Living with terror, not in terror

A week ago on Sunday, Taliban forces were able to hold parts of the central city of Kabul hostage from about 1 PM until some time the next morning. Eventually the Afghan Army, with some support from NATO, killed most of the fighters who’d been firing from buildings near the Parliament and other prominent offices. Civilian deaths occurred, but could have been far greater according to the western press.  The intelligence failure has been explained away by pointing out the instances in which intelligence has prevented attacks. NATO’s plan to prepare a national force capable of protecting national and international institutions appeared to be working.

From inside some of the thousands of compounds in Kabul where the sounds of attacks and counter-attacks echoed, the mood was different. Family returning home reported seeing dead bodies in the street. A young woman was frustrated to find that her bank was not open that day due to “computer problems.” Upon returning home, she learned that minutes after her leaving the bank, attackers were using it to fire from. She’d escaped harm by minutes.

The power was off. The night was filled with the sound of missles. Fear traveled from friend to friend by cell. What would the morning bring? My friend awoke five times in the night sure the Taliban would be in control again by sunrise.

We spoke two days later. She brought up books she’s reading, progress and setbacks with university applications, and my post on the Amish. Only after these did we get to Sunday’s hours of terror. “This time was different,” she said. It was more threatening because the Taliban were firing on the most important buildings and called this just the beginning.

A young person is studying and building her future while her country trembles under her feet. Being female, with an overthrow of the national government, she will lose all she has worked for. As a member of the minority Muslim faith in Afghanistan, the minority prosecuted, hunted down and murdered by the Taliban in the 1990’s, she knows she could witness this and lose her life. Yet, it does not consume her. Her work continues, her studies, her plans. Her dreams may splinter apart in nightmare, but my friend is the same bright, hopeful, hard-working individual she has always been.

Beyond the Fire of Burning Symbols

A college-age student friend in Kabul and I discussed the protests after word got out of smoldering Qurans at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. With our different news sources, we couldn’t agree on why this had happened, only that it had. The student was certain NATO forces had intentionally burned them and had intended for Afghans to discover their holy books in the trash. I’d gathered that both the burning and the discovery were more a failure in judgment. The student had heard nothing of the use of Qurans by prisoners to send messages.

We turned to the protests plaguing the country. This friend experiences how they worsen security and speculates this as a motive for the burning.

“This is really stupid!” my friend declared.

“The burning?” I asked to be certain that was her point.

“No, no, Afghan protests. Six have been killed and thirty wounded. Three already dead today. The dead leave their families without a breadwinner, and that is very hard here.”

An Afghan who believed foreign forces had deliberately insulted Afghans, perhaps to set off violent protests, and yet who was more disturbed by the Afghan response. Why?

“Quran means human,” the student continued. “Quran is in your heart, not in a book. Mohammed taught that books are not Islam; I am Islam. “

What about flag burning? My friend reminded me burning the American flag is part of Iranians’ annual celebration of their Revolution. “This doesn’t affect my country one way or the other,” I suggest. My friend relays a family saying about such activities: “It may destroy the donkey’s saddle, but leaves the donkey untouched.”

We share a smile, and, inside our hearts and minds, we hold our deepest values safe from the masses that react impulsively and violently around us.

Intercontinental Hotel, Kabul

The attack on the Intercontinental Hotel Tuesday night by 8 Taliban members who slipped through security checkpoints on the road leading up the hill to the hotel’s main entrance remind me how fortunate I was to be there in 1970. I’d been in Afghanistan for  a year and a half as a Peace Corps volunteer working on smallpox vaccinating teams in the remote areas of the country. Trips into Kabul were my R&R including meals in Afghan restaurants, an old American movie at the downtown theater sometimes, and partying with other PCVs. The enormous-looking hotel seemed like an aberration at first, an intrusion into the ancient world still so intact.

But there were advantages. Experienced travelers my parents’ age came through that spring on a trip to India and Pakistan. I shared my love of Afghan culture and people for the few days of their visit. They came because Kabul now had a hotel approved by their tour company. The day I dropped in on them there, I’m reminded, I gazed longingly at the modern bath and was invited to fill the tub and soak as long as I wished. I don’t recall the luxury of this, but know there was no working indoor plumbing where I’d lived in Kunduz and Puli-kumri north of Kabul and a real scarcity of water where I stayed in Kabul. One of our Peace Corps group says her solution to this in the fourth rate hotels we used when in Kabul was to bathe in a pot of tea, an item readily available.

A Peace Corps friend reminded me this week that The Intercontinental for him was a place to go for ice cream when he came up from Jalalabad. Some of the help spoke English, and some comforts of The West had made their way to a “city that was called a city, but was not a city.” (Lynn LaFroth, PCV 1969-1970) How lucky we were to be there before the terror and violence of a night raid by Afghans on their countrymen who too sought the comfort a luxury hotel for an evening or so with family and friends.