-Iranian and going to Behzan's house to interview him. He was with a friend, Hamid, who introduced himself by mentioning that he had been in prison, but that "I didn't do nothing, twice." Both were interesting to interview, but more or less as you'd expect: they were not deep thinkers or political sages.

Yesterday I was paid, but without my commission. My idiot boss owes me about $250, but claims he cannot pay it right now. It bodes badly for the final payment when my contract expires on the 19th, which is a bit more substantial. Also yesterday Siar, who left the company to strike it rich, told me that my idiot boss was to sell the company to him two weeks ago, of which my idiot boss told me nothing. When I asked my idiot boss about it, he grumbled about Siar's lies and claimed that it was because Siar did not have the money. I have been constructing increasingly labyrinthine plots and having increasingly violent daydreams of revenge if my money, of which I have already assigned every penny, does not come through.

I have spent today pacing back and forth in my office, fuming about my job, last night's friendly gathering I was not invited to attend, the lack of progress with my ongoing articles, the uncertainty of my situation in Kabul and the uncertainty of my near future. I realized that it has been two full years since my last favorable charting on Maslow's Hierarchy, and day by day I am becoming increasingly bitter, angry and withdrawn, the kind of things that feed on themselves. I'm tired of broken communications, of being openly stared at wherever I walk, of the endless mosquito population, of not having dependable go-to friends to call, of the numbing boredom, and most of all of looking forward to more of the same in Washington.

On the bright side, I finally got my camera back.

AE, Ltd.

2010-07-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

When the call comes in for a crane, or a truck, or whatever, the roles break down this way: Khalid, the boss, finds the equipment, then sleeps in and gets paid. Fahim gets up early to meet and escort trucks and drivers to the job, and I speak to the Army from the office, to relay instructions between them and Fahim. It can be intensely frustrating at times; Fahim's English is good enough to communicate his ideas, though it's very basic. Still, there are enduring communication problems. Fahim will call me to tell me the trucks are at the gate, I call the Army, the Army sends a guy out but doesn't find the trucks. Are they there, just in a corner? Are they somewhere else? I don't know.

I call Fahim and say, where are you? "I am at Gate 1, Zach, you call for customer?" Yes, I did, they're at Gate 1 and can't see you. "Ok Zach, ok." Where are you, Fahim? "Yes Zach, ok." No, Fahim, where are you? "Ok Zach, call for customer." Dial tone. The delivery gets made eventually and it's just confusion/language barrier, but it can be incredibly frustrating, especially in the morning before I've had my coffee. For this reason I asked to accompany Fahim on the next delivery.

Some background is needed. Afghanistan is as mercenary a place as I've seen, and I'm not just talking about the ubiquitous mercenaries. Once, we sent some trucks to a base, but on the way somebody offered them more money to drive to Mazar-i-Sharif, so they did. No phone call, they just left. Also, Afghans have a tendency to lie about a great number of things. I don't know if this is just the Central Asian 'avoid-confrontation' culture, a local specialty, an artifact of the conflict or what, but I have been told some incredibly blatant and clearly disprovable whoppers -- they tell me the crane lifts 40 tons when the big label says 30; they tell me my near-boiling soda is cold; they tell me they can get the part, and they can't; they tell me they can't get the part when they can. Etc. It makes Westerners crazy.

Today, our job was to deliver a scissor lift to an American base in Kabul by 8am. Fahim called at about 6:30 to say he would pick me up in 20 minutes. At 7:45 he finally arrived with bad news: though Khalid told us today's equipment was too small to be a problem, the police would not let the lift into Kabul, where heavy machinery is banned during the daytime. To get through requires either a permit (very expensive) or a series of bribes (less expensive). When we reached the lift at about 8:30, it turned out not to be a scissor lift at all -- it was a small flatbed with a small crane, to which was bolted a small basket. Ok, we told the driver, just drive and we'll figure it out.
At the very next intersection we were waved over by the cops, who were letting bigger trucks go by without a glance. Because they really have no way to stop anybody except by shooting them, it tends to be catch-as-catch-can. They caught us. We pulled over to negotiate, and while we were on the phone with their captain, our truck just drove away. The cops yelled at us for a minute, then accepted our explanation -- we have no idea what he's doing -- shrugged, and said "we'll just arrest them at the next checkpoint." We chased the truck down to ask him what the hell he was thinking, but we did get out of paying a hefty bribe, so we couldn't be that mad. Fortuitously, we were right in front of the base. There was a large police checkpoint between us at the gate we needed, but there was a smaller gate just down the road. I went in, talked with some soldiers from the Maine National Guard, and got us in the small gate.
Driving home in the typically chaotic Kabul traffic, we passed an Afghan in a giant H2 Hummer, wearing an American flag scarf. Fahim turned to me: "Why we always take the bad words from foreign? Bad things. Not good. Bad words, bad custom, bad things. Like..." he pauses for a second, "big glasses! Why we take these things, Zach?"

When you ask an Afghan where they are from, they will typically tell you where their family originates. Though Fahim was born in Kabul, he will tell you he is from Panjshir. Panjshir was one of the few places never taken by the Taliban; it was the home of the Northern Alliance, led by the skilled jihadi Ahmed Shah Massoud. Until Massoud's assassination he was considered one of the only people that could potentially lead a united Afghanistan, and his picture can be seen everywhere in Kabul -- on billboards, car windows, houses, etc. Fahim, who calls him "The Great Massoud," works his name into as many conversations as possible.

On Friday afternoons, equivalent to Sunday here, the whole of Afghanistan pours out into parks and grassy areas to rest, hang out, talk, etc after they have prayed. I go down on Fridays to nearby Shar-e-Nau park, where a veterinary student-turned refugee-turned money changer named Sawad thrashes me soundly in game after game of chess. I have been practicing to beat Sawad, and trying to teach Fahim to play chess on my laptop's standard chess program. Fahim is an enthusiastic player, requesting a game at every opportunity, but he's a terrible player. Granted, chess is really tough, but Fahim seems unwilling to grasp the essential idea of grand strategy. He moves his pieces haphazardly, without backup, and is surprised when the computer takes them. I have watched in dismay as he throws away capital piece after capital piece in order to eliminate a random pawn. I have played several demonstration matches against him, in which I explain every move, my plans, my strategy, my weaknesses and his options. I set up a trap for his queen, and say, "this is the trap. See this castle? If you move your queen here you can take it, but I will take your queen with my horse." He takes the bait anyway. That said, Fahim thrashes me soundly at checkers.

Khalid keeps a small chess set downstairs, which he uses to play checkers ("dwozabiza"). Fittingly, Khalid is the worst businessman I've ever seen. When he started this logistics business two years ago, he was quickly able to make good money, though how I have not been able to establish nor replicate. Then, abruptly, he decided he was rich enough. He started ignoring his calls -- not canceling, just ignoring. All his contacts rotated back to the states. Then, equally abruptly, he decided he wasn't rich enough and had to get back into business. So he rehired Fahim and brought in Siar, who then hired me. Siar is a dedicated businessman and a nice guy, but an inveterate liar. During Siar's time, the amount of office intrigue and drama was impressive for a 4-man office. Everyone had separate, secret companies, and they schemed to get each other's contacts and price lists. Within a couple of weeks one of Siar's companies got a lucrative contract, so he accused Khalid of some arbitrary breech of contract and walked out. Unfortunately, since he was the only person in the place with any business acumen, he took our best opportunities with him. I am now the Great White Hope, purported savior of the company despite the fact I clearly have no idea what I'm doing. Khalid has an office downstairs, where he smokes cigarettes and does god knows what all day. Among his many business-related sins:

-His primary idea of marketing is basically email spam. He has no personal contacts left, and no interest in developing any. Granted, that's mine too, but still.
-A situation arose where a contracting officer thought she owed us some money. We went back to check, but it turns out Khalid has not been keeping track of how much money he has or has not been paid, much less when and for what services. I wish I were joking.
-He has several companies, none of which are successful, in which he pretends to be different people. Some of his partners/owners and most of his staff are fictitious. I learn about a new one every couple of weeks, when he calls me down to explain an email from an Army officer. Also, in addition to being myself, Director of Communications, I am also Ahmed Wali, Marketing Manager for another company.
-The same day our trucks left without a word, a 40-ton crane broke down. We whipped up a 30-ton replacement crane, but Khalid told me to tell the Army it was 40 tons, because he could charge more and the Army wouldn't know the difference. "But what," I asked, "if they were lifting 40-ton objects?" They're not, he assured me based on nothing at all, just tell them it's a 40-ton. I refused. Later he told me he got a 40-ton replacement crane, though I strongly suspect he just decided to lie to me as well. The Army found their own solution, so thankfully I didn't have to make the decision.
-One day he told me I had 10 minutes to leave the house, because he was bringing over a friend who had Taliban sympathies and wouldn't appreciate a foreigner. I don't really know people I can just drop in on without warning, but I did it anyway because I want to survive. It turned out that by 'friend with Taliban sympathies' he actually meant 'two hookers and some wine.' Not a business thing, but still, what an asshole.
-An entirely foreseeable issue with my visa, which I will not detail until it's sorted out. Believe me, it's stupid and expensive, and it didn't have to be.
-He asked me to register with a certain contractor's database. This required, in addition to a ridiculous amount of my time dealing with several bureaucracies, waiting for a couple of numbers from him. After two weeks of constant, constant reminders, he finally sat down and entered the numbers from memory, which took him two minutes. Later it turned out we were already registered, he had just forgotten.
-That happened twice.
-To get heavy machinery into Kabul, I've mentioned, requires a license or a bribe. It takes a few trips, but in the long run the amount of bribes exceeds the cost of a license. We have no plans to procure a license. Go figure.

Field Trips

2010-06-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

My work takes maybe an hour per day at most, then consists of waiting around the rest of the day for emails that seldom arrive. I do this six days a week. Today I got so bored of sitting down and doing nothing that I decided to stand up and do nothing. I tilted the laptop screen up to aimlessly surf the 'net. I stood on the deck and watched the scrawny stray cats stalk past one another. I observed the weirdly colorful large flies, with big red segmented eyes and stripes running down their backs. For what seemed like an hour I returned the stares of the group of Afghans in the car the parked out front (it's common -- they're generally waiting for a meeting at the police station next door, and staring at foreigners is a national pastime). I strolled around the neighborhood, once in the heat of midafternoon and once more in the refreshing early evening breeze. I stood on the deck and read as the sun went down behind the mountains that ring Kabul. Then I stood up to read inside. I sat down to write this blog post, because to type I have to hunch awkwardly over the table.

Aside from my boss and coworkers, in whom I have not one iota of trust and generally wish would go away, I essentially have two friends who I am completely dependent upon for all social interactions. I don't see them but once each a week or so (I like them both, but I suspect they hang out with me out politeness or sympathy; I'm almost always the initiator. Whatever, I'll take it) and I'm alone -- or wish I was -- the rest of the time. Consequently, I get irrationally excited when one of them suggests some activity that involves leaving my house and talking with people. I'm essentially your dog when you look down with a goofy smile and say, "wanna go for a walk? C'mon boy, walk?? Walk?!?" So the other day when Ms. Peacock -- I haven't gotten this 'name them anonymously on the blog' thing down yet. The Peacock, just Peacock, or Ms. Peacock from Clue? -- suggested we go to the Kabul Museum, I was all over it.

The Museum and most of its collection was looted or destroyed under successive waves of looters. The Taliban literally defaced many of the objects, then came back later to break them. Roughly three-quarters of the exhibits were stolen or destroyed, and the building itself was burned halfway to the ground. Restoring the Museum was one of the first big projects the international community started throwing money at, so today the place is open for tourists, few though they are. In no way does it compare to one of the endless Western museums, in which it would literally take weeks to see every exhibit, but it's impressive given its history.
Like many things seem to be in Afghanistan, the Kabul Museum is both inspiring and depressing at the same time. Grand and majestic from the outside, the inside is dark and sullen. Some of the exhibits, notably a three-foot Buddhist sculpture, were clearly shattered into a thousand pieces and painstakingly reassembled. Elaborate, colorful, beautiful miniature vases are labled simply, "small vase." A whole wing of a prayer room, 700 or so years old, was moved to the Museum; it's still used for prayer. Wooden Nuristani sculptures have a room to themselves -- Nuristan, which until last century was Kafiristan ("Land of Unbelievers"), is by both geography and temperament one of the most isolated places on Earth -- when you read about American soldiers saying things like "they'll fight us or the Taliban, anybody who comes into their valley," they're talking about Nuristan. Parts of Nuristan are thought to have been uncontacted until the late 19th century, like some isolated Brazilian jungle tribe. Consequently their artistic culture evolved in near-complete isolation from the world around it. Their wooden statues and doors bear no resemblance to anything else in the region

.
Behind the Museum is a lush garden of roses. Inexplicably, in the garden is a rusted-out train steam engine and a number of old cars in various states of destruction. This includes a '60s Cadillac filled with bullet holes and a 'horseless carriage'-era buggy. You are not allowed to take pictures, but I did anyway, including some of the guard who told me not to take pictures. I live life on the edge.

The Museum was closed when Ms. Peacock, Kabul Writer, The Driver and myself arrived. I had gone to the Museum a few weeks before but didn't say anything. Dog, walk, etc.

Fortunately, right next door is the Darul Aman Palace, former residence of the Afghan kings. During the various long periods of warfare over Kabul, seemingly everyone involved in the conflict has at various times shelled and/or occupied Darul Aman. Most of the Palace still stands, in one form or another, despite gaping holes in the roof and outer walls. It embodies the phrase 'tragic beauty.' The place is blocked off by the Afghan National Army, but with a kind word (or a small bribe -- Kabul Writer got us in, he wouldn't say how) the one-legged soldier at the gate will allow you in.
The wires are stripped out, broken glass is everywhere. While one wing is remarkably intact (structurally, that is -- the roof not so much) another is inaccessible due to a gaping hole in all three main floors. It's both beautiful and sad in a way I can't describe (fortunately, Lady Peacock if a great photographer). There are supposedly plans to rebuild it. I hope it's left the way it is forever as a reminder and a spectacle. I can't imagine cleaning it up could possibly make it more interesting.
Perhaps the most powerful facet of Darul Aman is the graffiti; it inadvertently puts much of Kabul's modern history on display. What's drawn and written -- in Dari, Pashto, Arabic, English, German, who knows what else -- is the same as graffiti always is, and has always been. This guy was here, long live the Taliban, something about a woman, etc. It's everywhere (incidentally, read the translated graffiti from Pompeii). One piece in particular caught my eye -- an intricate, hand-painted Koranic verse, and underneath the Muslim Shahada -- "There is no god but God and Mohamad is his prophet." La ilaha il Allah Mohamad rasululah, or something to that effect.

On the way out, a young boy with no arms asked us for money. He lost his arms, apparently, through electrocution, and was treated at a nearby clinic. Lady Peacock wanted to bring him to the Red Cross to see what could be done regarding prosthetic limbs, but in the end we left him behind. Despite being armless, he was one of the better-off kids: he had a family and some access to medical care.

A couple of days later my other friend, whose name is too obvious for me to come up with an ironic and telling fake name, sent me an email about the album-release concert of Kabul's first real rock band, Kabul Dreams. The band is three guys, all of whom lived abroad during the Taliban era and brought back an eclectic range of musical influences. They play solid indie rock (in English) for a mostly expat audience. Their following thus far is small -- many young Afghans (there are a lot of 'em) listen to godawful foreign pop -- but they're gradually gaining attention.
The concert was held outdoors at the Kabul Health Club, a combination gym/bar/restaurant frequented by Westerners. At the door, as always, was an armed guard. A stage was set up in a big grass area. Most of the up-close audience was composed of press and friends -- including Afghanistan's only metal band, who I hope to write about soon and who started a mosh pit to a cover of The Subway's 'Rock and Roll Queen'). Unfortunately, by that point in time my camera had busted. I was hoping there would be pictures and video all over the internet by now, but a quick Googling doesn't bring any up. Bummer.

Rambling Way Above

2010-06-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

I have flown in aircraft much more than most people. From high up it's difficult to discern any individual characteristics of the cities and towns we fly over; everything is on the scale of geographical features, colors, my eyes sweep over whole blocks, jumping over thousands of people at a time. Their efforts, the things they've built, their pleasures and peccadilloes, triumphs and failures a lifetime in scope, they're inconsequentially small.

My favorite part of a flight is down low, on approach, when cities become neighborhoods, which become blocks, then houses, then you can almost read the street signs; when you're low enough to appreciate something but high enough to see its context. But it's almost entirely a structural tour: never in my years of takeoff and landings have I seen a person from the air, not even on short final. Moving cars, yes. Buildings with people in them, certainly. I've seen birds, dogs, cows and deer, but never, not once, a human being out in the fresh air. Kabul might be many things, mind-numbingly boring, but not until yesterday on top of TV Mountain did it occur to me that people could see it as devoid of life or flavor or culture.

An engaging Dari-speaking American girl, who from now on I'll just refer to as Peacock for any number of reasons, and I have been tossing around the idea of going to tour the Silo bread factory for a couple of weeks. The bread factory is a gargantuan, uh, bread factory, built by the Soviets to convince the Afghans they were actually quite friendly if you got to know them. The Afghans weren't impressed. But they kept the bread factory, and it's still in operation, though half the surrounding city was destroyed in the mujaheddin era. At least five or six stories tall, it stands out amongst low-slung Kabul and, from the outside, looks like it produces bread by the Panamax load.

The Peacock came through with a writer from Kabul's most vociferous newspaper and a driver. We went down to the bread factory in typical Kabul traffic, which has by now become routine to me, only to find that we just missed the end of the first shift. The factory wouldn't start up again for four or five hours. Instead we drove up, through the neighborhoods built hanging off the steep hillside, to the top of TV Mountain. TV Mountain is exactly what it sounds like -- a mountain with a shitload of TV antennas at the top. It divides Kabul neatly in half, and from that one vantage point you get stunning panoramas of most of Kabul, all the way to the real (snow-peaked) mountains that surround the city.

We were lucky enough to be there on a day without either dust or rain, both of which are common, and the whole city was laid out around us. From the top of TV mountain, Shar-e-Nau Park lost its heroin zombies and beggar children and packs of stray dogs, turning into a green square. Khalai Fatallah lost its poppy palaces and ubiquitous armed guards. There is nothing quite like seeing things from on high because it removes you from the humanity, which is both a blessing and a curse: objectivity is what you make of it. We rose up above the streets and the blocks and the neighborhoods. Even from that stunning view, so close, Kabul's humanity disappeared.

The pilot of Bock's Car, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, died a few years ago. In his obituary he was quoted as saying something to the effect of "all those people who call to nuke our enemies don't know what they're talking about, they haven't seen what it can do." It's completely bizarre that nuking our enemies was, and in some cases still is, the official policy of every atomic power, and thus a big fraction of humanity. Even Bock's Car dude, who saw only the mushroom cloud, wanted no more part of it.

It's easy to malign American soldiers here, who scare the hell out of the Afghans -- I say this because a column of American humvees is the only thing I've seen Kabuli drivers hold back for -- because of the callousness with which they joke about shooting, and actually shoot at, Afghans. Despite being right there, they're far enough removed that they don't have to consider the humanity of the other guys. And outsiders that join them, like embedded reporters, they take on aspects of it too. Humans are pack animals. We can adapt that way.

Maybe you need that distance, the ability to strip all the blood and tissue and fear and love and dreams and convert it all into numbers, to make decisions about people's lives. Soldiers are trained to dehumanize everyone. Even doctors are trained to ignore the screaming person on the table so they can work effectively. Cut to heal, etc.

But Kabul, to me, seems like a place to bury yourself in humanity, to roll around in it and breathe the ripe smell and suffer resultant the mental and physical scarring. This place has none of the calculated antisepsis of American cities and none of the polished cliches of the European cities I've seen.

But there is so much behind closed doors and shut mouths here. Everyone -- everyone -- has at least one story so horrific you wonder how they can live with the burden. And for an outsider, a non-Dari-speaker like me, most of those stories are unavailable.

In Rory Stewart's book, The Places In Between, in which he walks across Afghanistan as the Taliban falls, one anecdote in particular struck me. Stewart's very into history, and he noticed an old caravanserai, an ancient place caravans used to stop off for the night while shipping goods along the Silk Road. He said to his escort, isn't that a caravanserai? No, his escort said. Stewart decided that his escort knew exactly what it was, but that it didn't matter anymore, so it wasn't a caravansarai.

On top of a hill in the middle of Shar-e-Nau is an old, crumbling wall. I went up there one day to walk around; it's old, I can tell you, but in Afghanistan that could mean anywhere from 50 to 1000 years. I've asked a number of Afghans about it, and they all say the same thing. "Castle" is it's name , and "ancient" is it's age. As to who built it, or why, or how it survived, nobody either knows or seems to care. The other day I saw a gimmicky gift shop selling what were clearly pre-Islamic coins. I hope they were fakes. All the history people can tell me, about anything, is recent -- they don't know where those walls came from, but it protected the mujaheddin artillery that fired into the city.

On a lighter note, I challenged a truck to a fight. You can see who won.

Today's Light Reading

2010-05-29T00:26:00.000-07:00

Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post puts some things about the Kandahar offensive in perspective.
Brenthurst Foundation's Greg Mills reminds people why its military component isn't especially important.
Aga Khan, who runs an immensely important foundation in Afghanistan, ruminates about the world's problems.

Communication Breakdown/Random Anecdotes

2010-05-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to learn Dari, which is really a necessary thing to do. The problem is that it muddles my brain. Germanic and Romance languages are the ones branded on the inside of my skull, and I have recently established, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Dari is not one of those. I've begun, through hand signals and obnoxious questioning, to grab ahold of a few scattered words that I cling to desperately whenever I hear them in the conversation. Which I never do.

Dari is supposedly a pretty simple language, and my basic grammar lessons on livemocha.com have seemed a miracle -- now I can sometimes tell if the speaker is referring to themselves, me or someone else. Sometimes. I can't get past the first lesson -- to pass it requires I learn the spelling as well, and the alphabet is completely different and baffling. The words I've learned I have trouble picking out of a conversation. Dari still sounds like a rapid-fire exchange of semi-random vowels.
---Incidentally, there's an occasional series of low concussions somewhere in the distance. No idea what it is. Last week I spoke briefly with a reporter who doesn't even wake up at gunshots anymore. Not that that's what the sound is, I hope, but every sudden boom makes me jumpy here. ---

Anyway, though it's supposed to be an easy language, Dari's puzzling to me. Sometimes, someone I'm with will hear a word they taught me a couple of days before and say something like, "you know what this song is about, don't you?" Or finish a sentence and look at me expectantly, except that I'm completely confused. And don't get me started on the writing.

Rasta-mon, the office manservant, is one of my many Dari tutors. He stays here at night with me; I'm not sure why, it's apparently just custom here. He speaks absolutely no English, not a word, and I can only say a couple of words in Dari. Nevertheless, we have conversations of a sort. Neither of us understands much.
"Zok!" he'll say insistently. I'll look over, and he'll say something in quick Dari. I don't know what he says, but it usually seems to end in a question. He expects a response. I smile and shrug and spread my hands in the (hopefully) universal language of I-have-no-idea-what's-going-on. This never satisfies him. "Zok!" The process is repeated. Our conversations are exhausting.

A little while ago, he came in and we talked about something. I think we started out discussing either tea or Iran, and it somehow ended with him showing me a short clip of softcore porn on his cellphone. I don't understand how that came up. Later on I ate dinner with him, and we passed the time pointing at things and saying them in our respective languages. Then he took great pains to illustrate an action that could mean either to fight, to swim, to hump, or something else entirely. Smile-shrug-spread hands. 'Wardesh' is the word, in case you know the answer.

My job is essentially marketing. I spent the day writing a brochure about how awesome our medical equipment supply is, based entirely off supplier brochures. I hate marketing with a passion. I spent some of the day watching the outside world pass by. At one point, two American helicopters passed over and a little kid ran out onto the balcony catty-corner to mine and pretended to shoot them down. Little kids do this everywhere, but it's somehow a little more sinister here. Some stray cats passed by, a bird briefly alighted on the balcony railing, I caught a glimpse of some Westerners that live in the house opposite mine, and the ANP drove a truck by. I waved at the kid on the balcony, and he didn't wave back.

Last night I had dinner with a friend and we sat around talking for a while. Her roommate came home; a stray dog followed him home, and he has now adopted her and named her Lucy. Dogs are generally not treated well in Afghanistan, and there are quite a few roving packs of strays, many of which are very unfriendly. Walking home late at night in Kabul is a sobering and sometimes nerve-wracking experience, and nothing gets my heart pumping like a pack of those dogs trotting past. That said, it's apparently not uncommon for someone to feed or care for a stray sometimes. Anyway, The Roommate has adopted one, and it's friendly. He had it in their small courtyard last night, but it slipped out right behind me and escorted me home. It was a short walk through a safe neighborhood, but it was good to have the company.

Winged Creatures

2010-05-24T07:47:00.001-07:00

You probably know by now that I accepted a 3-month job here in Kabul. See, the US Army has signed up 5 companies for unlimited deliveries, and can call any one of of them any time to deliver something to someplace, but this company isn't getting as many calls as they want. So they hired me as a Fluent English Speaker/Tame Writer/Resident Paleface to get them some business. I will be the only point of contact between this company and the Army. They give me a room -- I now live in the house that houses their office -- and pay for my food, pay me a base salary and give me a small percentage of contracts, among other things. It's not a great deal, but it's alright.

There is a window with a screen door behind me, which attracts an unlimited number of flies; every twenty minutes or so I have to open the screen door to let them out. The office is brand-new, set up just a couple of days ago in a house next to a police station. I have a desk, my laptop and a piece of scrap paper. That's it. There is a guy, basically a servant typical of Afghan offices, that does whatever I want him to if I can bridge the language gap. He can neither read nor write in any language and speaks no English. I, on the other hand, speak no Dari and can't figure out how to pronounce his name. I call him Rasta-mon, which is the best I can do. It's only within the past few days that I've begun coming to terms with being in Kabul for three months, and it's because I'm starting to meet some people.

Yesterday, I was invited to the zoo by a beautiful bird of the rarest kind, a Dari-speaking American woman. With her friendly Afghan coworker (to whom I've pledged a bootleg copy of 'Blue Planet') and a driver, we went to the zoo by a seemingly random route of big, small and minuscule streets.
Kabul, I should add, has literally no traffic regulation. People drive on the right most of the time and often try not to hit one another, but those are considered suggestions. The chaos is refreshing in its purity -- in the absence of rules, the car's actions are bound only by the driver's personality; I've seen some risky moves, but nothing like the boneheaded killing-stupidity that Washington traffic displays. Almost all of the streets are bumpy beyond description. Much of the ride is spent maneuvering around giant potholes. It makes for a hair-raising ride and an adventurous but frustrating drive. At some point we passed a massive graveyard of rusted-out buses stacked three deep that had succumbed, at one time or another, to Kabul's pitted streets.

On the way to the zoo we stopped off at a corner near the park where I often pass by. Somehow, I've always managed to walk right past the peacock vendor, who keeps Kashmiri peacocks perched over the sidewalk. Upon request he will take one down and toss it tp the ground, where the peacock will stand around looking confused until placed back on its perch. For $200 (subject to negotiation), you can take one home. The Dari-speaking American badly wants to buy one.

Maybe it was the company I kept, but the zoo, which I expected to be depressing (it's often described in the guidebooks as 'grim' or 'cruel') was a lot of fun. An ostrich ate an orange out of The Driver's hand. Two bears tried to mate ("We have a lot of idiots in Afghanistan," noted Coworker). Someone threw a soda can into the monkey cage, and a monkey drank it. A small marijuana plant grew in one exhibit unmolested. Except that we were an exhibit unto ourselves: at one point, Dari-speaker and I were speaking in English and turned to find 10 or 12 Afghans staring at us. At various points we were followed around by a little girl, a little boy, two older, bearded Afghans, and a teenager in a salwar kamiz.

On the way home we drove through a neighborhood that runs up the steep side of one of the mountains that ring Kabul, place that translates to 'High Garden.' The Afghan radio station we listened to featured American rap (with lyrics that would immediately be censored if the Afghan authorities could understand them) and a manic DJ who occasionally tossed some English into his high-speed ranting (a taste: "Daridaridaridaridari--I kill people for money, but you are a friend, I kill you for free-Daridaridari." I'm still laughing about that.)

The scenic tour involves passing some of Kabul's landmarks, which are inevitably linked to something terrible. Every person and corner has a unique, fascinating, tragic story. For example, the star attraction of the zoo used to be Mustafa the Lion. When the Taliban took the city, one of them jumped in his cage shouting "WE are the lions, not you!" Sher Mustafa killed and ate him. The dead Talib's brother threw a grenade into the cage seeking revenge, which put out Mustafa's eye and crippled him for the rest of his life. He died a few years back of natural causes. On the way home from the zoo, we passed a famous bread factory (built by the Soviets, still in operation), the old Soviet Cultural Center (a cool-looking building, remarkably intact, where the heroin junkies all go to shoot up), a completely destroyed cinema (burned by the Taliban after they took over), Kabul University (just Google it). I went with a friend while she looked for a new house a couple of days ago; the real estate agent told us how he and his driver were kidnapped by the Taliban and held in darkness for three months. A taxi driver told me about the infection and death of his newborn son. Everybody here seems to have similar stories.

This place is like nothing I've ever seen. I don't even know how to start characterizing it. From behind me drift the sounds no less than 4 clashing versions of the beautiful muezzin call to prayer. It is about to be drowned out by two Blackhawk helicopters passing overhead. Tonight I'll eat at what is probably the world's best-guarded but worst tasting KFC imitation and drink a beer or two at a quasi-legal expat bar.

11 weeks to go. This will be interesting.

A Stranger in a Strange Land

2010-05-16T01:51:00.000-07:00

There are two Spanish words meaning ‘to know.’ One is ‘saber,’ to know a fact. The other is ‘conocer,’ to know to know persons, places or things. It may just be my terrible Spanish, but I read more into the words. To me, ‘saber’ is transitory, vague and surface, and ‘conocer’ is permanent, deep and profound. After a week in Kabul, with a few more days to go, I am well aware of my lack of knowledge of the city. I’m supposed to be a journalist, chasing leads and hunting stories, coming ever-closer to some significant truth or realization. But that is not my place in Kabul.
Here I have no leads, no contacts, no knowledge of the local geography, etiquette or rules. I don’t know what’s permissible and what’s not in this relatively safe wartime capital. I know only one person I could remotely call a ‘friend,’ but she has better things to do than babysit me, and the people to whom she has introduced me have thus far proven unhelpful. I know my situation because I can leave my hotel and walk for hours, exploring aimlessly, to find nothing of substance and yield no particular result. I’m just starting to learn some local landmarks, but it sheds no light on the crucial social geography. Kabul, a thriving and fascinating city of three million, is to me a complete enigma. Yo la se, pero no la conozco.

I’m contemptuous of most tourists because they are not visiting the city to explore its essential soul, they are visiting to graze the surface. They go to take pictures on top of the Eiffel Tower, admire the Roman ruins, take pictures of the pyramids – not to say those are bad activities in and of themselves, but they detract and distract from what’s worth doing and knowing. It’s like filling up on appetizers before the main course. It’s watching the Superbowl for the ads. It’s reading Dante’s Inferno or Gulliver’s Travels without the context. Everywhere in the world, locals hate the tourists. I hate the tourists. I really hate being one of them.

Visiting a place, a city with seemingly no knowledge or any context and pulling out a good story is, to my mind, one of the most admirable and impressive traits of a reporter. When I drop in, context-less, contact-less, schedule-less, I am utterly lost. I occupy some part of space and time and burn through depressing amounts of money, and nothing else. A couple of reporters I’ve met dropped in the same way, and gradually built up contacts until they have to turn away stories – there is too much to write about and too little time. It took them months or years to get to that point. I’ll be here a few more days. Kabul will always be a mystery to me.

Sitting here at the Flower Street Café in Kabul is something I will remember as one of the most interesting things to do in this city. Without leads, without contacts, without friends, without the knowledge of the city so crucial to understanding, I can sit here and take shelter from the daily rainstorm, eavesdropping on people who know more than I do. At a nearby table, two Americans – brand-name reporters – are talking about secret detention facilities. On the opposite side, a beautiful girl types silently on her laptop. She’s probably a reporter too. The expatriate community here is small enough that everyone seems to know each other, and the Café is filled with a litany of ‘good to see you again’s’ and ‘hey, how’s our mutual acquaintance?’ I could sit here for hours and hours, but I keep leaving in the hopes that in wandering I will find some compelling scene, complete with a friendly English-speaking Kabuli to explain what’s happening.

My impression is that Kabul is fairly safe, if one takes the precautions common to all third-world shitholes where you have no hope of blending in. If this were a European city I would head to a watering hole, Ministry or café-lined street, engaging anyone unlucky enough to make eye contact. I speak enough European languages to at least convince an interlocutor that I’m not a CIA agent, but I can't do that here. Most people in most places are, if not friendly, at least not dangerous. The most likely unfortunate outcome in Europe is being mugged. Here, an outcome of definite possibility is abduction, being smuggled to Pakistan and a gruesome beheading. Afghanis are famously hospitable, and those I’ve met have received me politely and offered me tea, more than I could expect in, say, New York or London. But in those places I have some context of the social rules. Here, I go into a situation not knowing whether I’ll receive tea or a death threat, and I wouldn’t understand either offer because I don’t speak any Dari. Hoping to avoid that situation, I steer clear of almost everyone.
So here I am, a stranger in a strange land, bank account dwindling, awaiting a ride home. Kabul is dangerous enough to require extraordinary caution, but safe enough that potential stories do not present themselves. The stories I’m most likely to write here, if any, are peripheral at best. This sucks.

The Justice/Peace Divide

2010-05-15T05:33:00.000-07:00

by ZACH ROSENBERG

Sidiqua, 18 years old, cries gently as she talks about her life. At the age of three, Hezb-i-Islami rocketed her home while assaulting Kabul; the first rocket put a piece of shrapnel in her back that the local hospital had no capacity to remove. The second killed her mother, brothers and aunt. Her father, bearing permanent mental scars, cannot bear the pain of seeing her; though he has a home in Kabul, she is not allowed inside it and he often sleeps in the streets.

Without family, a crucial part of Afghan social life, Sidiqua is adrift. She is unemployed and broke. The government, which gives her 8,000 Afghanis a year — about $160, well below the cost of living — denied her request for land, Sidiqua says, because she is a woman and cannot build a house. To survive, she moves between the houses of her neighbors. “I need my mother,” she weeps, “where is my mother now?”

At an NGO-organized “Victim’s Jirga” in a Kabul hotel on Sunday, Afghans from all over the country gathered to share their grief and voice their hopes for the future. After speaking in panels organized by conflict period — the civil war, the Taliban era, and the current era — the victims were split into eight working groups to debate questions about the past and the future.

The Victim’s Jirga comes in advance of the widely-anticipated Peace Jirga, from which many hope a comprehensive reconciliation plan will emerge. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has frequently stated that the only end to the current conflict will come through negotiation, a position supported by U.S. President Barak Obama and other NATO heads of state. Negotiations have already occurred with at least one major figure in the insurgency, Hezb-i-Islami commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Sidiqua, whose family was killed by Hekmatyar’s militia, said she would not forgive Hekmatyar or accept any outcome in which he would be allowed back into Afghanistan. Other Jirga attendees who were tortured or saw their families killed by Hekmatyar and other insurgent leaders hold varying opinions on forgiving the past in exchange for future peace. But many victims face a more immediate problem: Karzai’s wholehearted acceptance of warlords means that many abusers are members of the Afghan government.

One such victim is Abdul Halim Aziz, a laborer from the Rustaq district of Takhar Province. In 1989, he says, a local warlord named Perankol Sie massacred 56 people, nine of whom were members of his family. Aziz took his family and fled until Karzai came into power, when Sie, now a parliamentarian, sent Aziz a note saying that he could return home without fear. Aziz did so. In 2006, Aziz says, Sie kidnapped two of his sons, ages six and eight, from their school, killed them and dumped their bodies in a nearby river.

When Aziz brought more than 100 villagers to Kabul to confront Sie, he was granted an audience with Karzai, who, according to Aziz, told him that he should forget the killings because he was young and could have more children. Though Karzai then issued a proclamation for a parliamentary hearing, Aziz was not allowed into parliament and the issue was left to stagnate.

“I have no expectation from the government of Afghanistan, the parliament or anyone. Whoever is in power, they are always corrupt, they are money hungry, they are power hungry,” says Aziz through a translator. Aziz says his only wishes are to move his family to safety outside of Afghanistan and push the international community to act. He looks tired as he says this; his story is documented and compelling, and he has already been interviewed several times today.

The victims are divided into eight groups of perhaps ten victims each to debate three central questions — how to remember the past, how to achieve peace and the nature of justice. Each group sent a representative up front to explain their answers, written on large sheets of butcher paper.

“By the name of Allah, I am Ahmed Shah. I am a victim of war.” Shah, wearing a traditional salwar kamiz, had written his group’s points out with the hook on his right hand. His left arm has neither a hand nor a hook. A man behind him held the microphone to his mouth. “If the victim’s views are not considered,” Shah says, “we will not have true peace in Afghanistan.”

Though the crowd at the Jirga was self-selecting, their suffering is by no means rare. After 30 years of war and brutal oppression, nearly everyone in Afghanistan has horrific stories. If they have not lost family and friends, been tortured, witnessed horrific violence, killed people — or all three — then they are close to someone who has. In a number of cases, the perpetrators at whose hands they suffered are members of the current government.

So it is not surprising that though the individual working groups differ on the exact role of government in addressing their concerns, all eight groups unanimously demand that the government purge itself of human rights violators. In doing so, the victims are seeking justice for the atrocities committed and insurance that they will never happen again.

Attempts to remove powerful human rights violators from government would, first, remove the leaders of large swaths of government, two, potentially destabilize the government. That the victims seem willing to pay the associated costs might suggest, first, that they are ignorant of the costs, though this is unlikely given their experiences; second, that their desire for justice or hopes for the future cause them to downplay the costs; third, that the current situation is not so unbearable that the costs outweigh the benefits. The desire for justice is likely; as noted earlier, this is a self-selecting group that has suffered heavily, that is willing to trust civil society and tweak the nose of both the Taliban and the government by speaking openly against both parties.

What particularly interests me is the third possibility, that they do not represent particularly extreme views and are willing to pay the costs of greater instability in exchange for greater potential stability down the road. This suggests that they find the current tenuous security situation relatively bearable, and are more concerned with government malfeasance than the Taliban insurgency.

As Reuters notes, Jirga attendees are divided as to whether or not to talk with the Taliban. If victims of violence are accorded a special voice in the upcoming Peace Jirga, it is unclear how their representatives will weigh in on that issue.

Though the Peace Jirga is not tasked to deliver justice, it is a question that will undoubtedly weigh heavily on attendees: if achieving peace comes at the cost of justice, or vice versa, which is the preferred outcome?

The Worst Photographer You Know

2010-05-04T23:35:00.000-07:00

I'm at the Flower Street Cafe. At the door I am greeted by a suspicious man pointing an AK-47. He checks my bag and I am let in to buy coffee at western prices. There's a relatively fast internet connection, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to post some of my less terrible pictures. To the left are 16 burning fuel trucks outside Pul-i-Alam, Logar Province. They were set on fire during a riot against a US night raid that killed three civilians. Troops I spoke with were convinced that the raid was justified, and the riot instigated by paid Taliban. The truth will probably never be known.

This is the KC-135 I flew over to Ramstein, just making landfall over Britain. At one point, I was down in the refueling boom operator's cupola overflying New York. The view was amazing; I wish I'd taken a picture of that.

The connection here is fast, but not that fast. I have some huge pictures, but I'll have to upload them when I get back to Washington, where it will still take a while.

"Happy snaps" are what the Army's PA people call pictures featuring moments divorced from reality. Often, instead of the war around them, PA photographers are called to take pictures of normality -- change-of-command ceremonies, cool stuff the soldiers get, people smiling, basically anything except this stuff.

This is an Aeromedical Evacuation team loading a patient aboard a C-17. This patient, I believe, was a 20-year-old Marine who had been shot in the chest. He was awake and looked alert. The AE teams are covered regularly by media, so they're used to photographs. They're hard stories to cover, but everyone's professional about it. Their patient load is sometimes very heavy. There were four patients aboard this flight.

This is a Casa-235, a Spanish-made plane operated by Presidential Airways, a subsidiary of Blackwater, waiting to take off. There are about a dozen of these planes based at Bagram, which shuttle mail and passengers from Bagram to nearby outposts. They are seen frequently. In the background is one of the daily afternoon thunderstorms.

An M-4 in the moonlight at ECP 1, COP Baraki Barak. That means it's an M-16's shorter cousin at Entry Control Point 1, Combat Outpost Baraki Barak. I liked visiting ECP 1. It was usually manned by bored SIGINT (signals intelligence) personnel, voluntold for the position because there aren't many signals to intercept. They're also not allowed to leave their post, so they were captive interviewees.

When I get back to Washington I'll set up a Flickr account and upload all the stuff I have that's worth looking at. In the meantime, I'm going to eat my expensive beef kabob wrap and walk around Kabul a bit before heading back to write an actual article.

In Kabul

2010-05-04T06:14:00.001-07:00

My embed was unexpectedly shortened, so I find myself unexpectedly in Kabul. Despite the suddenness of my arrival, an acquaintance has agreed to take me in. I'm going to buy them some awesome dinner.
Kabul is by far the biggest city in the country. I've only been here a few hours, but it's good to be back in a city; lots of things close by, murderous traffic, smog, relentless construction.

So far, most of my time has been spent in transit. After a few days at Bagram I went to FOB (Forward Operating Base) Shank, in Logar Province, from where Task Force Bayonet administers Logar and Wardak provinces. At Shank I made the acquaintance of two cool Public Affairs people, Haun and Harris. At their PA office I was able to hang out, write, surf the 'net and bullshit. Haun gets extensive and frequent care packages, and the resulting overflow has a frequent stream of people coming in to pick up beef jerky, gum, cough drops and other little things. They have a nightly habit of watching movies, and the 4-man office is dorky enough that the movies are always fun: Star Wars, Serenity, etc.

Then I moved a few miles down the road to FOB Altimur, where a subunit of TF Bayonet, TF Saber, controls the districts of Baraki Barak, Charkh and Kherwar. Altimur was pretty boring -- aside from a few hours of cool stuff (guided tour of the ANA camp, hanging out in the Tactical Operations Center) there wasn't much to do. I was stuck there for a few days.
COP (Combat Outpost) Baraki Barak was different. The COP is where the actual fighters live, going out to perform their tasks at a local level. I met some cool people from MI and the Cavalry brigade, did base interviews w/the District Stability Team (DST, comprised of one person from USAID, one from Dept. State, one from USDA), spoke with interpreters.
Then I said something stupid interviewing somebody and got kicked out. Nicely, but quickly. It was suggested that for the rest of this trip I should avoid embedding with the Army, but that the option would be open in the future.

So I made some 'holy-shit-what-now' calls and was warmly received by Una in Kabul, thank fucking god. Now I just have to figure out what to do here. I've got a couple of leads but three weeks to explore them. That's a lot of time to fill.

Logar Province

2010-04-25T00:56:00.000-07:00

This'll have to be short -- a lot has happened and but my time on this computer is limited.

I rode a CH-47 to FOB Shank, the biggest FOB in Logar Province. The minute I got in I was put into a Commander's Conference, a gathering of US and Czech militaries, ANA and ANP commanders, and the Province governor, Atiqullah Ludin. I was here for a couple of days, interviewed some people, and generally had a good time hanging out.

Then I convoyed a few miles down the road to FOB Altimur, where I'm supposed to catch a ride to Baraki Barak, a district in Logar. The night before my departure, the PAO here asked if I wanted to go to a press conference today in the provincial capital, Pul-i-Alam. Of course I would! So today we convoy out to Shank to pick up some people. The plan changes quickly, because it's clear that something is on fire further up ahead. It's fuel trucks, and we can see the flames from 7 or 8 miles away. They were set on fire during an (ongoing) riot over a firefight last night and the night before. Things are heating up here.

So the Colonel I was riding with told me to go with a Captain to a meeting. While at the meeting, the Colonel left without me. I'm still attached to the Captain, but the Colonel, who I was supposed to be following, has apparently left the FOB without me. Whether intentional or accidental, it still sucks. I'm stuck in an office and missing all the fun. More to come in the future, plus pictures if the connection can handle it.

Arrival at Bagram

2010-04-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

The connection here is terrible, so no pictures. I've arrived at Bagram air base, the first stop for almost every American entering Afghanistan. This place bears no resemblance to Afghanistan at all. There are no Afghans here, save workers at the dining hall and an occasional Afghan Army officer. None of the Americans I've spoken with speak any Dari or Pashto.

After four days in a hotel outside Ramstein, we -- a reporter from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and our Public Affairs escort -- managed to get on a C-17 ferrying home an AE (aeromedical evacuation) and CCATT (critical care air transport team) back to Bagram. The relaxed and friendly Air Force Reserve crew was at the tail end of a one a one-week detachment to Germany. Somewhere over Azerbaijan, after a conversation with a CCATT nurse, I went up to the cockpit, where the crew was desperately trying to find a way back to Germany: Ramstein, where all their stuff was, had been closed due to volcanic ash. A parade of crewmembers came up to get the bad news from the pilots, accused them of joking, swore with varying degrees of vehemency and started making their own suggestions. Over Turkmenistan -- we took the short route because of the high-priority AE team, Turkmenistan limits the number of overflights -- they tried to explain the subtleties of the USAF crew dispatch system, which I still don't quite understand.

I was in the cockpit as we began our descent into Afghanistan. Getting close, the crew turned off all flying lights, leaving only a few stars to shine weakly through the otherwise pitch blackness. One crewmember loaned me a helmet with night vision goggles, and as soon as I put them on I jumped -- the mountain peaks were right there. And not just mountains: the sky was filled, I mean filled with stars. I could see the distant glow of Kabul. At some point we passed something odd; I'm not sure what it was, but when I took the goggles off briefly I couldn't see it anymore. The pilots dropped the nose almost 20 degrees and the plane sunk like a stone. I gave the helmet back as we came closer and left the cockpit, but I know we were lights-out until a few feet off the runway.

At Bagram I was met by a public affairs officer who helped me check into the Hotel California, which is really just a tent with bunk beds. After a sleepless night I went to the PAO office, where they had prepared a full schedule for the next two days. I interviewed a maintenance officer on the flightline amidst taxiing F-15Es and F-16s and was given a tour of construction by the bases' head of major projects. I was guided through the 'port dogs' lair, where they offload and onload all cargo. I had the afternoon off, which I used to wander around in search of an internet connection.

Today I interviewed two aeromedical flight nurses, and in the midst of the interview they were alerted -- they had half an hour to get a plane ready before patients arrived for a transfer flight. The aeromed squadron allowed me to watch as they prepared the plane and received the patients, then they jetted off. That afternoon I spoke with three airfield managers. Tomorrow I plan to check out the air traffic control tower, take up the aeromed squadron's generous invitation to help break in their new BBQ, and take night pictures on the flightline.

Bagram is a surreal place. I sleep in the top bunk in a tent that is kept pitch black and quiet, but for the roar of fighters taking off (which looks spectacular in the dark) Everyone -- I mean everyone -- carries an M-16 or its shorter version, the M-4. I get stares walking around in a tshirt. This afternoon I walked out of a building to find everyone was standing still at perfect attention. Everyone froze solid when the US flag was taken down and the anthem played for a departing general. When the last note of the anthem played, everybody suddenly unfroze -- joggers continued their jogging, passersby kept joking and talking shit. Like it hadn't happened.

There is more to come, including pictures. Right now I'm at the USO with a slow and tenuous internet connection. Technically this place is military-only, but few people seem to care. A cheesy war movie is playing in in a nearby room. Two Polish troops -- so far I have seen Poles, French, British, Australian and Egyptian troops -- are speaking with their families by Skype. Two F-15s just took off noisily. If they are anything like the other departures I've seen, they took off with full afterburner, then turned off all the lights a few feet above the runway, disappearing completely into the night.

I'll likely be here until Tuesday, when I'll fly -- somehow -- to Logar province and my Army embed.

Still. In. Germany.

2010-04-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

More detail to come, but today almost involved getting on a plane.

We flew out from Andrews on a KC-135 from New Hampshire. At Andrews were all sorts of interesting planes due to a major summit going on in DC -- a 767 from Kazakhstan, an Il-76 bringing Dmitri Medvedev's cars, an Indian 747, etc. Our airplane, built in 1962, is one of the newest examples of one of the oldest planes in the Air Force. The crew was friendly and cool, but man was that plane cold. Heat blasts from vents in the ceiling, but somebody evidently forgot to tell the aircraft designers that heat rises. Consequently there was a little thermocline layer -- sitting up your head would be toasty warm (and warmer standing up), but right below the neck it was freezing cold. I slept (or tried to sleep) most of the time on some webbing that comes down from the sides of the aircraft, but it was so cold that I woke up every couple of hours to walk up to the toasty cockpit and bug the crew. The crew was cool -- they let me jumpseat on the landing into Ramstein, which was fascinating. Wouldn't let me fly of course, but hey, I had to ask.
The other passengers were an aeromedical evacuation team headed back to Germany. They slept a lot, so I didn't have the chance to talk to them, but I assume they had just dropped somebody off at Walter Reed.

Ramstein is a huge US base, the main transportation hub for everything to and from 'downrange,' as the military calls Afghanistan or Iraq (or Krygyzstan, or Djibouti, etc). Ramstein used to be the center of a gigantic network of US bases in the immediate area, many of which have since closed with the end of the Cold War. Consequently, Ramstein is still big, and it's like a little slice of America. To my amazement, they actually built an American-style shopping mall here, complete with a Wal-Mart equivalent, a Macaroni Grill, a food court, cellphone stands in the isles and a promotional Jeep in the center. They even got the typical mall rats, god knows from where.

We checked in at a hotel off-base (I'm traveling with two people -- a public affairs officer and a reporter from Arkansas) that does 95% of its business with Americans -- probably the only hotel in Germany with a Guam-timed clock on the wall -- and promptly met a Ramstein-based American. We all went out to dinner, drank local brews and ate schnitzel. Then again tonight after the aborted flight. And probably again tomorrow.

Initially we were booked out of Ramstein on a new (and comfortable) C-17, but it filled up. Then we were scheduled with the same crew that flew us out here, a KC-135 from New Hampshire, but we got out to the plane and got bumped for another aeromed team, so we went back. Our latest attempt was almost in vain from the start: an early-morning flight that had already missed scheduled flights twice for maintenance issues. Make that three times now. We won't leave until Wednesday at the earliest.

So tomorrow's up in the air. I'll probably try to get on-base and do some reporting on stuff there, but if I can get in touch with my old friend Thibaud in time I might take the train to (relatively) nearby Strasbourg, France.

More to come sooner or later.

The Call Comes In...Delayed

2010-04-09T14:01:00.000-07:00

After a few days in Washington, being sent home from my brief trip seemed like an opportunity do-over. It came me the chance to wrap up all those little things that go unfinished before any trip. Two days ago I got a call from Tech. Sergeant Jerome Baysmore, who was clearly puzzled to be saddled with my addition to his previously-scheduled trip. The departure was on. But a few minutes ago he called again -- the departure is off, delayed another 24 hours.

Aim High!

2010-04-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

This was actually supposed to be a family-and-friends-only thing, but it got linked onto WIB by accident. Unfortunately, the cat's long since out of the bag, so people are reading about themselves on here. Let me say that I appreciate everything that everyone did on my behalf, in particular the patience of Abby, Ben, the crew of Reach 449 and Roger Drinnon et al at AMC. I recognize that the USAF is not American Airlines and generally has better things to do than babysit me and my stuff. I don't begrudge USAF losing my bag -- after all, they did find it again -- and it was a much more interesting week than I usually have. After speaking with a number of people involved, I still don't have a coherent explanation of why I was sent back, but hey, I get to try again.

Because people seem interested in a longer version of my trip, such as it’s been thus far, I’ll use this space in lieu of a bunch of individual letters. It’s true, a vague Facebook status update really doesn’t do much justice to anything. This is more to organize my thoughts, so don't feel obligated to read it all. Since this is a public blog I’ll have to leave out some details; some people spoke off the record or wouldn't want their names out there. I have some proper articles in the pipeline about the missions I saw, but right now I want to tell my own story. So, in excruciating detail, I present the weird saga of my aborted trip to Afghanistan.

The trip began on Tuesday morning when I stuffed everything I own, and some things I don’t, into a (brand-new) backpack and a (borrowed) military-grade duffel bag. After a 2 ½ hour ride that took us out of Washington, across the impressive Bay Bridge and through scenic rural Maryland, Mom dropped me off at the main gate at Dover Air Force Base, a sprawling military transport hub and major airbase, with C-5s and C-17s based and all kinds of transient traffic. As with most military bases, Dover AFB is plopped incongruously in the middle of nowhere, in this case between rural Delaware and the minuscule city of Dover.

Military bases have a surreal normality to them; they are self-contained towns, complete with traffic lights, fast food restaurants and small-town gossip, but almost everyone is in uniform, some are armed, the population is skewed towards young white men and the physically fit. Entering a military base always makes me inexplicably nervous.

At the visitor’s center I was met by Airman Chu, one of the local public affairs officers (PAOs) with a 'forgiveness ring' on her left ring finger and an engaging laugh that follows the end of almost every sentence. Airman Chu – I can’t spell her first name – is originally from Taiwan and grew up in the Midwest; she got citizenship and first-class medical care from the Air Force, and it will pay for the school she attends after her enlistment ends later this year.

Chu took me to the maintenance office building to meet Lt. Matt Ratcliff, who runs a 250-odd person C-5 maintenance office. Airman Chu, who teaches the 10-minute Media Training presentations to airmen about to be interviewed and makes a distinct face when she wants them to stop talking, sat directly across from Lt. Ratcliff. Ratcliff is apparently a pretty funny guy outside of media interviews, but to me he seemed formal and serious. It probably didn’t help that for the first ten minutes I thought he was a PAO and asked him questions to which he couldn’t possibly know the answers.

The C-5 was designed by Lockheed in the ‘60s and had another production run in the ‘80s. It is one of the largest planes in the world, so goddamn big that even some of the crew members seem to have trouble believing it can fly. Because the design is antiquated, and because the individual aircraft are old and heavily used, the plane is infamous for breaking down. If they were commercial aircraft, they would have been turned into Coke cans or sent to Bolivia long ago. The oldest aircraft are the A models, which until recently the Air Force was legally required to keep flying, despite their attempts to retire them. The B models are from the 80s, and have many of the same engine, landing gear and fuel system problems as the As. Their mission capable rate is one of the lowest in the Air Force, and the crews have to work hard to keep the planes in the air. Because the C-5 isn't built anymore, maintenance frequently has to send parts out for repair, requisition parts from the retired C-5s parked at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona ("The Boneyard"), cannibalize a plane that's just beginning an upgrade and thus wouldn't be flying for a while, or even build their own parts -- they have their own metal shop.

The latest development is the AMP/RERP program, which updates avionics and replaces the engines. Aircraft that have gone through these upgrades are called C-5Ms, and have greater range, payload and reliability. I think all C-5s (excluding the old C model, of which there are only 2, used exclusively to haul satellites and NASA rockets) are supposed to become Ms eventually. The upgrades are often done one at a time; there are plenty of C-5Bs with AMP upgrades, but not the new engines. The AMP upgrade is extensive enough that its crews require different certifications than other C-5Bs. Though there are only a handful of M models in service and a couple more in conversion (few enough that, according to several AF personnel, command hasn’t figured out how to use its new capabilities) everyone seems to be looking forward to getting more.

The interview finished and Lt. Ratcliff gave us the ramp maintenance phone number, so we could get onto the flightline. Chu called them, but they were too busy to let us in. We called a couple more offices -- same result. The base mostly shuts down at the end of the normal working day, so getting the required approvals to go talk to more people would have been very difficult. Chu drove me back to my hotel, where I tried and failed to sleep.

In the morning I was picked up by Lt. Abigail Wise, who was slated to escort me to Afghanistan. Abby, as I took to calling her without explicit permission, runs Dover's Public Affairs shop. She's a couple of years out of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, which could easily be mistaken for a prison with an airport. She washed out of flight school just before her first solo and went into public affairs, but has her eye on a position dealing with contractors and eventually law school. She runs marathons. She answers my questions straightforwardly and accepts the Air Force's foibles as a matter of fact.

She brought me briefly to her office -- I don't know what I was expecting, but in most respects it's exactly like a civilian office. Abby sat behind her organized desk ("I'm a disorganized person," she said) and talked about office life -- her co-worker's technical problems, confusing equipment, etc. I glimpsed the briefing paper she had for me -- which literally said nothing more than "Rosenberg is a blogger for a very popular website." A few months ago there was a minor scandal when it was discovered that the military put together very detailed assessments of embedded reporters, complete with projections of how positive their stories were likely to be. If Abby's paper is representative, they never even Googled me. I was disappointed. While Abby was finishing some last minute paperwork, I overheard Airman Chu giving a media training session -- all of 10 minutes long -- to two airmen down the hall.

"Why did you join the Air Force?" she asked

"For the money," one responded. They all laughed.

By 8am we reached the passenger terminal, where Abby zipped around from place to place taking care of business as I languidly drank coffee at the USO and walked around meeting people. The first people I met were a group of Air Force enlisted men, who griped about their jobs ("I hate carrying something cool, and then having to sign a paper saying I never carried it"), why they didn't make NCAA brackets ("you have to care to do that, right?"), car trouble ("..and the bitch was texting when she ran the light. So the door panel was all dented..."), grilling ("...hooked to the main line, but the Air Force tore it down. To I rebuilt it to spec..."), etc. At the terminal I met two guys from DC's local ABC affiliate, who would fly in the same plane to Afghanistan. Jeff, the cameraman, is a 30-year news veteran who flies gliders for fun. Kris, the on-air reporter, comes from southern California and has a dry sense of humor. "This is what we cover," Kris said, counting them off on his fingers, "traffic, weather, people suffering, animals suffering. That's it."

The ABC guys had problems from the start; they wanted to interview soldiers on the flightline, but there was a plane with casualties on the ramp -- all the deceased return through Dover -- and despite supposedly lifting the ban on images of returning casualties, actually photographing them requires all sorts of permissions from on high. Jeff and Kris huddled with Chu. Could they film on the ramp anyway? Chu made a phone call -- no. What if the camera was pointed away from the plane? Another phone call -- no. How about the sidewalk outside the terminal, pointed towards the control tower? One more phone call -- you might see planes through the fence, so no. They ended up interviewing two soldiers on the sidewalk with the camera pointed towards the terminal building, with Chu hovering just outside the frame.

"We can't use any of that. They were too stiff," said Kris with frustration. Jeff nodded. "And did you feel his grip? I thought he was going to break my hand off."

Eventually we get permission to go to the ramp, and out we go en masse -- me, Jeff, Kris, their escort Lt. Carolyn Glover, Chu and three or four airmen with nothing better to do. On the ramp was a chartered 747, a KC-10, and a long row of C-5s and C-17s from bases all over the country. Dover is a massive transport hub, and because of its location and maintenance capacity they have aircraft passing through from all over. An F-18 passes overhead on a practice approach. The ABC guys set up and film at times. I take notes and talk to Airman Jesse Frome, who was bored and came over to see what the excitement was about. Jesse is learning to repair C-5 avionics. He comes from Renton, Washington, and joined the Air Force so he could travel instead of follow much of his family to the Boeing 737 production line. He wants to get an engineering degree. Nice guy.

We all check our bags -- Abby, the ABC guys, Glover and I -- and head out to our ride, a C-5B. Today, in addition to our stuff, the plane will carry a dozen or so mishandled bags down to Charleston AFB, where they will be unloaded. At Charleston we will pick up two trucks of unknown type (more on that later) and fly to Rota, Spain, where we will layover before flying to Bagram Airbase, about an hour outside Kabul, Afghanistan. On the Rota-Bagram leg we will be refueled in the air. Because this is a long flight, the C-5 has a crew of 8 -- three pilots, one engineer, one trainee engineer on his first operational flight, one loadmaster, one loadmaster instructor trainee, and one loadmaster trainee. The crew is wearing tan flight suits with the 9th Airlift Squadron patch, the only distinguishing piece of their uniform. Incidentally, if you're really bored, here's an interesting video about interesting patches.

The crew is uniformly polite and all answer my questions patiently, but some are more enthusiastic or forthcoming than others. For example, one conversation with a loadmaster went something like this:

Loadmaster: ...but that kind of issue only comes up when we go someplace that can't really handle something of our size. Like the last time I went to Africa, where they weren't ready to pump that much gas.

Me: Ah, that sucks. Where in Africa was that?

Loadmaster: *pause* I've been to Africa a couple of times.

Me: Right, can you tell me what country?

Loadmaster: *pause* We fly to Africa sometimes to support AFRICOM training missions.

Or another conversation with a pilot, where I noted that our C-5 had something that a neighboring C-5 didn't have:

Me: So, what's that little electronic-looking ball on the back fuselage near the insignia?

Pilot: It's defensive equipment.

Me: So it's a countermeasure?

Pilot: Yeah.

Me: It looks like it's an infrared thing.

Pilot: *pause* I'm not sure I can tell you anything more about that.

A few seconds on Google tells me that the system is called LAIRCM. Of course, the pilot knows exactly what it is and probably knows it's unclassified. But he doesn't risk anything by not telling me. That's pretty representative of some of the responses - pause, think, and non-answer. Much of it, I think, is not so much about classification as that, as a civilian, a blogger and one-off cargo, I'm a designated outsider. I have the sense that if I were with the same crew for a couple of weeks I would get some honest and voluminous responses. The same thing happens when I ask about the downsides of the job. I overheard one crew member bitching about being away so much. Later the conversation went like this:

Me: So, what are the downsides to your job?

Crewman: I wouldn't trade this job for the world.

Me: How do you feel about being separated from your family so often?

Crewman: They understand that I serve my country and love what I do.

Ok, one more. I heard a lot of people refer to the C-5 as 'FRED,' which I knew before I left stands for 'Fucking Ridiculous Economic/Environmental Disaster.' I asked about it:

Me: What does FRED stand for?

Crewmember: *chuckle* It's just a name. We call the C-17s 'Barney.'"

Me: It doesn't have any other meaning?

Crewmember: Nope

Me: *sigh*

Come on!!

Not the whole crew was like that, of course. Some of them went out of their way to ensure that I knew what was going on. Especially notable was Cpt. Dave Bradeson, a lanky pilot who was quick with a smile and happy to talk. I was invited to sit in the jump seat for the Dover-Charleston leg, where Cpt. Bradeson found me a headset, set it up so we wouldn't interrupt the crew, and spent the whole hour-long flight answering all my ridiculous questions. He trained on the T-1. He loves the C-5, he always wanted to fly it. The average mission usually involves 40-50 hours there and back. He can land on a 6,000-foot runway, but the flight line's capacity is usually the limiting factor. He once flew to Macedonia. He prefers tanking off a KC-10 because it's more stable, but some pilots don't like the turbulence from the middle engine. That message came from TACC, which stands for Tanker Airlift Control Center. Yes, it always comes from there. Look, there's a horse race at that track down there. Those circles mean the navigation system --- you get the idea.

The jump seat was fun. The C-5 is goddamn enormous, so we're looking down at most of the planes we pass and spotters are required to look out both sides to ensure the wings don't hit anything. The nose gear is well aft of the cockpit, so we're actually hanging out over the grass when we turn onto a taxiway. The takeoff was smooth and quiet. Landing at Charleston was handled by the copilot, Lt. Kramer (pictured), who has only been flying the C-5 for a few months. He came in a little fast and might have bounced on touchdown, though the C-5's suspension is good enough that I really couldn't tell.

At Charleston, everything is unloaded to take on the cargo -- two Stryker Recovery Vehicles, essentially heavily armed tow trucks. The first attempt to load on the rear ramp is unsuccessful -- part of the vehicle is about three inches too high, and though it can be lowered, nobody knows how. So they close the ramp and open the massive nose door, which swings the whole nose up over the cockpit to reveal another ramp. As this unfolds, Abby (L) and Carolyn (R), the PAOs, take the ABC guys and I to the Charleston flight kitchen. Posted on the wall there, in addition to the 'USAF Standard Attack Warning Chart and pictures of commanders, were posters warning personnel to report human trafficking, not to sexually harass coworkers, to report all mishaps, not to gossip, etc.

At Charleston the trucks were put on and we picked up about a dozen Space-A passengers, who are usually retired military personnel and their families hitching a free ride to Europe. The mishandled bags were carted away, the trucks loaded, the ramp went up and I went back to the rear passenger compartment for the flight to Bangor, where we were to refuel.

The C-5 -- have I mentioned how goddamn big it is? -- has, above the cargo compartment, five areas. The cockpit comes first, then the first passenger compartment where the crew sleeps. Behind that is an equipment room with hydraulics and cables, and behind that is the rear passenger compartment, where everyone else hangs out. Beyond that is a compartment of empty space unusable for weight and balance reasons; this unusable space, the crew will tell anyone who walks by, is larger than the usable cargo compartment of a C-130.

The passenger compartment is much nicer than I expected it to be. The seats, which are mounted backwards, are on par with commercial economy class. A loadmaster (they divide up responsibilities each day-- one takes responsibility for the front passenger compartment, one the cargo bay, one the rear passenger compartment) reads off the exact same briefing as the FAA requires of commercial aircraft, but in a much less formal way, with interruptions to hurl insults at other crew members and reel off lines from popular movies. Because the Air Force doesn't particularly care if you walk around in flight or when you use computers, it's actually a lot more comfortable than commercial travel in some ways. There are, however, no windows save two tiny portholes at the emergency exits. It's a little too loud to do interviews, so I kick back and write. At some point during that leg, I wrote this:

"Something is surreal about flying. There's the suspended disbelief that something so goddamn big can take flight, something remarked upon by Frome, Chu and Wise, all of whom work on and around aircraft for a living"--there's a break here as I look across the aisle and see Andy Moesch (pictured in happier times), one of the loadmasters, with an oxygen mask on. Our eyes meet briefly. He told me later he was testing it. I go back to writing: "I told Wise the joke about 'one day, someone's going to realize the Bernoulli Principle doesn't work, and all the planes will fall out of the sky.' I don't know if it was my delivery or her humor, but she didn't get it.

"There's something more though. When that ramp closed it had an air of finality to it, like being sealed into a tomb. Flying, being a passenger, a crew member or a pilot, it feels weird. The same suspended disbelief. Maybe it's the temporariness of the whole thing, or the cognitive dissonance of flying at altitude and speed while standing still. Or the isolation of sitting next to someone in a pressurized cocoon."

It's late at night when we land at Bangor. We all get off and go to the terminal, which is clearly used to military flights. There is one room dedicated specially to welcoming returning veterans, as this is often their first step on U.S. soil on the way home. There are two rooms covered in stickers from various squadrons. The entire crew buys lobster rolls, and they tell stories about Diego Garcia, where the preflight sometimes includes luring coconut crabs out of the landing gears. I sit with Jeff and Kris from ABC, and we talk about life in Washington. This is also the first real chance we've had to get to know our PAOs, Carolyn and Abby. Jeff, I find out, is a serious glider pilot. Kris used to cover the military for a station in Colorado. Carolyn's husband is an Air Force security officer. Abby was required to attend football games at the Academy, rain, snow or shine.

We get back on the plane and I jumpseat for the takeoff again. Though the exact same things are happening, night operations are somehow more serene than the day. Tonight it is overcast and the cockpit is dark, save for the gentle blue of taxiway lights and vivid multicolor LCD instrument displays. I sit quietly, listening to the slow call and response of the checklist. It is interrupted only once, when a controller asks for our destination. The pilot reads out the call letters, and the controller responds sharply that he wants the name of the place. The pilot responds and there are two full seconds of silence before the crew's thoughts roll in one after the other:

"That guy was giving us some sass!"

"You should have told him 'no'"

"That's classified"

"Need to know"

"Direct Area 51, sir."

The comments die down and the checklist continues, broken only once when a pilot says "this is where I say to myself, do not run over any taxi lights."

We take off -- once again, the C-5 is so big and smooth I barely notice -- and we quickly break through the clouds to a dazzlingly bright moon. I remain quiet as the crew starts to talk. There are two or three overlapping conversations at a time. I jot some isolated snippets:

"You've got a great view out your window."

"What fucking window?"

"If you have a window, something has done really wrong."

"Why the hell couldn't I have gotten KC-10s?"

"I honestly believe each C-5 crew should be issued boxing gloves, and at thirty thousand feet they should go down to the hold and fight it out."

"Then somebody would want to fly with McLovin."

"Is that--"

"Yeah, that guy"

"That's a great name for him."

"I went through training with him, and he was......"

You get the point. After a while I go back to the rear passenger compartment

I wrote a little more:

"But for a loud whine and slightly-above-average engine roar, this could be a civil flight. And the lack of windows. And the emergency slide boxes that are mounted prominently.

"What do these people know about politics? What do they care? Aside from mission requirements and turbulence from above, do they even notice? In one day I've heard one reference to politics [try that in DC]. Lots of talk, mostly from Wise and Glover, of 'contributing to the mission,' etc, but do hey care what the mission is? Are they hiding their opinions from me as an outsider, or is this just work for them?"

We cross into Spanish airspace in the late morning. We abort the first approach to Rota because of a nose gear problem. The second try is successful. Once we land we are met by Navy Lt. Ben Tisdale, Rota's friendly and enthusiastic PAO. Immediately a problem arises: we are not posted on the flight manifest past Charleston, and due to the subtleties of the diplomatic agreement governing the base, we are technically violating Spanish sovereignty. Despite Ben's strenuous efforts to game the system by terming us 'guests,' a harsh Spanish woman demands we be kicked off the base. I leave that issue behind when I realize with a shock that my duffel bag has not arrived with us. Everyone else's bags have been offloaded -- but not mine. Abby springs into action. We call Dover, who swears the bag got onto the plane. We go to the plane, where the crew promises the bag is not on board. We call Charleston, but get no response. This bag is absolutely crucial to the trip, and it sets up a frustrating catch-22: to file a proper claim for the bag, I have to be at my final destination -- Bagram, Afghanistan. I cannot fly to Bagram without my borrowed armor, which is in the bag.

An hour later, there is nothing to do but wait. Abby is here to help, but there is not much to be done. She hands me some talking points and goes to check her email. The papers list heroic facts about Air Mobility Command under headings like "AMC Mission: provide global air mobility...right effects, right place, right time" and "AMC Vision: unrivaled global reach for America...ALWAYS!" I am jetlagged and exhausted. On a giant flat screen TV, a grainy image of Larry King reports the crucial news that Sandra Bullock's husband has checked into rehab for sex addiction, but nothing from the war. The irony is too much for me. I slump miserably into the terminal seat.

At some point, Ben cedes the immigration problem: we have to go into town and get our passports stamped. He appears out of nowhere, changed out of his blue tigerstripe uniform into a t-shirt and gym shorts. Jeff, Kris, Ben and I stand around talking, waiting on the official base translator. It emerges that Ben met my War Is Boring editor, David Axe, when he was stationed aboard a ship on which David came to report. We joke about the scoops we can get from inside a Spanish immigration jail. The translator arrives with some Spanish military police, and the four Americans pile into a van. The police lead us to the entrance. "Oh, I get it," says Jeff, "they're making sure we leave." We are being kicked off the base. We roll into the town of Rota, a quaint little resort town. At the small police station, a Spanish couple complains that the woman's purse was stolen -- until she realizes she left it in the car. Some kids wander in with a puppy they found and ask how to find the owner. The police send them away. We fill out some forms and have our passports stamped, then it's back onto the base.

From here things get hazy. I am tired and jetlagged. The satisfaction of finally leaving for Afghanistan has been abruptly replaced by gnawing uncertainty. My mind constantly turns back to my bag and running through ways to find it. People talk to me, but I'm not really paying attention. At some point we check into the base hotel, where I forget my social security number. At some point I eat a cheeseburger. At some point I meet the base commander, an intense man who asks me, "what do you do?" I don't know how to respond. At some point I am given a folder full of propaganda. Ben drives us around the base, pointing out sites of interest. There is the port where Spain's lone aircraft carrier is docked. The Seabees' quarters. An Armed Forces Network station. A Spanish admiral's house. An American naval hospital. Some other stuff. We go to the local Air Force squadron, which is responsible for maintaining the incredible number of US aircraft that transit through on the way 'downrange,' as the military terms Iraq and Afghanistan. We see a slide show, where some impressive numbers are thrown at us and where Kris asks, "why does Rota have the reputation for breaking C-5s?" We tour the flightline, jammed full of C-5s and C-17s. We examine the inside of a C-17, which is packed full of radios for the Afghan National Army. Jeff and Kris shoot a promo. I take a video of our C-5 on stilts, as maintenance staff retract and extend the nose gear; I barely remember it. I have some random notes scribbled, but some of them don't make much sense. At some point, we go back to the hotel for a couple hours of rest, where I take a shower and change into my only extra clothes. The others used the time to sleep; I remember thinking vaguely that I should have thought of that.

Jeff has talked Ben into bringing us into town for dinner, and when we meet in the lobby I am surprised to see that Abby and Carolyn have changed into civilian clothes and look, well, normal. Some of Ben's friends join us in the lobby. I still haven't slept and I'm worried about the bag, but god damn, I'm going to eat dinner in Spain. We convoy out to an Argentine steak place, where we share appetizers and drink something fruity and alcoholic. We tell jokes and stories, discuss turning a C-5 into a bar, talk about where we grew up. I eat a giant, Argentine steak, cooked rare. In retrospect, these couple of hours were the highlight of the trip.

When we get back to the hotel I'm determined to find my bag. One of Ben's friends has given me permission to use his office's secure phone line. Abby gives me some phone numbers. A half-hour later I talk to an airman in Charleston: "I remember that bag, sir. It's here somewhere." He finds a green duffel bag with the right tags on it, but I can't believe it. Does it have a green jacket in it? "It does, sir." What about a helmet? "Yes, sir." A flak vest? "Absolutely, sir." The next flight to Rota leaves tomorrow at noon, can you get it on there? "I'll put it on personally." Because I was only on the manifest as far as Charleston, they assumed it was destined there and took it off, though I'm still confused as to how everyone elses' bags made it through. I triumphantly email Abby, and immediately my eyes shut of their own accord. I pry them open. Stay awake five more minutes, I plead with myself, just five. It's about one am local time.

As I email an update to David Axe in Afghanistan, the phone beside me rings. It's jarringly loud. It's Abby: "Are you still awake?" Yeah. "Can you meet me downstairs? I have some news for you." Maybe you saw the email I sent you about the bag? "Yes, I saw it." Shit. That means something is wrong, and it's not about the bag.

Downstairs, Abby is still in civilian clothes. She delivers the news cold: "You have to go back to Dover," she tells me, and the flight leaves in two hours, meaning I have to go to the passenger terminal now. At Bagram she was scheduled to drop me off and pick up two people, one being my editor David Axe, the other being a guy headed back to get married. His return is more important than my arrival, and because of my bag's (and thus my) delay, Abby cannot stay until the bag arrives, and I cannot stay without Abby. She has to get this guy home. Ben, the Navy PAO, has been roused from his wife and 1-year old daughter, Caroline, to pick me up and drive me the quarter mile to the airfield. I can only imagine the expression on my face. I ask to speak to whoever made the decision. She gives me the number of her boss at Scott AFB in Illinois, from whence the order came. I march upstairs to call him.

Ben shows up at the door, then Abby. Or the other way around. I call Illinois, where the phone is answered by a captain named Brockhoff. Ben essentially puts himself on the line for everything -- he will take responsibility for me, he will ensure my safety and productivity in Rota, he will escort me to Afghanistan when my bag arrives. I tell Brockhoff. "Call me back in 20 minutes," he says. Ben goes home and Abby and I sit and talk for a few minutes. I call Brockhoff back and it looks like a compromise can be reached -- I am to leave the base and get a hotel in town, Ben is to show me Rota in depth and, when my bag arrives, escort me to Bagram. Abby goes back downstairs to sleep. "Call me back in half an hour," says Brockhoff.

I call back, and this time things aren't so positive. Ben can't escort me to Afghanistan; despite having all the necessary qualifications, he is not technically certified to go there. The certification takes a month to obtain. And anyway, the Air Force cannot generate orders for Navy personnel.

What if I stayed here until another PAO came through? But there is, apparently, no possibility that any Air Force PAO can come through Rota within the next few weeks.

But I can get my editor's armor the second I hit the ground at Bagram. The Taliban aren't firing SAMs, can't you waive that bullshit armor requirement? No, you need the armor.

Can't you delay this until the morning, when people will be in their offices? No, the plane is leaving in two hours.

How about if I went, on my own dime, to another European USAF base? No, that would be a decision for USAFE, a separate branch of the Air Force, and since it's now 2am in much of Europe the relevant USAFE personnel are asleep. We can't get you an answer before your plane leaves. You should get on that plane.

Why couldn't this decision be made earlier? Roger Drinnon [Brockhoff's boss] was waiting to see about your bag, Brockhoff says, and now that it's been located [by me] we've canceled its trip to Rota. I guess we'll ship it to you when you get back. We've woken up Ben and Abby -- again -- to come and get you.

Goddamnit, Brockhoff, what did I do to you to deserve this? How do I write about a mission I can't see? Why did you bring me so far to send me back?

Brockhoff was probably just the bearer of bad news, but because I couldn't speak to his superiors -- they had apparently gone home for the day -- he was an easy target. I might have cursed and yelled and insulted him personally. "I understand your frustration," I remember him saying a number of times. He promised he could get me on a flight out of Andrews AFB on the 9th, transiting through Ramstein in Germany on the way to Bagram. I doubt he had anything to do with these decisions. To hell with it. I hope he felt like shit after dealing with me. I hope that shit rolled against the tide, up the line to Colonels Baron and Codlick, who make these decisions.

I've talked to a number of people familiar with military airlift in the last couple of days, and my consolation is that most of them think my experience was the result of, in one person's words, 'some king-size fuckups.' After these conversations, it seems clear to me that, if I had known the right people to call, or had I known how to game the system, or had this happened just a few hours earlier or later we could have found a happy middle ground for everyone.

For a week I have been asking various people in various ways and settings, what are the downsides to working for the Air Force? Now I see I was asking the wrong question. They work for a sprawling organization, where lack of communication between offices allows problems and errors to compound uncorrected, where arbitrary decisions are made based on incomplete information. Where their order change constantly. They're just doing what they're told regardless, and I bet that what they're told to do sometimes doesn't make much sense. I should have been asking, how often are you retasked? How often do you fly empty? What's least useful cargo you've carried? What's the longest you've sat idle? What is your favorite back door? I'd guess the answers would be more interesting than what I actually got.

Ben comes in yawning and Abby in sleeping clothes, and I feel terrible. Ben has been called away -- again -- from sleeping with his wife and infant daughter on my behalf. Abby will barely sleep before her flight to Afghanistan. And if I had just acquiesced an hour earlier, it wouldn't have happened. They are both pretty stoic and graceful about it. They bring to the passenger terminal, check me in, and hang out for a while. At some point, Abby asks why I'm not pissed off and throwing things. I think I said something about leveraging it for better coverage. The truth is, it was really a pretty interesting week. Pictured at right: late-night stoicism and grace.

Then Ben drives Abby back to the hotel -- and returns of his own volition to hang out for two or three more hours and make sure everything goes smoothly. Remember, he had earlier volunteered to take responsibility for me and escort me into a war zone, and I'm not even writing about the Navy. Granted, Bagram's not exactly supposed to be Guadalcanal, but still. That guy deserves whatever award public affairs people get for acting stoically in the face of ludicrousness and showing dedication to good publicity in general -- and it should be an Air Force award. I will buy him a thousand beers for trying to help when I needed it most. Maybe I'll send him an Afghan rug or some tea, if I ever get there. That's gotta be worth something.

I was on that C-5 flight back to Dover when it left. I should have interviewed people on the plane, but I was just too tired. Before takeoff the loadmaster approached me.

"What service are you in?" he asked.

"I'm not in a service. I'm media."

"You're media?" he said. "Everyone else's name has 'Air Force' or 'Army' beside it. Yours has 'Service X.'"

"Huh. What does it say when a CIA guy flies with you?"

"I don't know. We've never flown a CIA guy before."

I grunted and went to sleep. Later, another loadmaster came up.

"Do you have any credentials? They're curious about you."

I didn't feel like digging through my bag for a press pass, I showed her my vague travel orders. So, somewhere out there might be a random C-5 crew that thinks they flew James Bond. At least I was on the manifest. I dozed on and off the whole flight back.

At Dover I was met by Sgt. Padgett, who generously drove me to the bus stop in town instead of eating lunch with his wife. From there I caught the Greyhound to Wilmington and the next train back to Washington. Then I slept for ten solid, glorious hours.

AMC, if you're reading this, I'm looking forward to being reunited with my bag. I'd also like to be, as I was promised, on a certain flight out and eventual landing at Bagram with all my stuff. I am not checking a bag this time, and we both get a do-over. Please do things coherently this time.

*Postscript: Three days after my departure from Rota, David Axe is still in Afghanistan and hasn't met Abby, who is supposed to escort him home. There are two possible interpretations of this: first, the guy I was bumped for still hasn't left for his wedding; second, Abby might still be at Rota. Meaning that if I hadn't been sent home, I would be at Rota, reunited with my bag, properly escorted and ready to hop the next flight to Afghanistan. Instead, I'm in Washington and my bag is not. Aim High!

Autopia: At Long Last, Clear Messages for High-Speed Rail

2010-02-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

At Long Last, Clear Messages for High-Speed Rail

By Zach Rosenberg
February 1, 2010 |
10:30 am |
Categories: Infrastructure, Rail
| Edit

We finally have a plan for high-speed rail in the United States.

The Obama Administration, which has long made it clear high-speed rail should be a national priority, on Thursday released its long-awaited list of high-speed rail project stimulus money. The official list of projects can be found here (PDF), and as usual Yonah Freemark breaks it down nicely.

The exact distribution of the $8 billion earmarked for HSR in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ( aka the stimulus bill) has long been the subject of rumor and speculation. As applications poured in, pundits and commenters suggested everything from divvying the money up equally among the projects to giving the whole pot to one mega-project.

What stands out about the awards is their piecemeal nature. While the infusion of cash will bring practical, measurable benefits, high-speed rail is so mind-bogglingly expensive (the California high-speed rail project alone is estimated at $40 billion) and the grants are spread so thinly that many of the benefits we’ll see will be tiny. We can draw three conclusions from this.

First, the Obama administration is serious about establishing a nationwide high-speed rail network. Although the plan allocates $620 million to speed up trips between Richmond, Virginia and Charlotte, North Carolina, the largest benefits will come from connecting that line to the Northeast Corridor in Washington, DC and the proposed high speed rail hub in Atlanta. A line linking Madison, Wisconsin with Milwaukee is nice, but hooking it up with the hub in Chicago is really worth salivating over.

Second, states cannot depend entirely on federal money to bankroll these projects. No one received everything they wanted for their projects. Much of what was allotted, particularly in California and Illinois, provides a financial boost to states that already have pledged money. The long-overdue federal transportation bill pending before Congress sets aside a small (relatively speaking for high-speed rail) sum to be handed out annually, but other big announcements in Obama’s speech — a freeze on discretionary spending, significant earmark reform, etc - may limit or do away with traditional sources of money that might otherwise be available for high-speed rail.

Third, some is better than none. Many of the stimulus grants aim to increase train speed trains to 110 mph, despite the technology available to increase it to 220 or more. The Northeast Corridor is a prime candidate for increased-speed funding — although the trains running that line are capable of 150 mph, most places along the tracks don’t allow it. That greatly suppresses potential ridership. The NEC will have to make do with a $112 million grant for crucial but relatively minor upgrades.

Obama can expect to take flack from both sides of the HSR argument. Fiscal conservatives will blast the grants as a waste of money, and high-speed rail supporters will criticize them as spread too thinly to provide much benefit to any one project. Obama has found an unhappy medium, but it effectively lays the groundwork for what will hopefully be a cash-filled future.

Map: U.S. Department of Transportation. Download the full-size map here.

War Is Boring: Can Yemen Stop Al Qaeda?

2010-01-29T07:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.warisboring.com/?p=3654

by ZACH ROSENBERG

Despite increased pressure on Yemen to fight an Al-Qaeda branch that has taken root there, the government in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, may lack the will and leverage to oust the terror group.

During a panel at the New America Foundation (NAF), a respected Washington, D.C. think tank, several scholars with experience in the region questioned the Yemeni government’s ability to mount effective anti-terrorism operations within the nation’s borders.

While nominally in control of the nation, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s orders have little effect outside the capital. Yemeni government influence in the areas where Al Qaeda operates is dependent on the cooperation of area tribes, suggests Barak Barfi, whose report on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was released in conjunction with the NAF panel.

The relationship between the tribes and Saleh’s government is often antagonistic. As the government lacks the military power to force cooperation, a complicated system of leverage and patronage has arisen. Saleh has earned tribal cooperation in the past through payments to tribal leadership, which use the money as they see fit; in much of the country, Barfi says, it is the only link Yemenis have with the government in Sana’a. But money, scarce in Yemen, has not been the only form of leverage. Other tactics — kidnapping prominent figures, for example — are common on both sides.

Barfi and fellow panelists stressed that though the relationship between the tribes and AQAP is poorly understood, most Yemenis consider AQAP to be a tool for addressing their own grievances with Saleh’s government. “That said, there is a very thin line and it’s easy to cross,” he added. Likewise, Saleh appears to view AQAP as a tool to guarantee foreign help in leveraging the tribes, as opposed to an existential or ideological threat. Despite the commonness of radical Wahabi-style Islam in Yemen, AQAP appears to be composed of foreigners.

Yemen has become the recipient of intense attention from the international community following terrorist attacks in the U.S. that allegedly have strong Yemeni connections. First, there was the shooting at Fort Hood by U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan, who is said to have been in contact with a radical Islamic cleric in Yemen. Second, we saw Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner on approach to the Detroit airport. Al Qaeda claimed to have trained and equipped Abdulmutallab in Yemen.

At a major ongoing conference in London to discuss terrorism in Yemen, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the Yemeni government to address the root causes of terrorism. “You can’t just continue to make promises in the face of very tough challenges like the ones Yemen is facing, without being expected to actually manage and resolve some of those problems,”The New York Times quoted her saying.

Among the problems Clinton cited were endemic corruption, lack of dependable institutions and economic mismanagement. At the NAF panel, Christopher Boucek stressed the urgency of effective action. “If we’re still having the conversation on how to help Yemen six or 12 months from now,” he said, “it’s six or 12 months too late.”

While U.S. intelligence operations in Yemen have been an open secret since a well-publicized drone strike in 2002, a recent flurry of air strikes indicates that U.S. operations extend to training, sharing intelligence with and supplying Yemeni forces. Barfi, the NAF panelist, suggested that the air strikes were largely counterproductive, having missed AQAP leadership and angering powerful local tribes.

The worse-case scenario does not include the collapse of the Yemeni government, said Barfi, despite Yemen’s impotence in the face of coalescing security issues. Boucek suggested that the U.S. could “forestall what we know is coming down the road,” said Boucek, but that an effective approach must include more than the military-oriented aid that has traditionally composed the dominant component of U.S. aid.

"The Last Chance" - Washington's View of Afghanistan

2009-08-28T13:12:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I attended a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution about the Afghan elections, which remain undecided. The speakers, Michael O'Hanlon, Anthony Cordesman, Kimberly Kagan and Bruce Riedel, are all highly respected scholars who have examined recent US operations in Afghanistan up close and personal; most were involved with General McChrystal's fresh strategic review. Overall, the speakers were supportive of the election's conduct: the election workers and electoral commission worked mostly as advertised, the ANA and Afghan Police generally kept the voters safe (despite 300+ attacks, including large bombs in Kabul and Kandahar), and observers pronounced the elections mostly free and mostly fair. Yet turnout was low - only about 30% of eligible voters went to the polls.

In many places, particularly in the south and west of the country where turnout was lowest, the vote counts are being attributed to Taliban interference. Though there's no knowing what percentage of eligible voters were absent due to the Taliban, it's safe to say they had a substantial impact. The 2004 elections, won by Hamid Karzai, saw a turnout of around 70%. But Bruce Riedel doesn't think those numbers are representative, since the election was "more like a coronation" - Karzai had the backing of every major warlord and faction, he just needed legitimacy. Instead, Riedel says, the latest figures should be compared against the 2005 legislative elections, which was largely ignored by the ethnic Pashtuns that composed most of the insurgency. The 2005 election turnout was closer to 40%. Now the insurgency is comprised of members from almost all factions, and given the general absence of the central government from the lives of most Afghans, they had little incentive to vote.

The panelists were unanimous in decrying the near-total lack of civil support. Despite well-publicized programs by the US military, NGOs and the Afghan government, the 'clear, hold, build' strategy has been largely confined to 'clear.' Dr. Cordesman had a particularly negative view: he requested that people "stop talking about smart power as if we had it," and suggested that the capability to and definition of 'hold and build' were "beyond nonexistent." The other panelists, while softer in tone, said much the same thing. That there is virtually no coherence or accountability to aid dispersal appears to have been a major factor in the current military climate in Afghanistan, and that the future holds little promise of help is a major strike against any eventual peace.

"This is the last fresh start," said O'Hanlon, and one by one the other panelists agreed. That someone wins the election appears virtually irrelevant. Much more important is that the election bestow legitimacy upon the government the winner will run. The Afghan government is among the most corrupt on the planet, and whoever wins the election, the panelists agreed - though all expect the Karzai to be declared winner - will probably be unable to change it. Several experts suggested before the election that the Taliban's goal would not be to topple the government or kill candidates, and indeed, they did not try. Rather, the tactic would be to suppress enough voters to sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election winner and his future actions, and in this they seem to have succeeded.

Conflict Hip Hop/Hip Hop Aleikum

2009-07-30T19:29:00.001-07:00

On March 31st, the Somali militant group al-Shabaab released a propaganda video with a new and interesting feature: hip hop. The song has no beat, the rapper's delivery is unsophisticated, the lyrics are unidimensional, the production quality is low, it might not even be hip hop - but if not, hip hop's flavor and influence is there.

This guy is not the first person to rap about Somalia, and a thriving Somali hip hop community ensures he's not the best - or only - voice on the topic. Though it appears that most Somali rappers are descendants of US-based refugees, the diasporic tradition of sending ideas back home, coupled with the ease of the internet, makes it very, very likely that, somewhere in Somalia, hip hop is growing local roots.

Of course, a lot of hip hop has heavy political content*, it's been a platform for social and political criticism since it began. While its traditional use by members of oppressed groups remains globally prominent, it's no longer an exclusive domain. People on all sides now participate in the argument through hip hop.

To the best of my knowledge, al-Shabaab is the first real political institution to officially present themselves to the world by rapping. State Department-sponsored tours and judges writing in verse are the closest examples I know, but there are degrees of difference. Maybe al-Shabaab isn't the best example: only a few thousand strong and deeply divided, their achievements in taking over parts of southern Somalia haven't earned them much more than American ire. Yet those conditions - territorial control, holding residents accountable to a legal system and gaining recognition on the international stage - along with the potential to further expand - seem to warrant them seriously as a political group, and rap is the PR they chose.

Al-Shabaab's PR machine isn't great, but that video got great play. The MC is American-raised (or born), and rapping in English clearly suggests that the target audience is English-speaking, most likely the American-Somali youth that regularly join up.

As far as I know, there are no government has any official policies specifically on hip hop, and officialdom has displayed suitably unpredictable reactions, ranging from acceptance to puzzlement to hostility. While corporations have long since discovered the genre for both subtle product placement and direct advertising (even Common, who wrote a great extended metaphor about commercialism, starred in a Gap ad), the use of rap by governments to spread political messages is an uncharacteristic and worrying possibility.

While governments are often among the last to adapt to cultural shifts, government PR machines can sometimes be very, very good. Is it possible that one day we might see government sponsored hip hop artists spinning carefully crafted talking points to the youth? Rap songs from both sides of a conflict aimed at gaining support abroad?

One reason hip hop is heard from Arica to Zanzibar is that you don't need specialized instruments - you always carry them. And because the major focus is usually words, rappers have a lot of space to express their opinions. Almost anyone can identify with love, sex, cars, making money, getting away with things, good times, where you're from, etc. But you can talk about anything you want. Why hip hop isn't used more for sending crafted messages is a mystery to me.

The music itself can be an active force for good. There's some quality music out there on topics from human rights to environmentalism, with a lot of the suggestions being implicit in the nature of the words (Mr Lif never actually says 'don't invade Iraq,' Aesop Rock never says 'revolt' but the meaning is clear). If an angry Canadian can write a funny country song that makes a huge impact, imagine what a widely-distributed rap video could do; an NGO could raise awareness and money; specific political arguments could be presented; educators could make political science seem interesting. To my knowledge, nobody's figured out how to effectively use hip hop at that level, and that's a good thing - hip hop could become a capital-centric, cynical joke like some rock and roll. Or worse yet, a viciously deceptive political wasteland like TV news. It's well on the way.

There's potential there, and al-Shabaab realizes it, and so does Marc Lynch.

*A guy in the third link actually says 'microcephalic.'

2009-07-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

The post is coming, but my god, it's so hot....I feel so apathetic...

My Degree Doesn't Say 'Political Science' Fer Nothin'

2009-07-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Dear the two or three of you that read this blog on occasion,
I intend to write a long, semi-informative blog post in which I correlate the Happy Planet Index with aspects of UNDP's Development Index. Some people have done this roughly, but I'll take a closer look and try to isolate individual variables like literacy, demographics, etc.
If I'm feeling saucy (or bored) I might try some correlations on corruption, stability, infectious diseases and whatever other solid-looking data I can get my hands on. I anticipate that the Happy Planet Index and UNDP Index with have a medium-strength negative correlation, and a medium-strength positive correlation with all the other 'bad' stuff.
Further, I will speculate rampantly on why the results are what they are.
If I'm really bored I'll call up some relevant experts and see if I can't waste some of their time and expertise.

In the meantime, The Onion dives headfirst into the new century

Why I'm moving to Washington

2009-07-13T10:50:00.001-07:00

All two or three of you that occasionally read this blog might know I'm moving to Washington, DC. Washington, mostly by virtue of having so much government based there, is a deeply depressing and largely dysfunctional city. It is filled with douchebags of every conceivable stripe. It is overflowing with people who are very concerned with what they look like, routinely ignore laws they helped craft, compete viciously with everyone around them, lie as often as not, and play basketball because it might get them closer to the President. It is home to massive amounts of power, stratospheric prestige, and limitless ambition. It's a place where even your dog can be a political issue. And those are considered the good parts of town.

Why in the hell, some have asked, would a guy like me voluntarily jump into this? Of course I have lots of family there, a couple of people I could maybe call to get a beer with, proximity to the people that make the policies I follow closely, and most importantly, lots and lots of work.

Portland's Transportation

2009-07-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm planning to leave Portland, it's time to reflect on Portland's transportation services, which have generally gotten me where I want to go.
-Like most mass transit, it closes at some point. I live pretty far out, and my last bus leaves downtown for home at about 12:30am, which means that if I want to stay out I'm pretty much screwed. Many of my friends in more accessible areas have the same problem - the bus just stops running before they're ready to go home. Boo hoo, right? But this is an issue in many places. DC's Metro system, which I'm about to use a lot more often, stops running around 2:00. Not so bad, but I'm all in favor of paying the extra costs to have 24-hour transit in major cities. One train an hour would do just fine. Portland's not there yet, but late-night Portland swarms with taxis. Think of all the money and emissions that could be saved by extending just a couple of key bus lines a couple more hours.
-Nonstandard tickets. The tickets differ between MAX, Trimet, other bus systems, etc. Portland is in the midst of a major push to expand its transportation network. It's not that big a deal, but if I didn't speak English so well it'd be pretty confusing. And I've always wondered why people don't take advantage of that nonstandardization to forge tickets and slip between the cracks. It turns out, somebody did. Who knows how many of these things have actually been circulating; it took a very aware fare inspector to catch it, and I never see those guys. Only once have I been inspected for fare. I was using an expired bus ticket, but, like with the drivers, I pull it out, wave it around vaguely, nobody pays too much attention. You don't need fake tickets when you can use the one from last week. I'm surprised nobody's been busted for forging bus passes, which are subject to the same lack of scrutiny but much more valuable.
-People not paying/people paying. The MAX is an awesome, awesome invention. The stations, however, are open, so people very rarely pay. I don't know how The City could actually force people to pay, so my advice is: extort a whole lot of money from somewhere and make the whole damn system free. It probably wouldn't cost much more than it does already.
-Nonstandard transit systems. C'mon, WES couldn't run on a MAX line? Is it really worth the purported cost savings to have a while elephant shuttle commuters around the outer Portland area, but not actually be compatible with MAX?
-No Eastside Streetcar. They're actually working on this, is my understanding, but what would be really nice is to have an extensive loop that connects to North Portland and the MAX at both the Rose Quarter and Hollywood MAX stations. Nobody in this city would ever drive again.
-MAX north and south - The proposed Columbia River Crossing (convenient link to my own article) will almost certainly have a MAX line. Fantastic. Get it built, then build a MAX network in Washington and link it up to all the busses. Also, the almost-open MAX line to the south is nice, but it, first, follows the highway, second, doesn't go very far. Don't expect to see commuters giving up their cars to ride those lines, they're just not that convenient.
-Please, PLEASE list the MAX and bus arrivals by the actual arrival time. The MAX arrival boards are set to the scheduled times instead of the actual estimated times. I can't tell you how many times I've stood on the platform where a train was noted as 'arriving' with nary a MAX in site. It makes a mockery of the arrival boards, and consequently very few people actually pay attention to them. They could be crucial, but they're not. Also, the phone-accessible Transit Tracker is a great system, but if a bus is late - and they quite often are by a couple minutes - the Tracker system assumes it's irrelevant and strikes it from the list. It sucks walking away having been told the next bus is 50 minutes out only to watch it pass you three minutes later. Assign a Trimet techie and allocate a few hundred dollars, we can solve these issues, no problem.
-Fire crappy bus drivers. This is a minor issue. Probably 95% of my bus drivers are excellent - very friendly and helpful in personality, comfortable and efficient in driving skills. This is why I love Trimet so much. There are about 5%, however, who just suck. They're either unfriendly or clueless, or more often just bad drivers. When the busses are packed, there's nothing quite like being constantly thrown into the people in front and in back of you to make you wish you had a car.
-High-speed rail. Portland is on a designated HSR line stretching from Vancouver to Eugene. I love taking trains around, but trips to Seattle and San Francisco take so damn long it's tough to justify. Hell, there's an airline that makes its money by flying PC-12s between Portland and Seattle every hour, and that can't be good for the environment. If someone can build a reasonable downtown-to-downtown service, air traffic will just evaporate, which is kinda the point isn't it? I doubt we'll see a functional and efficient HSR system on this route within my lifetime, but hey, a guy can dream.

Portland's transit system is held up nationally as a model network, as it should be. All things considered, it's a great system. It can stand to be improved. Portland, more than any other American city I know of, has the potential to be held up internationally as a model. Keep up the good work, but keep working on improvements.

Light Summer Reading

2009-07-07T16:42:00.000-07:00

Every summer I decide I haven't quite gotten my fill of hollow novels with unconvincing plots and generally stereotypical characters, so I open up some Tom Clancy. Say what you will about his fascination with the minutiae of weaponry, unwavering belief in the morality American-meted justice, refusal to seriously consider political or social alternatives, unrealistic plot devices, hollow character formation, unconcealed sexism -- alright, he's a bullshit writer, punching at the same weight as Britney Spears and tofurky and the Whale Warriors. He's the pop of political novels. Hey, stop judging me.
The book I picked up for fifty cents at the thrift store is Rainbow Six. I'm about a hundred pages into it and I've dropped it in disgust only to pick it back up three times so far. A major turnoff for me is an unrealistic characters and plot: any strange kind of weird shit can happen, but if the characters don't act like real people or the plot reflect that, it might as well be junk mail. Catch-22, for example, was ridiculous on any number of levels, but in Joseph Heller's universe it made sense. Robert Heinlein's characters might be a little shallow and rigid, but even Jubal Harshaw is almost a believable character. Likewise, Tom Clancy's principled but mindless and largely interchangeable characters generally act rationally in Tom Clancy's world.
My major stumbling block this time around is that Rainbow Six was written in the late 1990s and deals with terrorism by shadowy groups and the government organizations that violently try to stop them. Since 9/11, the invasions and mishandled occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, legalized (or at least tolerated) kidnapping and torture, the people in power who tortured - or approved of it - and why, the muscled but confused politics of American foreign policy, the apparent suspicion and distrust with which the US government treats many its citizens, etc, have changed the face and conduct of government as an institution and the individuals behind it. Rainbow Six starts with a relatively peaceful aircraft hijacking - which puts it well outside the scope of belief in today's world, where that aircraft might actually be shot down on purpose. Clancy later goes on to describe hardcore soldiers with no combat experience (whereas in real life, by now they're on their third tour in Afghanistan), governments that trust the US to act in the best interests of the world, and European terrorists as the main threat the world peace.

I imagine trying to read Francis Fukuyama's The Last Man is about the same. Whether you agree or disagree with what he writes, this book just doesn't accurately describe anything anymore. Rainbow Six goes back to the thrift shop next week, but I reserve the right to check out the video game

Gone Public

2009-07-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

I was up late last night, but while I catch up on my sleep you should be aware that tamales have got to be the best damn food ever. It's a shame that more people don't appreciate 'em.

Here's a picture of Gerald Ford trying to eat one with the husk on. For the modern verbal equivalent, check out the Republican party's awkward movements on Sotomayor. Compare what they say now with the 2008 election cycle. Ideology aside, a lot of these people just seem to suck at politics. Can we have a 3rd party now, please?

America Withdraws from Iraqi Cities

2009-06-30T15:51:00.001-07:00

And Abu Muqawama's standin, who supposedly knows something about this mess, has some ideas on the latest round of car bombs there. Sometimes I wish I knew something about Iraq, but since I don't, here's some uninformed commentary:
Iraqi security is now to be kept by the incredibly corrupt government, backed by occasional US support and supposedly air power, intelligence, special operations and whatever else the US does on call. You might remember the Iraqi offensive in Basra last year, which involved a lot of US support to, in my understanding, weaken a threat to Maliki's political power. It's hard to argue that the US military hasn't been used in Iraq to, first, protect/further narrow political interests at the cost of alienating Iraqis, second, eliminate/imprison rivals not only to Iraqi political figures but everyday Iraqis as well - acting on the anonymous tips by Iraqi citizens virtually guarantees that. Iraqis seem nervous - rightfully so, I think - about this latest US move (which is in keeping with the mutually agreed Status of Forces Agreement): despite the problems of having largely naive, heavily armed, 22 year old foreigners running around the cities, American troops at least served a stabilizing function through keeping local militias apart and suppressing obvious violent criminal activity (er, sorta). Now that Iraqi troops - newly-trained, largely corrupt and generally unwieldy - are in charge, I wouldn't be surprised to see more violence as the Iraqi Army and various factions all fight one another, punctuated by an occasional series of US airstrikes and offensive missions. I don't know how this will affect the current Iraqi government, but they should be pretty nervous too.

The various factions have done themselves a real service these last few years by attacking other factions instead of US troops. Keep it up a little while, guys, then you'll be rid of us and you can really get down to business.

Viva Honduras!

2009-06-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know whether this coup is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, Zelaya was a real asshole. On the other hand, the military directly taking things over presages some pretty bad stuff. Coups of any sort introduce short-term instability, even well-backed military coups (not that Honduras was one). This NYTimes article shows why there aren't more coups - if you haven't pissed off the military, or the monied elites, or influential foreign nations, or the vicious press, you've certainly pissed off some citizens. You win some, you lose some, but Zelaya is reported to have said something to the effect that "they've (the coup plotters) created a monster they cannot contain." Is he just bitter or is he making real threats?

People who pay attention to Central America probably saw this one coming. The Honduran government has been, if nothing else, fragile. Corruption is a huge problem, due partly to the massive amount of hard drugs moving through on their way to the US, partly to the enormous gang membership among youth - which, I'm told, makes Tegucigalpa an adventure whether you like it or not - partly to a host of other things that some others have described more fluently.

I'm not a fan of Zelaya or the Honduran military in general, but I don't follow Central America very much. From what I do know, that whole region is ripe for political shenanigans, and revolution is not beyond the imagination.

Coup in Honduras

2009-06-28T11:21:00.001-07:00

Not news to anyone that follows this blog - since that's basically me - the Honduran president was ousted by the miltiary following his attempts to extend his own term in office, which came from disobeying the Honduran Supreme Court, the Congress, and firing the head of the military. Lotta good that did him.

US-Iran relations and the Gulf States

2009-06-25T12:13:00.000-07:00

In the New York Times today, an article about Iran mentions that the US's Arab allies - which I assume to mean the UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia - are afraid that improved US-Iran relations will "undermine their interests." What are those interests, and how do those relations affect them? Are they more concerned about a change in Iranian policy or American policy?
David Axe wrote a good piece about how Iran is scaring its neighbors into buying more weaponry, but he doesn't really delve - not his area - into why. It's not my area either, but since this is the internet and wild speculation is the norm, here are some random thoughts on these issues.
1) Military support. The Gulf States - Saudi, Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain - fear that better US-Iran relations will result in less US support in the face of Iranian aggression. As David Axe noted, some of these countries are in the middle of making serious investment in their militaries. Just from the aviation sector, which is thought to be Iran's weakest point (thus the easiest for others to exploit), Saudi Arabia is buying Eurofighters, UAE and Oman get F-16s and UAE is buying tankers to refuel them - completely unnecessary for defense in such a small country except as a deterrent. All these aircraft will be brand new, with the latest technology, in numbers that suggest that these purchases are not merely symbolic. A loss of US support also means the potential end of military aid, large amounts of which - not Egypt and Israel large, but pretty big - directly support Gulf militaries. If the US drops local military aid in order to appease Iran, a good amount of financial support, material support and training possibilities goes with it.
2) Money. The last thing any nation needs is another competitor, and if the US ban on investment in Iran is lifted, you can be sure that US companies will pour into the Iranian marketplace. Oil is a special concern, seeing as Iran has lots of it, and the whole regional status quo is based in large part on oil money. If the Saudis or Kuwaitis or even Iraqis see less oil money coming in, money which largely props up their regimes and keeps civil dissent to a minimum, they face serious threats externally and internally.
3) External Relations. The US doesn't exactly have the best reputation in the region, but it's a powerful friend to have. It's conceivable that the Gulf state's relations around the world would be harmed if the US isn't squarely in its corner. The recent US-UAE nuclear deal is a case in point - without explicit US support, would UAE be able to purchase necessary support equipment abroad? China, Russia and India could make great inroads in this case, but they simply don't have the weight and influence to throw around like the US does, even given Russian and Indian geographical proximity. The UAE, in particular, is apparently still pretty pissed about Russia's assasination of political enemies on its territory, and are probably wary that India might request better treatment for the huge number of Indian workers there.
4) Internal Legitimacy. I can't imagine that most Gulf citizens are enamored of US support, but with the loss of a world rabbi has consequences, especially economic consequences, that might incite discontent. In these nations, ruled by a single supreme family and largely devoid of freedom of speech, the only outlet for serious discontent is civil resistance. Likewise, I can't imagine that American diplomatic messages are taken very seriously in the region by the general populace, but if the US tells Gulf states they have little to fear from Iran, what will citizens in turn request of their governments?

Lunar Politics

2009-06-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

I had a nice, long, fresh new blog post about why everyone's going to the moon all of a sudden, but I closed the window by accident without saving it. I spent a good couple of hours researching and thinking, and I thought it was pretty good. Instead, here's a clumsy synopsis without all the links:

The announcement that NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken up position around the moon got me thinking about the politics behind the whole thing. Given the recent rush of programs to map out/figure out/land on the moon by at least six countries/collaborative efforts (the US, China, India, Japan, European Union, Google Lunar X-Prize), one can surmise that a new 'space race' is in effect. Why do so many people want to check out Earth's minor orbiting body?

1) Technological prestige. The national political leadership - which might really represent their respective publics on this issue - wants to see a significant and emblematic technical success, thereby (ostensibly) proving the superiority of that nation's technology, which will forever enshrine the nation's high-tech industries and would likely serve to drive up demand for their services.

2) National prestige. What political leadership doesn't want to brag about having done something that few other nations have? The success, on your watch, of something so mind-blowing and fascinating as putting something with your flag on another planet - especially if there's a hero to plant it - results in a jump in political support. The leadership is praised domestically for their vision and a legacy is ensured. Other pesky problems - the economy, for one - are conveniently shelved while citizens gawk in wonder and try to find words sufficient to describe their national glory.

3) International prestige. Putting something on the moon demonstrates prowess of a nation's rocketry (therefore missile) technology, navagation systems, infrastructure, engineering (therefore education), and financial instruments. Politically, it goes farther than that: it demonstrates patience and committment to long-term interests, willingness to compete/adjust the balance of power on a global level, and signals both a distant threat and a willingness to engage diplomatically (the thinking goes that by spending so much time and effort on a semi-militaristic but not overtly threatening project with a supposed net benefit to humanity, instead of an overt military buildup or foreign aid to poor nations, the nation is at least sensitive to international condemnation).

4) Military and strategic advancement. The research necessary to get these things on/around the moon has direct military application - missiles, electronics, materials, these things can be very useful to, say, building a new attack aircraft. There's the advantage of the strategic advantage of the moon itself - it's a great place to intercept airborne communications or aim missiles from.

5) Money. It makes the world go 'round. Aside from the obvious money-making potential of flying tourists to the moon - remember that several space programs have brought tourists into space - there are vast deposits of interesting minerals and elements that, if brought back, could earn the bearer a lot of cash.

6) Science. Though it seems to function as a thin veneer for political and technical aspirations, science will be advanced through these programs. Accurately mapping the moon and figuring out what it's composed of could bring a wealth of knowledge about planetary formation, comets, materials, chemistry - anything. The spin-off from the programs themselves - improved cameras, lightweight electronics, materials science, and the all-important experience - could potentially open up new areas of scientific research and have a major impact on application of research. If physicists, aerospace engineers, computer scientists, and material scientists aren't paying attention to this, they should be. Even social scientists can harvest - the related institutions and impact of the programs will provide a wealth of data to political scientists, economists, sociologists and even philosophers.

I had a whole ton of links built in before The Great Erasure, but you can do the research yourself. Here are some interesting sites I found:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/
http://www.thespacereview.com/
http://www.spacedaily.com/

Iranians Getting Interesting Emails

2009-06-23T17:23:00.000-07:00

Some Iranians aregetting emails, according to an anonymous letter, posted by Foreign Policy's Joshua Keating, from someone who really wants to encourage protests in Tehran. If these are spammed out, which it certainly sounds like, who spams them? Maybe reading this CIA book is making me paranoid.

One of the random emails that I’ve been receiving in the past four or five days said that everyday there will be a protest at Enqelab at 5:00pm. Perhaps that’s why the police presence was so heavy. I don’t know who sends these emails and who else receives them.
Perhaps one of you is sending them? They come from cryptic email addresses with names like “Free Iran”, “Payandeh Iran” (Iran Forever), “A Friend”. They contain announcements that apparently come from Mousavi or Karroubi, information about where demonstrations are being held, how to access the web via proxies and filter breakers (none of which work anymore, by the way), how to treat gunshot wounds, why you should bring cigarettes with you to protests as a means to fight the effects of tear gas and other things. Where and who these come from remains a mystery to me

Google searches don't come up with much yet, but I did find a pretty cool site, started by bilingual journalists out of New York: Tehran Bureau

Just an interesting website

2009-06-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

The Infrastructurist

Italy as a "failed state"?

2009-06-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

Valentina Pasquali, in her reviews in the renowned magazine Foreign Policy, suggests that the lines between legitimate politics and criminal enterprise has become so useless that they are, essentially, part of the same entity. As evidence she cites the effective breakdown of justice system under pressure from both criminal groups that ignore it and legislators that go out of their way to weaken it. Does a weak justice system and corrupt political system a failed state make? Let's see the Failed States Index, conveniently located on on the same site. Being nor the best nor the worst doesn't garner much attention, but the map makes it look pretty much on par with the other major European nations. Still, let's go to the Fund for Peace and check out the interesting raw political scores. I have some issues with how these are measured (PNG has a higher security apparatus score than Egypt? Really?), but these people are experts. Italy, being a democracy, member of the EU, UN, World Bank, etc etc, has to publish all kinds of interesting statistics, and its position in Europe makes it accessible to researchers - thus, one would expect its Index scores to be pretty accurate. Remember, the higher the number, the worse off it is.
Italy gets the total Failed States Index score of 37.1, making it a bigger failure than the US or Sweden, but less so than Germany and Greece.
Criminalization/Delegitimization of the State: Italy is given a 3.7, sandwiched between the Czech Republic with it's large organized criminal enterprises and South Korea, which, if memory serves, has seen every single one of its ex-presidents accused of serious corruption. Italy looks to be roughly in the middle of other states with similar Index Scores. Given the blatent ties between Italian politicians and the mafia, does Italy deserve a higher score? Based on its neighbors, maybe not.
Deterioration of Public Services: Italy gets a 2, putting it slightly worse off than Spain and once again on par with South Korea. Given the traditional mob influence over things like trash collection (Naples, anybody?) and community policing (pizzo, protection money to the mob) one might expect a higher score.
Arbitrary Application of Rule of Law: Italy is given a 1.8 here, sandwiching it between such lawless nations as Switzerland and Canada. If, as Ms. Pasquali notes, the law is highly biased to the accused in major crimes, it makes sense. The law is not unevenly applied, it's just not effective. Fair enough.
Security Apparatus is a 'State Within a State': Italy earns a 2.5, making it significantly lower than the UK and on par with Germany. If the police are beholden the politicians and it's the politicians that are corrupt, this makes sense.
Factionalized Elites: Now we're talkin'. Italy gets a 3.2, higher than Mauritius, which saw a recent coup attempt, and higher than Poland and Lithuania, which have seen large protests in recent months. I'd really like to know how this is measured, but Italy doesn't seem so bad here.
Intervention of External Forces: Italy has a 2, on par with Finland, South Africa, and Spain. Fair enough.
I'm not an Italian scholar; in fact I've never been there. Just from the numbers, however, calling Italy 'the failed state of Western Europe' is a little premature. The Failed States Index gives higher scores to both Spain and Greece, places with semi-active but largely ineffective resistance movements, and Italy's total score isn't so far off from Portugal and France - not models of harmony and effectiveness themselves, but not bad company. The Index from 2009 has yet to be released, so the updated index might change things. However, Ms. Pasquali and Foreign Policy, while drawing our attention to serious issues, are perhaps a bit shrill. Let's not call 'wolf' just yet - we have a long way to fall.

Unrest in Iran?

2009-06-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

In 1953, when it seemed like the British might lose control over Iranian oil and policy, an American guy named Kim Roosevelt (who apparently wrote a book about all this later) flew to Iran to figure out how to overthrow the Iranian Prime Minister. He had lots of propaganda printed, bribed a lot of people, and coopted some important Iranians. He eventually succeeded, despite a lot of things going wrong, by starting protests massive enough to create utter confusion - enough to stage a coup and put the shah back on his throne. In 1979, massive protests again toppled the government (and overran the US embassy to start the infamous hostage crisis), installing the government of the Ayatollahs that still runs Iran.

On Friday, the Iranians held an election. Though Iranian voters actually get to choose between candidates, the candidates themselves are approved (or rejected) by the ruling clerics: not exactly free and fair, but it can't really be written off as a scam. Ahmadinejad, the current President, is said to have won with 62% of the vote - enough to prevent a runoff - but there are major demonstrations in Tehran right now, protesting the outcome. The protesters believe that the election was rigged. Anyone unlucky enough to be reading this blog can certainly find good sources of real information, but these protests might just presage a political shift in Iran - any concessions made to the protesters means a shift towards democracy and accountability, however small. There are a few questions I'd like answered:
1) How much have protests previously swayed the clerics? Is there a precedent for this?
2) How important are protests to Iranian political culture?
3) What involvement, if any, does the US have in initiating or sustaining these protests?
4) American media really failed on this one - where the hell are they?
5) What, if anything, do these protests mean for Iraq and Afghanistan?

As far as I know this blog has no readers yet. If anyone reads this and cares to weigh in, feel free.

Ah, Italy!

2009-02-17T13:01:00.001-08:00

And, speaking of corruption, here's another great NYTimes article:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/02/17/world/business-italy-mills.html?ref=world
The gist of it is that the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, bribed a British lawyer to keep quiet about some unspecified business dealings back in 1997. The lawyer was just convicted of accepting the bribe, and now has to pay a lot of money to - you can't make this shit up - the office of the Italian Prime Minister. By the way, Berlusconi is except from prosecution.

Corruption in the New Economy?

2009-02-15T12:33:00.000-08:00

Ah, blatant corruption. Here's an NYTimes article about an investigation of US military officials in Iraq. Keep in mind that while there certainly IS massive corruption somewhere in the process, there is as yet no evidence that these guys are involved.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/world/middleeast/15iraq.html?ref=world
These people were in charge of 'reconstruction' contracts, and there is a serious question of whether they took bribes from contractors to rig contract bids and accept substandard work. Corruption is a really fascinating issue.
In our culture it's perfectly acceptable to snub what could clearly benefit society in favor of personal profit, it happens all the time: people ignore the homeless guy begging for change; CEOs accept ridiculous bonuses at the cost of spreading the wealth or reinvesting it in the company; my roommates and I leave lights on without thinking of the environmental consequences. These are standard cases. When they become corruption is when there is a specific imperative from above not to self-enrich in favor of following through on your task. In some cases they're pretty borderline - pharmaceutical companies give out pens, condoms, chocolates, all kinds of interesting and free things to people at medical conferences (is that encouraging corruption or just very targeted advertising?) - but sometimes there's no debate at all, like when thousands of dollars are found in a legislator's freezer, or someone accepts gifts in exchange for rigging an open contest. The really juicy stuff is marked by clandestine interactions - the more they hide, the more angry everyone would probably be. I imagine that corruption is a telltale sign of a weak institution, being unable or unwilling to stop the people that siphon their resources or ignore clear institutional priorities.
Here's my question - in a time of economic depression and pressure for openness of corporate information, is corruption going to become a bigger issue as competition for scare dollars increases, or a smaller one as institutional shareholders scrutinize transactions more closely?

Article for Crosscut

2009-02-11T21:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to an article I wrote about The Oregonian, Portland's biggest news source.

http://crosscut.com/2009/02/05/media/18826/

First Post!

2009-02-10T15:23:00.001-08:00

This is the first post of what will hopefully be a long and unbroken string of them. Run while you can.