A different game entirely

After a day and a half in Dubai waiting to get my visa processed I was finally on my way to Afghanistan. I don’t know what I expected but I was surprised at the people that were boarding the flight. For one it was packed (who the hell is going to Afghanistan these days?) and there were lots of westerners. Among them were: your standard looking missionary types, complete with children in tow, God help them; then there were some gruff looking dudes in their 20s or 30s that looked to be either military or ex-military now working as ‘security contractors’ - less politely called mercenaries; and there was a smattering of well dressed men in their 50s and 60s that I took to be either diplomatic types or executives in contracting firms that are working on the big infrastructure projects in the country.

The flight from Dubai to Kabul was 2 ½ hours and uneventful. As the plane dropped below the clouds on the approach to Kabul I got a good view of the landscape below. I couldn’t believe how mountainous this place is, I’ve heard about it, I’ve read about it but to see it is something totally different. We landed and I collected my bags without incident. I didn’t know it before but there were two colleagues from my agency’s headquarters with me on the flight. We all met as the agency driver collected us all from the arrival lobby.

The drive from the airport into Kabul was a bit surreal and I kind of wished that I had Christiane Armanpour sitting next to me to give a run down of what I was seeing. Kabul is an extremely dry and dusty place, and the part of the city that I was in didn’t have any paved roads or silly traffic lights that I noticed. What I did see were lots of guys with AK 47s – standing, sitting, just hanging out on a Friday afternoon with their automatic rifles. The driver pulled up to the guesthouse where we would be spending the night. The place had its own unique charm including a twelve foot security wall around the whole place, a solid metal gate that we knocked on as we stood on the non existent sidewalk. A guard pulled back a little slit in the gate, speakeasy style, and took a look at us before deciding whether or not to open the door on the gate. Once the door opened we were greeted by three other “rugged gentlemen of adventure” with AK47s slung over their shoulders. Once inside the place was actually pretty quaint in a war ravaged developing country kind of way.

All of the security briefings that I’ve read along with the people that I spoke to before getting here all said the same drill in terms of personal safety; always be aware of your surroundings, stay away from large crowds, avoid places where Westerners gather, vary your times and routes to places that you frequent. This was all stuff that I had heard and lived by while I lived in Indonesia for almost 5 years. It was that Indonesia experience that I used to convince myself that I was ready for the security situation in Afghanistan. You see Indonesia is the home of the militant islamist group Jemayah Islamiyah (JI) and those wacky boys from JI liked to occasionally blow shit up throughout the country – one to obviously promote their campaign to establish an Islamic Caliphate throughout southeast Asia, and secondly I just have to think was just to prove that they could do it despite the best efforts of the Indonesian security services to stop them. JI was responsible for the devastating Bali bombing in 2002, which occurred shortly before I moved to Indonesia, and killed over 200 innocent people. While I lived in Indonesia JI was responsible for bombing the following; the Marriot hotel in Jakarta, a KFC at the airport, an office of the World Food Programme, and the Australian Embassy – on this last point I have to think that anybody who has ever been stuck in a bar with a bunch of Australians would understand why somebody might be tempted to blow up their embassy.

So I thought about being able to live through all of this and come out fine and convinced myself that I was ready to make the step up to the big time and work in Afghanistan. When you strip away all of that “gee I just want to make a difference in the world” sentiment, being an aid worker is just like any other job in the sense that it’s all about “making your bones”. For lawyers it’s about winning that first big case, for investment bankers it’s working on that killer merger, for high school teachers it’s about having Fred McCray in your social studies class and yet somehow still remaining committed to teaching at year’s end. For aid workers it’s about managing ever larger projects with increasingly larger budgets, and reaching increasing levels of beneficiaries. The twist for aid workers that sets them apart from rational people in other professions that naturally seek increasing levels of responsibility in their careers is that aid workers want to do it / need to do it, at least for a while, in some of the most remote, underdeveloped, dangerous, and just generally fucked up places on earth. I imagine that only international news correspondents share this same perverse and macabre worldview that causes you to look at large scale natural disasters and armed conflicts as job opportunities. “Damn, I wonder if I can get in on that Burma flood emergency?” So here I am trying to firstly do some good and apply some hard earned expertise to this program, afterall this what I do and I think, maybe foolishly so, that I’m pretty good at it. But I’m also here to prove that I can do what I do in one of the toughest place on earth.

The security situation here is in the back of my mind, I’d be a liar to say otherwise. Historically, aid workers of all stripes were lumped in with members of the International Red Cross in the sense that they were considered neutral actors in countries and conflicts. That blanket of neutrality if you will allowed aid workers to move about in some seriously dangerous places around the world with only random and unorganized harassment to worry about. That was then, nowadays aid workers especially those working in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan are seen as legitimate combat targets just like Marines. Aid workers are being picked off by armed factions around the world at increasing rates. While I remind myself that every Afghan man with a long beard isn’t out to kidnap and kill me, God I wish that the ones that were wore buttons or t-shirts that said “I’m down with the jihad” or something to that effect, I'm already on guard and weary of people walking up to me starting conversations, much more so than I have ever been anywhere else in the world. While the rational side of me says that I need to be smart about being safe because jokes aside I really don’t want to get my head blown off. There is a part of me that is disappointed to have to look at every stranger through the lens of suspicion. Disappointed because I have been lucky enough to travel all over the world, and all over the world people have in one way or another gone out of their way to help me when they didn’t have to.

So I’ll work hard to keep my wits about me, and if some really nefarious looking dudes ever walk up to me and ask if I’m American, I’ll look ‘em straight in the eye and say “ Noooooo mahn, me from Jamaica!”