Brain Dumping

Like Chou En-Lai's alleged witticism about the French Revolution, it's too soon to say what I really picked up from Kabul and Lahore. And given that I'm an unreflective sort at the best of times -- for one thing, I'm not metallic and shiny, and for another, thinking requires a cigar or a pistol, and I have neither readily available at this time and place - this is admittedly just a rough go.

• In Kabul, most Afghans seem to assume some level of US military support will remain, despite Karzai's nonsense about the Bilateral Security Agreement. Given that the US set a firm deadline and then backed off a few times, Afghans - sensing weakness, like a child reaching for your beard or a cat jumping on your lap - have assimilated the public spit-fight and moved along. Construction seems to continue apace, people are shopping in shops (as much as ever they did), ANA and ANP line the roads and mostly keep them safe (save from the occasional IED and from cabbies, see previous post).

• That said, the Afghans who work/worked for ISAF have visions of Najibullah dancing in their heads. Najib had been president before the talibs rolled into K-town, and he wound up yanked from a UN compound and hanged from a light post, a certain appendage removed and currency jammed in his mouth. The US and most other national governments who sent troops to Afghanistan have some sort of visa program for the locals who worked as translators, etc. ISAF - the NATO-led force - is not a national government, and tells its Afghans: Sorry, chum, try the US or Germans. The US and Germans, etc., tell the translators: Sorry, chum, you didn't work for us, you worked for ISAF.

Being not only unreflective but profoundly atheistic, I don't find many things purely amoral. Las Vegas, certainly. Veal patties in place of veal cutlets. Throwing books in the trash. And playing this Simon-says game with Afghans who stuck their necks out, yes, for good hard coin, but also to bail out our butts, after we stumbled into the Hindu Kush with half a plan, too few boots and one eye on Baghdad.

I've been in touch with an old colleague who now works for John Kerry, who passed on my plaintive wails to the special representative for Af-Pak, who is not Richard Holbrooke and likely never will be. Bills have been filed. Editorials have been written, though mostly about the holdup in the US national visa program. But nothing's happening, except a bunch of Afghan men and women still in Kabul, and the provinces, hoping the US won't leave them to the tender mercies of fucking savages.

OK, more about this later, and probably endlessly. Don't get me started at a party, boy…

• In Pakistan, it's deeply amusing to find that the former coup leader/dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf is seen as a liberal, and has some well of support among the liberal-minded Pakistani elites. He opened up the media - Jesus, did he; TV is as bad as US cable, with all the shouting-head shows, and the newspapers have a higher ratio of opinion to news pages than any paper I've ever seen west of Suez - and forced the military to accept women. Paks of all stripes took it upon themselves to brag to us that there are women Air Force pilots; the two regular guards at the Wagah crossing were M4-toting women, small but tough-looking, like Gurkhas with long hair.

The mullahs don't like Musharraf, for these reasons and others. The Army isn't particularly fond of him, but appears to be backing him in his current treason trial drama because they don't like the precedent of an Army general being tried for seizing power and sacking judges, among other things. Some pro-democracy true believers want him jailed or hanged. Most average Pakistanis, though, seem to have moved on. The daily updates about his 'medical condition,' which may or may not preclude a trial and may or may not require him to go abroad for treatment - presumably never to return - are there, but perfunctory.

• I'd love to say the most significant difference between Afghanistan and Pakistan is the British colonial influence - after all, my grandfather was a Brit and briefly a Soldier of the King, though only in eastern Canada - but that seems unfair somehow. But leaving Kabul and arriving in Lahore one is struck with a sense of re-entering civilization. Good roads. Working (and obeyed) traffic signals. Greenery, oh God, in abundance. A semiserious tourism industry. Sanitation.

Pak needs democracy, yeah, but first it could use a 24-hour power system, and a little less of the comic-opera security (including the obsession with All Things Injia). It probably could use a good new partitioning, east from west, with the west given back to the Pashtuns (at a dinner party with a bunch of well-heeled, Western-educated Pakistanis, I heard some commentary abou the 'un-evolved' Pashtun culture) to sink in its own mire, the east to continue pursuing progress, trade, prosperity, hygiene, etc. But what do I know. I assumed the battle over Kashmir was about control of water systems; Pakistanis told me, with varying degrees of contempt, that it's about 'national pride.'

• That said, many Pakistanis - of my acquaintance, short- and long-term - are concerned about the mullahization of their culture. The call to prayer is blasted loudly from every mosque - loudspeakers, I'm told, used to be frowned upon but Musharraf, in a bid to appease critics, gave them license. Many women are unveiled but many more are taking to it, some out of religious revival, some out of excess of caution. Y'know, as my buddy O'B is fond of saying about his Albanian forebears, they learned quickly that the way to progress involves keeping the old-world stuff to the weekends.

• Dubai, oh dear, if there's a judgment day, you and everyone who enjoys you is going to answer for your being built squarely on the backs of exploited South Asian laborers. In the meantime, party on, dudes.

• I'd love to see more of Jordan someday than trinkets and bad cabs. But this hotel has a comfortable bed, lots of hot water and a locking door, my trifecta of hotel quality. As Karen noted, we've stayed in much worse places in the US. Kentucky and New Jersey, I'm looking at you.