Thinking more about Afghan election theme song; keep coming back to "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" by the sainted Ramones:
You've got to pick up the pieces.
C'mon, sort your trash -
Better pull yourself back together;
Maybe you've got too much cash.
Better call, call the law.
When you gonna turn yourself in? Yeah,
You're a politician,
Don't become one of Hitler's children.
...
My brain is hangin' upside down,
And I need something to slow me down.
But then, that's pretty much the unofficial Afghan national anthem, no?
For no good reason other than sentimentality, here's a look back at the 2005 elections for Wolesi Jirga, shot around Kabul that September.
From the top:
1. Election official at the Ministry of Women's Affairs explains the dirty-finger identifier
2. Campaign posters bloom in Shar-e Naw
3. Journos Bashir Gwakh (baseball cap), and Kathy Santini (blue tablecloth), interview UN official at the polls
4. Woman voters leave polls in Qala-e Fatullah
5. Poster warning against various forms of misbehavior: intimidation, bribery, fraud, voting ...
(Photos by Jim Chiavelli)
Y'know how, when you're 14 and desperately in love, every song directly bears on your life? Well, I'm wicked old, as we say in Massachusetts, so I find myself blasting around listening to lyrics that all, somehow, bear on Afghanistan.
So, here's a bit of "Up the Wolves" by the Mountain Goats, called to my attention first by a recent episode of "The Walking Dead" (go on, haters, hate, but I'm an OZF - Original Zombie Fan - and once shook George Romero's hand) ...
"I'm gonna get myself in fighting trim,
Scope out every angle of unfair advantage.
I'm gonna bribe the officials, I'm gonna kill all the judges -
It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage."
Been changing jobs, catching up on ironing. Doesn't mean I love Kabul any less … or any more, come to that
So, two things today:
The Times' Carlotta Gall, longtime Af-Pak reporter, is arguing in a new book that the real enemy of peace is Pakistan. The Pak ISI are an interesting bunch -- I've written about the security-theater aspect of their ops earlier this year, but obviously it's the ones you don't see hassling naan bakers and smoking cigarettes in bazaars that'll get you. Gall talks about being roughed up in her hotel room by an ISI agent who clearly took a most unIslamic route to defending the Taliban from the horrors of being written about … Anyway, looking forward to the book release.
Professor Brian Glyn Williams has an essay on, of all places to be taken seriously, HuffPo, lauding the warlord Abdul Dostum. I presented to a grad class at Northeastern some years ago alongside Williams, and recall chatting with him about the Cult of the Blessed Massoud in Kabul ... He's been banging the Dostum drum since staying with the fella some years back, and in fairness, there's much from a Western perspective to recommend the guy (though allegedly drunken shoot-'em-ups while serving in the Karzai administration are kinda de trop) …
And speaking of gratuitousness, despite the merits of his argument, Williams does toss in an unnecessary shot at "Aryan Pashtuns," and conflates Pashtuns with Taliban, which has evoked a Pashtun counter-tweet offensive (old pal Malali Bashir, never afraid of a scrap, is right in there).
So: ISI entirely to blame for everything, Dostum good, Pashtuns wicked, Pashtuns offended… pretty much SSDD in the Af-Pak blogosphere.
While I'm thinking of the Beloved Massoud, here's a surreptitious snap from January, while our driver - gun-shy after encounters with private security and NDS in Kabul's many shoot-the-photographer zones - was hoarsely chanting "no photo no photo no photo …"
January 2014: Massoud Circle. He's got the whole world …
(Photo: Jim Chiavelli)
