Hearts and Minds

The Taliban just released their answer to the US Counter Insurgency Field Manual. The American version, written in 2006, stressed the reduction of civilian casualties in an effort to win Afghan "hearts and minds" in the war against al-Qaeda, and more recently the Taliban.

The Taliban's new manual, written in Pashto, and titled "Mujahideen Manual" (see the cover above), details its code of conduct for Taliban fighters. In what is good news for civilians and most foreign workers, and bad news for American and ISAF forces, the manual encourages limiting attacks to high profile targets, and lowering civilian casualties.

Al-Jazeera has posted excerpts from the Taliban manual on their site. You can access their story here.

This Old House

Last week my cousin took me to see some of the land in Kabul that my grandfather used to own. It is no longer in the family, but we wanted to take a few photos anyways. While we were there we stopped and saw my uncle's sister, who lives just a block or two away from where the pictures were taken.

Mantu

This weekend I went over to my cousin's house to help prepare and eat Mantu, one of my favorite traditional Afghan dishes. Mantu is a thin steamed dumpling filled with meat and onions and topped with yogurt, tomatoes, mint, and beans. It is supposedly an Uzbek dish, although I have also found it as far away as Istanbul. One of housemates, who is from Kathmandu, says that something very similar to Afghan Mantu is also eaten in Nepal.

PowerPoint to the People

As we get closer to the election we've been hosting an increasing number of meetings with national and international observer groups such as NDI, IRI, the US Embassy, and EU-EOM.

As part of the Observer Facilitation Unit, Eng. Tawab Salim and I help coordinate the meetings and assemble the information that will be presented. Above is a picture of our first meeting with international groups; I am busy changing the slide for the PowerPoint I put together for the event.

Khashe-e-Qaoum

Here I am chatting with two of my uncles in our family's other house in Kart-e-Sakhi. The property, which has been renovated in recent years, belongs to another one of my uncles who lives in the United States.

At the time the picture was taken I was being given an history lesson on my Khashe-e-Qaoum, which is a Dari word for relatives and family. Family relations are difficult to follow being here for just the second time in three years. My uncle did his best, though I did much more laughing than understanding.

ملا عبد السلام راکتی (Mula Abdul Salam Rakity)

This is Mula Abdul Salam Rakity, one of the forty-one presidential candidates in Afghanistan. Take a closer look at his name for second. See anything familiar? Believe it or not, the "Rakity" is a poor spelling for rocket(y) in English. Apparently, "Rakity" became the mulla's nickname during the Afghan-Soviet War when he was taking down large numbers of Russian aircraft with Stinger missiles. The charming fellow is also known to have spent time fighting alongside the Taliban. The good news for peace-loving Afghans is that he is not considered a serious contender in the elections.

NATOISAFLTCMSFSFSO

From left to right: me; LTC Royal Ripley; a US Foreign Service Officer whose name escapes me; and ........., from the US Embassy's Election Support Team. The photo corresponds to my earlier post about dinner at NATO-ISAF.

The House in Kart-e-Sakhi

Yesterday my cousin and I went to see my father's old property in Kart-e-Sakhi. It's a small piece of land with mud-brick walls (gil-karee), a few rooms that serve as single-family homes, and a couple of rent-paying shops in the front; one is a bakery (naan-baayi) and the other a regular corner store with smokes and soda. Right now, one of my other cousins lives in one of the rooms and has rented out the rest of the space on a system here called "grao." Instead of paying rent, tenants pay a large fee to the landowner up front, sometimes $20 or $30 thousand. The tenants then get to stay on the property indefinitely until the landowner repays the fee. It's essentially a long-term loan and the interest paid is in the form of the use of a private residence; a pretty good deal for the tenants as long as inflation stays under control. Anyways, here some pics of the exterior. Someday I may own this property myself.


Below is the "corner store."
The front of the building. Bakery is on left, corner store is on right. Look up above at the houses built into the mountain.This is a view of the alley on the side of the building. Again, the houses built into the hillside are amazing.
Below, my cousin, her son and I are standing in front of the bakery. They are built up high with the floor at waist-level to fit the tandoor oven beneath the floor.

Voter Education

Pictured above are two of the voter education posters being distributed across Afghanistan in advance of the upcoming presidential and provincial council elections. There is actually a professional artist at the Commission that draws and colors each and every one. Because the electoral process is very new to Afghanistan one of the IEC's duties is to educate voters on topics such as who they are voting for, how to vote, and what the polling centers will look like. The extremely low literacy rate, estimated to be around 28 percent, necessitates that widely distributed materials convey their messages using pictures and shapes, instead of words. In addition to printed materials, the IEC also hosts a "190" hotline which Afghans can call to have their election related questions answered. I just completed revising and editing the newest printed FAQ list which is being distributed now. The Commission also sends out teams of civic educators into the provinces--one of which was killed two weeks ago--to educate citizens living far from urban areas.

Shirpoor

Shirpoor is one better known and fasted growing neigborhoods in central Kabul . The fairly small fifteen to twenty block area is famous for its luxurious mansions and $10,000/mo rents. Many foreign companies, UN offices, and famous Afghan warlords all coexist peacefully and take up residence there. Some of the houses contain over forty bedrooms, several fully-equipped kitchens, and small sheds inside high walls that serve as living quarters for the cooks and guards, who often make less than $200/mo. Because of the extreme poverty that exists on every edge of the neighborhood, and the extreme wealth within it, Shirpoor is often given as proof of the international community's ignominious waste and detachment from the very people they are trying to help.

In the top picture you can see recently constructed office buildings that lay just behind a make-shift garbage dump, old Soviet tank remains, and the mud walls of a local resident's house. In the bottom picture is one of the typically ostentatious Shirpoor houses nearing completion.

Today's Update

Today was another fine day at the IEC working on external relations issues. Right now I am putting together a short presentation that will be given to election observers later this week. Attendees will include electoral NGOs such as IFES and NDI, and stakeholder national and supranational entities such as the US Embassy and the European Union. It sounds important, but it's really just a basic powerpoint from information you can mostly pull of the IEC website. And they are coming all the way to the IEC to get the info!

This evening was especially interesting. I was invited for dinner at the NATO-ISAF base by an American military officer I met at the IEC. We ate dinner, drank coffee, and had a great conversation on geopolitics with two State Department officials--one from the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (OCRS) and the other a foreign service officer--and a second US Army officer responsible for election-related security. It was reassuring to hear about the efforts being made on the part of the US forces to ensure the security of the elections, and in particular the election compound.

One of the State Department officials actually just graduated from Georgetown MSFS about fourteen months ago. We ended up knowing quite a few people in common, including my classmate Yushin, who is currently working at the OCRS in DC for the summer. She told me that there are a large number of MSFS grads working in Kabul right now. Apparently, one MSFS alum who I emailed back and forth with quite a bit from DC this spring, John Dempsey, was recently appointed one of Richard Holbrooke's top advisors on afghansitan.

Paghman

The only day I get off from work every week is Friday, and today I spent it by riding up to Paghman for the afternoon with my family. About a one hour ride from Kabul, Paghman is a small province that is famous for its clean air, water, and beautiful landscapes. Thousands of people from the capital head there every weekend for picnics, swimming, and to pick wild mullberries and cherries.

In the center of town there is an arc that looks very similar to the Arc De Triomphe in Paris. It was apparently built in the early twentieth century by King Amanullah and Queen Tarzi after their return from Europe.

Earlier this Morning

Work at the IEC has been picking up lately. Although the national staff does not seem to understand where I fit in, the UNDP-ELECT advisors, who are embedded in the External Relations Department, have had plenty for me to assist with. Most of my work consists of facilitating relationships with election observer groups and compiling and updating election-related information that is distributed to candidate agents, civil society organizations, and political parties.

Within the next few weeks the IEC will be opening a Media Center in a downtown hotel to accommodate the swath of national and international media that will be arriving in Kabul soon to cover the elections. My plan is to convince the head of my department to transfer my post there when it opens. The increase in international presence around the Commission is already noticeable. I regularly get to meet and chat with US Army and NATO public relations officers, reporters from papers such as the LA Times, and international TV correspondents hanging around the IEC for their next story.

Taking pictures of the compound is restricted due to security reasons, but today one of my coworkers snapped a few of me in the back of a briefing session for some of the presidential candidates' political agents. Turnout was not very good but it was still a great opportunity to relax and enjoy a cup of tea.

Mesjid-e-Haji Abdul Rahman

Here are a couple of pictures I took of the new Haji Adbul Rahman mosque while walking around the De Afghanaan neighborhood in Kabul this afternoon. Last time I was here in 2006 it was still under construction. Nobody seems to agree on who built it or even what its name is but it is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful new buildings in Kabul.