FIX BAYONETS!

Day 252

I’ve gotten lazy and haven’t written for some time, so I guess I’d better get with it.

I got called to an urgent meeting back in early July, to observe as a different section discussed issues in the Province of Nuristan. Nuristan is up in sort of the upper right hand corner of the country, far enough up in the mountains that current roads only run North/South, along the valleys and rivers. That breaks the province into three areas that almost can’t communicate amongst themselves. The main issue was how to get enough police for the jobs that needed to be done, and how to get them paid. Pay systems here are somewhat sporadic, and it’s not unusual for police to not be paid for several months. When there aren’t enough police, the governors tend to fall back on tradition and simply recruit people into the Arbeki, or armed neighborhood watch. It’s not legal to pay the Arbeki from police funds, and the governors don’t have enough discretionary budget to make pay themselves, so it can become a problem. This is what happened here. The Governor needed police, so he recruited 400 Arbeki, after a promise from the President that they would be paid. Unfortunately, the Minister of Finance was never in on the deal, so they haven’t been paid. For the last eight months.

The partial solution is to enlist them into the police force, because then it’s legal to pay them. But, the eight months back pay isn’t going away. Hopefully, they’ll figure that part out.

It seems like this is one of the recurrent problems here. The President promises something, but doesn’t coordinate it with anyone, so nothing ever happens.

After the meeting, we went to lunch, where the interpreter regaled us with stories of how beautiful Nuristan is, with forests, mountains, etc. In the midst of all this, he swore that “Hairy people” live in the forests. ‘Course, he hasn’t seen them himself………….

Everyone knows about the terrible corruption here. (Through most of the third world, truth be told, corruption seems to be FAR more normal than honesty.) It’s not all that uncommon at home, either.

Our chaplain went down to one of the provinces for the dedication of a mosque, which one of our units had arranged to be refurbished. This is a much bigger thing than building a government center; mosques are central to a lot of the life in this country. Because of that, a fair number of important people had come to the dedication. The Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs, the Provincial Governor, the Deputy Commander of the nearby Afghan National Army Brigade, and others.

When they got there, our chaplain (the spiritual leader of all U.S. troops in the country) was not allowed to go into the building, apparently because of gender. She thought it was funny.

Not long after the official party had gone into the building, they sent a messenger back out to ask how much had been spent on the restoration.

The answer was, “$20,000″ The messenger went back in, then came back out with complaints.

The work was shoddy, even the paint job was poor. They felt that not even $5000 had actually been spent on the work. They wanted to know where the contractor was, and when he appeared, one of the police officers arrested him. Their attitude was, “You may steal from others, but don’t steal from the mosque!”

Day 255

The kites are flying again! Kites were a central theme in the book, ‘The Kite Runner’ but they were banned under the Taliban. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve started seeing more and more of them, mostly flimsy little things that look like they’re made out of Saran Wrap. All sorts of kids are flying them. Unfortunately, they’re flying them in all sorts of places. Like the middle of the street……….

The kids here are real entrepreneurs. They skip school to hang out near the camp gates, trying to sell trinkets. Maps, books, chewing gum, scarves, scorpions in little boxes, etc. Most of the small stuff is “One dollar!” One little kid this morning was trying to sell me gum while I waited for a ride back to the post from a meeting. He really hadn’t figured out the whole bargaining thing, though. When I refused to pay “One dollar!” for five sticks of gum, he immediately went to, “Two dollar!”

His buddy quickly picked up that I wasn’t going to buy a map, and started in on language lessons, which he tried to bill me for as our van pulled up.

The kids seem to mostly be pretty happy and healthy, and much cleaner than you might expect. But, there are beggars on the streets who really kind of tear at you.

The young women, with their babies, out in the hot sun for most of the day. Their clothes are ragged enough, and they are dirty enough, that it’s fairly certain they don’t go home to an easy chair at the end of the day.

The blind fellow on the way to our safe houses. A woman in a burkha takes him to his begging station in the street in the morning and he stands there all day with his hand out. He’s not just blind, his sockets are empty. I’m guessing he was punished for something by the Taliban, or, some sort of wound from the war. He doesn’t stand at the side of the road, he stands right in the middle, at the little concrete barriers that separate the lanes. And he stands there all day long.

The old woman sitting on the sidewalk as I approached the gate one day, with that same hopeless look that most of the real beggars have; that look that I’ve NEVER seen on a beggar in the States. I couldn’t just pass her by, she was certainly someone’s mother, and probably had no one left. Even so, you can give a little something, but you can’t make everything right, like you want to. It’s not possible to give something to everyone, there are just too many.