Afghanistan

Bamiyan – The De-Miners

Our job is to clean up the area for your safety, Sir! This is the life of those people, who risk their life, to find mines and unexploded materials around the Great Buddha statues of Bamiyan. They are those in uniform with Farsi letters: Main Paki, and English writing: De-mining. They are the de-miners working in Bamiyan. The encounter the day before with Saboor and Jamil brought me to learn deeper about the life of the de-miners. Achmad Saboor, a Tajik driver from Panjshir, picked me up to see their work around the Buddha hills. In that car I knew Waisuddin, or Wais, a Pashtun man in his thirties, with very strong short body. He was bearded but it seemed that was just trimmed, he also speaks very good English. Wais is among the most important persons in this demining project of Bamiyan Buddha. I was lucky to know him personally. And he was happy that he could practise his English with me. He is the commander of MCPA (Mine Clearance Planning Agency). The previously introduced Achmad [read more]

June 21, 2006 // 0 Comments

Bamyan – A Day in Bamyan

A happy day in Bamiyan From a tailor in the second floor of a wooden simple building in the bazaar of Sharh-e-Nao, I heard an interesting story from a man named Ramazan. When I told him where I came from, he said, “ooo Indonesia,” then he named some Indonesian islands: Java, Bali, Roti. He suprised me in two ways. First, it was already surprising that an Afghan in this little village of Central Afghanistan, where some people still thought that Indonesia was somewhere near London. The second thing was Roti. Roti is a small island, with such far flung location even most of Indonesians don’t know whee it is exactly. So how Ramazan knew about Roti? There is an interesting story behind this. In fact he had lived in Roti for fourteen months between 2001 and 2002. Besides Roti, he has been to Jakarta and Bali also, and attempted to get into Australia by risking his life on boat with other 240 fellow refugees, trying to get a new better life in ‘modern’ [read more]

June 20, 2006 // 0 Comments

Bamiyan – Hiding?

Behind all the politeness and sweet promises, who really knows what they are actually thinking about? Early in the morning Hadi told me that suddenly his wife from Kabul had called and that he had to go back to Kabul to do ‘something’ at his house. He used that gesture that he meant his wife did really need him for the nights, as he had not been home for 25 days. I asked for how long he would be there in Kabul, he said for a week or 10 days. Yesterday there was someone from an NGO in Bamiyan offering me to go to the villages of the province after a week. I asked Hadi whether it was OK to stay in his office during the waiting time, he was trying to convince me that the activities of the NGO had nothing to do with my work (how he knew?), but then he said that it was no problem at all. But suddenly early this morning he said that he had to go to Kabul for 10 days, leaving completely his office and locked the news room, which is for me was just an excuse to ask me to leave. [read more]

June 19, 2006 // 0 Comments

Bamiyan – The Mined Buddha

War and Peace. This is the first impression of Bamiyan Buddha I saw back in 2003 This is still re-visiting trips of what I have visited three years ago. The devastated Buddha statues of Bamiyan are still quiet empty niches on the hill surrounded by green farming land. It was extremely quiet this morning, as children were already in the school and men started working. No other obvious ‘tourists’. But it was not that quiet either. This time there were many workers working in the area. There were two groups of them. First, those with yellow helmet, working near the big niches of the Big Buddha (55 m) and further on the Small Buddha (38 m). The Buddha niches are both fenced now, requesting visitors to pay for ticket to enter (I don’t know exactly about the ticket stuff as it seems it was OK to wander around without ticket, and the ticket office was always closed). Actually the workers just started working today. Their task is to remove the rubbish stones from the area. A [read more]

June 18, 2006 // 4 Comments

Bamiyan – Three Years After

Radio Bamiyan In July 2003 I visited the valley of Bamiyan for the first time. Along the way, there were war remnants to remind all visitors that the land was scrapped by the long period of wars. The trip in 2003 was full of horror and mistery, when seeing the skeletons of tanks scattered on the side of dusty and windy roads. Today, almost three years after, I went to Bamiyan again, alone. The public transport, as what it was in three years ago, started very early in the morning from Kabul. The difficulty of travelling from Kabul is that there are too many bus stations, and each bus station only has vehicles to go to a certain destination. Therefore it’s essential to make sure from which station start the vehicle you are going to take. The other difficulty is that the timing, most buses in three years ago would be all departed after 6, so passengers should come around 4 or 5 in the morning. The problem is if the bus station located far from the residential area, then another [read more]

June 17, 2006 // 0 Comments

Kabul – Newsroom Experience

Working in the newsroom Pajhwok Afghan News Agency is the biggest news agency in Afghanistan. I was lucky that I was introduced by a journalist friend of mine to the director of this company. And starting from today I experienced the life in the newsroom. The news of the office came out online and updated in minute basis. The subscription fee might be still high for Afghan standard, up to 200 dollars for big companies, NGOs, and embassies. The website of the news agency is http://www.pajhwok.com, and provides services in Farsi, Pashto, and English. The director, Mr Danish, is a friendly man, and he provided me some books that I might read before deciding to wander around the country. He even promised some assistance from different parts of the country as the News Agency has several local offices in many cities of Afghanistan. Discussing about the photos Mr. Danish requested me to come to the office early to meet with the photographer of the office. They only have one photographer in [read more]

June 12, 2006 // 2 Comments

Kabul – The Long Way to Afghanistan

Let’s go to Afghanistan! The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is described by the Durand Line which devided the land of Pashtuns, the Pashtunistan, to two different countries. The Pashtuns in the Pakistan side, according to the agreement of the government and the tribal leaders, were given special autonomy to preserve their tribal culture until nowadays. The tribals have their own law, and Pakistani law barely has any effect on them. These tribal areas in the NWFP border province had been given agencies status, and are under control of Politcal Agent. The agencies of NWFP province are notorious of being troublesome. Waziristan is always on the top of ‘the place you likely want to visit’ among Pakistanis, and completely closed to foreigners. Not only once I read news about mission of Pakistani armies there in Waziristan, about terrorists (probably included mis-hit civilians) being killed, and about propaganda against foreigners who were accused by the [read more]

June 9, 2006 // 0 Comments

Peshawar – Village Experience

June 6, 2006 Walled houses of the Pashtuns. Behind the concrete walls, nobody knows what is hidden there. Ziarat Gul (not real name) is a young boy of 19 years old taking computer education in Peshawar whom I met two months ago incidentally in an Internet Cafe in University Town area. I was in Internet Cafe, and he sat next to me. He kept staring at me and asking me questions this and that, that I couldnt even concentrate of using the connection. Then my Malaysian female friend came to the Cafe. The boy’s attention turned to the girl, and he kept asking me questions about my Malaysian friend. I didnt answer so much as I was annoyed. Later I found that he was desperate about girls with Chinese appearance. But at least he didnt show any intention of interested at me sexually, so I accepted his invitation to visit his village and gave him my mobile number. The chance to go to his village just came yesterday, two months after the invitation. I met him again in the same place, and he [read more]

June 6, 2006 // 3 Comments

Peshawar – Sexual Innuendo (Again???)

June 6, 2006 Man-to-man body contact is very normal here I was looking for a cheap transport to go to Khyber Pass, as foreigners are not allowed to take the public transports. So a friend of mine introduced me to a travel guide. The travel guide was very friendly, visiting me to my hotel almost every night and yesterday took me to his office. It was night. He said, “Dont worry, you are my friend, I will give you cheap price…” bla bla bla. It didnt matter for me. He liked to touch my shoulder which is for me OK, but in his office he tried to rub my ear, then I thought I should keep the distance. When he took me back to my hotel with a taxi, he even gave me a chain of flower. Not until 3 minutes, I was already in the hotel, climbing the stairs to my room. Two guys, one fat one slim, both in shalwar qameez, both moustached, started to stare me and kept following me. They wanted to chat with me but they didnt speak Urdu well, only Pashto. From what I understood, they [read more]

June 6, 2006 // 1 Comment

Peshawar – Permit to Afghanistan

June 6, 2006 Bodyguards of Afghan consulate in Peshawar Three years ago, July 17, 2003 exactly, I was applying for the permit to pass thru Khyber Pass to go to Afghanistan. This is one of the essential procedure for foreigners to get to Afghanistan by land ‘legally’, as those areas bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan are all tribal controlled areas. I was with my travel companion, Adam from England, in the Home Department Office to apply for the permit for both of us. The Home Department didnt allow anybody to bring camera inside the office. I guessed maybe because that the office was too filthy. At the third floor we saw that the floor was flooded by water, leaking from cooler machine apparently. The rooms were all dark, with water on the floor, thousands of papers every here and there, … But something more embarassing about the office that we experienced. First we were directed to go to the third floor where we were supposed to get the form. The old man in charge, [read more]

June 6, 2006 // 3 Comments

Peshawar – Afghanistan Miayam

The guys in Afghan consulate in Peshawar My trip in Pakistan is about to finish, the six months of time, seemingly long enough, is still not enough for me to visit even all of the provinces of Pakistan. And I still feel very hard to leave this country in very near future. But the journey has to go on, and the next trip is Afghanistan. Afghanistan Miiayam, in Farsi means Afghanistan, I’m coming. I have got the visa easily from its consulate in Peshawar. It cost 1$ per day, and I applied for three month visa which cost me 90$. Mr Rasuli, the visa officer, said that the visa started from the date of issue, but it seems that after confirmation with other traveller, the visa started from the date of entry and not the date of issue. I think that there is even miscoordination between the government and the visa officer of the country. I picked my visa at 3 pm. There were to Afghans sitting, also waiting for their passports. One of them thought I was from Afghan (I dressed in shalwar [read more]

June 5, 2006 // 2 Comments

Darra Adam Khel – The Gun Factories

April 16, 2006 They have known bullets and guns since childhood Darra Adam Khel is a village 38 kms south of Peshawar, on the way to Kohat. It looked like a normal village of Pakistan border, but somehow resemble Afghanistan villages also. It looked normal along the way: mud square houses, green field, boys wandering around, shops with their glass windows, and Pathans with their distinctive caps. But the name of Darra has something else to proud about, it’s the gun factory of Pakistan. The people in this area, if may say, all do the same business: gun making and selling. The factories are hidden in the rooms in the small alleys and bazaars, and gun shops are widely open. Pen-shapped pistols It’s obvious that this kind of place was not supposed for tourists to wander around. In fact, before the area was open for tourists, many tourist buses came here to visit the gun shops and ‘check’ the local made AK-47, guns, snippers, pistols, etc etc. Since Benazir Bhutto [read more]

April 16, 2006 // 1 Comment

Peshawar – Smuggler Bazaar

April 13, 2006 Refugees children Karkhana Bazaar, or smuggler bazaar, was quite among the most famous time in Peshawar memorabilia, due to its proximity with its infamous border, Afghanistan. But the smuggler bazaar today is no more than row of shops selling daily needs. It was Friday anyway, so the shops were closed. And we were there to buy beauty cosmetics… sigh. The bus we took to smuggler bazaar threw us away two kilometers before the place. But it was good. I had the chance to observe some children working along the river collecting garbage. The garbage collectors, mostly children in the Asia subcontinent, are among the most distinctive life of the grass root of the countries. The children, boys and girls, were happy with photographs. Some even posing with their meaningful garbage sack. Many children end up as garbage pickers Not far from there was the Afghan refugee’s camp. It was a very condensed shanty town, but now, the Pakistani government had given them the [read more]

April 13, 2006 // 0 Comments

Peshawar – Afghan Consulate

With guys in Afghan consulate April 13, 2006 Lamli, my Malaysian friend, is prepared to go to Afghanistan. She got the Afghan visa already, quite easily, she said. I thought it should not be a bad idea also to get one before I got back to Pindi. Her visa is for two months, 60 dollars. Afghan visa is like a ticket, for a month it is 30 dollars, for 2 it is 60 dollars. You can buy any number of duration of stay, and the price is 30 dollars per month. The visa procedure is easy and straightforward. Today is Thursday, and Afghan embassy is supposed to open. The consulate stated that it only accepted visa application on Tuesday and Thursday, but apparently it worked everyday. I went early to the consulate, got the application and filled it. When waiting for the interview, there was a fat bodyguard staring at me for quite long time. Then his first sentence, instead of a salaam greeting, was: “kukukukukakakakakikiki….” Three years ago, in 2003, I came to this consulate to [read more]

April 13, 2006 // 0 Comments

Rawalpindi – Cantontment?

I never expected that it’s very difficult to find a place to stay in this city Imperial Hotel, Muree Road, Rawalpindi 400Rs/double bed room After the 5 hour bus journey from Lahore to Islamabad, and long taxi drive to Saddar Bazaar in Rawalpindi, I was really resent by the hotel owner who refused me to stay in his hotel. Saddar Bazaar is the place for the budget hotels in Rawalpindi, where 2 years ago I used to stay. Today, they refused to accept me as their guest, as there is a stamp ‘Visa not Valid for Cannt Area’ on my visa page. I didnt realize what the meaning of the small stamp on my visa before today. The feeling of being refused in a hotel was very bad. I can imagine the same feeling of people being refused to enter a certain country despite of possessing the valid visa. And I felt disappointed, badly treated, being looked as second class man, etc. Cantontment is military area, which sometimes also include residential and bazaar area, as in this example [read more]

December 17, 2005 // 0 Comments

时尚旅游（2005）：惊出阿富汗

她在轻轻呼唤，声音微弱而深沉，穿过蓝色面纱，震颤着听者的心灵。我知道，那后面一定藏着美丽的双眸，终日凝望，满怀憧憬, 那是一张略施粉黛的白色面庞。我注视着她，用同样轻柔的声音说：“请让我掀起你的盖头……”这段旅程是由一个梦想开启的，这个去揭开阿富汗神秘面纱的梦想，初时只是出现在我的幻想中。但正是这个梦想，引领我穿过巴基斯坦，将我带到了几千公里外的阿富汗，去窥探它的神秘面庞，欣赏它美丽的容颜，并舔舐它两颊上流淌的泪水。

November 20, 2005 // 0 Comments

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