The Morning the Apple Dropped: An Inside Look at an Exploding Afghanistan
23 May 2006Stewart Nusbaumer
"I told you so, I told you a bomb would go off," the French banker says excitedly. The French are an excitable people, especially when bombs go off.
"Bruno, everyone has been saying a bomb would go off," and I reach for the mash potatoes.
"But Bruno said a bomb would go off today!" an Irishman interjects, and then rips into his spare ribs.
"No, I said the bomb would off this morning," Bruno corrects, his face beaming.
"Did I miss a lottery or something?" Abelardo, a Mexican economist, asks.
"That’s funny," an American documentary filmmaker says. His favorite phrase, “That’s funny,” is quite funny since Afghanistan is one of the poorest and most violent countries on this planet, and therefore one of the most unfunny.
It is dinner time at the La Monde guesthouse in Kabul, home to a concoction of foreign NGO personnel and profit leeches and just lost souls plopped into a battlefield country that is heating up fast. Outside Le Monde's high walls is the danger of kidnapping and the medieval art of beheading and who knows what nasty threats, so we hunker down behind the walls and inside whiskey bottles and blabber about women in bikinis. It’s this miserable quarantined existence that has made dinner our high point of the day, and our Australian chef a deity. It is rumored that the man can walk on his split pea soup.
To give you a hint of how perverse life is here, last weekend the younger French banker returned from the outside world with the startling news that he discovered a new bar in Kabul that was “loaded with women.” What percentage were women, the Mexican immediately drooled. “Oh, I say maybe 20 percent.” Only in Kabul -- where local ladies are hogtied in Muslim closets and Western women are rarer than a hot tamale in Germany -- is four males to one female considered excitement for the males.
On one side of the long dinning room table is an Irishman and a German who install security systems, only two days ago they arrived from Iraq to work on the Norwegian Embassy. They offered no encouragement about the social life in Iraq. There are two French bankers who distribute micro-loads to Afghan farmers, and there is an Internet Journalist, me, slapping a humongous pile of mash potatoes on his plate, and now his shirt.
On the other side of the table is the American documentary film maker who’s working on a project about Afghanistan drugs and an American death, and a Mexican writing a report for a NGO -- he is rumored to have a half dozen passports, "just in case" -- and a lanky Texan working for an American security firm. Actually, he is working to insure the grass in our garden remains free of enemy weeds -- even in the middle of the night. The Australian chef, who whips up our scrumptious delicious meals, bounces in and out, eventually settling in a vacant chair, waiting to hear our roaring endorsement of his latest masterpiece.
But tonight’s talk is skipping the bikini clad women and how great the grass looks in the garden, tonight the discussion is about the bombing.
In Kabul on the Jalalabad Road, where there are several US and NATO military bases, a car detonated barely after passing a military convoy that was headed in the opposite direction. Three people were killed and twenty-six were wounded, all Afghans.
The thinking at the table goes like this. The bomber was a total screw up and fumbled with the mechanism while passing the convoy, so he missed his target. An opposing view says he wasn’t a suicide bomber at all, but was simply paid to deliver the car or maybe a package in the car while the bad guys detonated the explosives via remote control. A third view says the driver was stoned on opium since most drivers in Kabul are -- hey, this is the superpower of opium production. A fourth view says pass the mash potatoes.
It’s hard to know the truth when all that is left are a few body parts.
Kabul is a nervous city, not sure if that has anything to do with the opium production. It is a nervous city that planted under a large apple tree with a ton of rotting apples. Everyone knows the apples are going to fall, but no one knows when. Well, except Bruno.
The rotting apples must drop because the Taliban is coming to Kabul and the Taliban likes to shake trees. It has something to do with god and country, and something to do with living the 12 century in the 21 century. Whatever, the Taliban are real tree shakers.
1) Taliban Grows Stronger
The Taliban is growing more powerful and deadly. “34 die as Afghanistan fighting intensifies,” reads an AP headline today. How about this one from UPI: "Fresh clash in Afghanistan kills 80." In the last month there has been a stream of reports conforming the Taliban is moving from strictly small unit attacks to medium attack forces of 100 or more fighters.
Ousted from power in 2001, the defeated Islamic fundamentals have used the intervening years to regroup and re-strategize their return to power. Presenting focusing on their stronghold in the south of Afghanistan, where four provinces are largely under their control, the Taliban will soon be striking in the capital. Destabilizing Kabul is an essential part of their plan to regain control of the country.
2) Iraq the Teacher
The war in Iraq has been an excellent laboratory and the Taliban has been paying close attention. Suicide bombers have never been part of the Afghan war fighting strategy, which has been irregular and guerrilla warfare with shifting alliances if not constantly shifting alliances. As the anti-government fighters in Iraq neutralized the government and stymied US forces, an important lesson was brought home to the Taliban: terror undermines the authority of a central government which benefits the anti-government forces.
This does not mean that the Taliban with be as indiscriminate in their destruction as the Iraqi insurgents, it may very well focus on only military assets and personnel. But there is no doubt that there will be a bombing campaign to terrorize the populace and reduce the credibility of the Kabul government.
3) Counter-Strategy? Forget it!
The Europeans are assuming control of the military/reconstruction campaign in Afghanistan, promising to use the carrot of reconstruction more than the obtuse Americans who rely on the stick of smashing insurgents. But carrots have not been shown to halt crazed suicide bombers and gruesome attacks. NATO says the Afghan military will stop the crazies, yet there is a long history of local forces refusing to fight (at least effectively) when foreign troops are available to do the fighting.
The strategy to prohibit the spiral of violence in Afghanistan is the same old ideas that have failed for more than a half century. And the post-war analysis will blame the politicians, the media, and the public before it gets around to promising that next time the military will deploy this old strategy better. Sure.
Because of the growing strength of the Afghanistan Islamic radicals, because of the effectiveness of terror bombing in Iraq, because of the West’s inability to devise an effective strategy to counter the effectiveness of radicals' terror bombing, the apples are about to come crashing down in Kabul. There is going to be lots of applesauce on the roads of Kabul.
Listen to Le Monde's esteemed Mexican economist, working on a reconstruction project here, although intoxicated he is still able to speak the truth:
"They’re coming after us," Abelardo slurs as he struggles to rise from the dinner table. "I don't want them to get my tennis racket."
A few of us stumble from the dinning room to the living room, turning on the television to watch BBC, which is supposedly airing a report on the bombing. We are somewhat attentive because we know the report will be short. This is “the other war” and “other wars” merit only short media coverage. That will change as more apples fall.
"Tomorrow will be OK," Bruno reassures us. "But end of week, maybe Friday" -- he does not finish his sentence. There is no need.
Stewart Nusbaumer is editor of Intervention Magazine and is now based in Kabul, Afghanistan. Email to: [email protected]
