Hearing the voices in Afghanistan

There was an article in the New York Times this past week about war correspondents in Afghanistan.  Within the article, Richard Engel from NBC said, "It's like the Baghdad class of 2003 is now the Kabul class of 2009."  The point being that the journalists who cover conflict zones basically moved from Iraq to Kabul starting in 2007.  The greater implication of the headline is that the war in Afghanistan is now the war that matters, and that Afghanistan, which looked like the fairer cousin back in 2006, is really more the ugly stepmother.  The truth is that Afghanistan was always only rosy in comparison to the “Fiasco” (adopted from title of Tomas Ricks’ book on the subject) that was Iraq.  In 2006 most of the serious media was paying attention to the violence in Iraq, and ignoring the growing chorus of discontent coming from the other theater.

In 2006, I was in Afghanistan with Mitch Koss.  Mitch and I had been having lengthy discussions on how we both thought Afghanistan was on the precipice.  Mitch -- who had been to Afghanistan in the early early days with Lisa Ling -- knew how difficult it was to make forward progress there.  I was also an Afghan veteran and was writing my masters thesis at the time on the escalation of the poppy problem in the country.  We both were keenly aware that Afghanistan was a success only in comparison to Iraq.



What we found on that journey were precursors of all the issues that are manifesting in Afghanistan today.  The security situation was really beginning to plummet.  We missed by just a few minutes a friendly fire incident between the US Army and the Afghan police.   We observed growing dissatisfaction among the populace about the lack of progress in development and the economy.  We saw the impotent reach of the government outside of a small radius beyond Kabul.  Shortly after we left, our hotel was attacked by RPGs and machine guns. Perhaps most interestingly considering today's headlines, we heard over and over again from Afghanis who were unhappy with Hamid Karzai. At the time, the media and the administration were heralding Karzai as the savior of Afghanistan, able to hold all these coalitions and factions together.  But on the streets, in the meat markets and the tea shops, we heard differently.  One of the final moments in our piece “Fear of Spring” ends with a random voice in the crowd yelling “Fuck Karzai.”  Well, now its 2009 and the world is finally starting to hear the voices in the crowd in Afghanistan.