# Posted 5:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE FROM OXBLOG'S AFGHANISTAN CORRESPONDENT:

[When last we left our intrepid Afghan adventurer, he was struggling valiantly against evil customs officials, who would not permit him to bring accompanists beyond the waiting area, or even to have gases and passions inside his handbag...]

Wednesday: Observations and Negotiations

We got an early start out of Kunduz. The plan had been to drive south all morning, stopping off at various orchards and demonstration fields along the way. In the afternoon, we planned to head northwest as far as Samangan town, check out some almond groves in that area, and then either crash there or head back to the minor city of Pul-e-Khumre for the night. But our Deputy Head hadn't enjoyed our sparing accommodations in Kunduz, and decided that we would drive all the way to Mazar-e-Sharif that evening (two or three extra hours) in order to be guaranteed air-conditioned rooms and comfortable beds.

We didn't immediately inform our team of shooters of the change in plans when they rejoined us -- I guess we figured that if the shooters decided Mazar was out of the question, we would at least have their protection for the morning. Unfortunately, because our bodyguards didn't realize that the distance we'd be traveling had significantly increased, they decided to set a nice, relaxed pace for our convoy of SUVs. After twenty minutes, the Deputy Head pulled up next to us, rolled down the window, and yelled, "We'll never make Mazar at this rate! You guys take the lead!" Glad to oblige, our driver Ainodeen floored it past our surprised-looking security escort. As before, the shooters kept to their comfortable 60 kmph and soon fell out of sight behind us.

We drove for the next several hours through the fertile provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan, following the main river valleys through a succession of bustling market towns. The steep row of hills separating the provinces was speckled with hundreds of wild pistachio trees. Mohibi explained that the hilltop trees were common property, and right now dozens of Afghan soldiers were up there protecting the unripe pistachios. In a few weeks, when the nuts ripened, the hills would be opened to all comers, to pick as many as they could carry away. One California consultant shook his head and commented on this highly unprofitable use of agricultural resources. Mohibi didn't hear him; he was explaining with enthusiasm that once, long ago, he had served in the Afghan army as a pistachio guard himself. Back then, before the Soviet invasion, that sort of thing was one of the army's primary functions.

The war has left its marks everywhere, of course. Near Kunduz, a joker with a can of white spray paint had written "No Parking: Tow Zone" in English on a derelict tank that had been halfway hauled off the road. Over the following two days, we passed more old Soviet military hardware than I could list, rusting away on the roadside or flipped over halfway down a ravine. Frankly, after driving from Mazar to Kabul, I find it astonishing that the Russian Army has any tanks left. The typical speed bump in Kunduz, Baghlan, and Samangan is a tank tread, unrolled across the highway and reinforced with asphalt. (It can chew the heck out of your tires if you're not careful). Graves are the other strikingly common roadside sight -- typically a pole sprouting from a heap of stones, strung with green or black flags and streamers. Below the flags, there are usually wordless slate slabs at the head and foot of the mound. A few graves have white marble headstones with elaborate inscriptions.

Late in the morning, we pulled into the town of Baghlan, to check out a sugar factory that has been out of commission for over a decade but painstakingly maintained by the local government. The old Czechoslovak sugar beet processing machinery was dusty but not corroded; there were only a couple bullet holes here and there; and the caretaker was re-cutting glass for the broken window panes when we made our surprise visit. A fleet of Soviet cargo trucks were rusting away in the yard… plus, of course, a couple tanks.

We could get the place working again -- whether it would ever be profitable is another question. Part of the problem with Afghanistan is that it's surrounded by countries producing most of its potential exports at lower cost. Cotton? Hard to beat Uzbekistan (even if US cotton producers would allow USAID to assist the Afghan cotton sector). Textiles? Pakistan has too much riding on that market -- they'd slap on an enormous tariff or threaten to close off the border, if by some miracle Afghan textiles neared competitive advantage. Fresh fruit and produce? Not unless we can get quality up to the level of the Arab countries and Iran. Raisins and almonds? Maybe. Afghanistan used to supply more than half of the European dried fruit market. But quality standards have gone up in the EU while crashing in Afghanistan. Opium? Now we're talking -- Afghan intensive cropping practices have allowed them to get almost four times the yield per hectare of their closest competitor on the poppy market, Myanmar. And the Afghans are sticking with what they do well.

But I digress. The shooters showed up while we were breakfasting on fatty kebab, naan, and yogurt. At this point, we explained that our group was heading to Mazar for the evening; that we understood the security company hadn't planned for this extension of the trip; and that we were willing to pay for extra petrol if they needed it. The shooters pushed back their sunglasses to stare at us incredulously, conferred together for a moment, then said that the extra petrol would cost $50. This seemed just a tad steep, but they were the ones with the automatic weapons, so we accepted our weak bargaining position and shelled out.

They looked at the money, conferred again, and then asked, "But what will we put in our stomachs?" Mohibi grumbled (in English) that they could put the extra bloody petrol in their stomachs, since their boss had certainly given them enough money for food and lodging. We tried to convince them to just head back to Kabul and take the $50 as a don't-shoot-us-please fee, but they didn't like the thought of facing their boss if they returned a day early. In the end, the Deputy Head paid them another $50 for food, lodging, and "damn well keeping up with us wherever we decide to drive for the next two days." Curiously, the shooters no longer seemed to have any trouble matching our speed.

As we drove that day, I was struck by the near-total absence of female faces in public. In Kabul, as I mentioned last fall, roughly half the women I see on the street are in burqas, and the other half wear headscarves. In Kunduz and the countryside around it, the burqa is all but universal. Over two days of watching, only in Mazar city and in the town of Hairatan right on the Uzbek border did I see the face of a woman over fourteen or so. (We did see plenty of younger girls -- the good people of Kunduz, Baghlan, and Balkh seem to be sending their daughters to school in droves, which is encouraging. Everywhere we drove, we passed swarms of schoolgirls in black uniforms and gauzy white headscarves).

I asked Ainodeen to what extent this near-universal veiling was a legacy of the Taliban. He said that rural Afghans had always kept to a strict modesty code, and that ten, twenty, or thirty years ago if we'd been driving the same road we would have seen the same proportion of veiled women. The Taliban imposed all kinds of stifling, unpopular rules that were purely derived from their interpretation of the Qur'an: no music, no kite-flying, no sports. Those little textual tyrannies are why so few Afghans remember the Taliban with any fondness today. But in some cases (the burqa, restrictions on the travel of women) they also formalized long-standing rural norms, which continue to be socially enforced among the majority of Afghans who live outside Westernizing urban areas. The persistence of the burqa isn't an indicator of support for Taliban ideology; by the same token, no one should expect that the ouster of the Taliban has brought rural Afghanistan any closer to accepting Western gender values.

I don't mean to suggest that these deep-rooted restrictions on women's dress and movement persist on "cultural" steam alone, or that they exist unopposed in rural areas. Especially in villages close to the capital, many women state that they would gladly swap the burqa for the less confining headscarf if only they lived in Kabul. (Hopefully, a lot of those schoolgirls I saw on the road in the north will grow up feeling similarly). It takes a great deal of pressure to keep these women under wraps -- and the pressure isn't just exerted by family, neighbors, and the local mullah, but by governors and local militias.

Take as an example idyllic Paghman, a verdant, mountainous district where the Kabulis like to take their picnics. It's currently dominated by the militia of Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, a butcher and torturer who wrecked a good fraction of Kabul during the mujahidin era (and is now allied to the most powerful bloc in the U.S.-supported government). Sayyaf's gunmen on the one hand enforce a strict "Islamic" dress code, and on the other hand perpetrate much of the banditry, kidnapping, and rape that is held to necessitate that code. The burqa and other restrictions have traditionally been justified on the grounds that they protect women; like many protection rackets, the "protection" and the threat increasingly stem from the same sources.

But at least it's now possible to discuss gender issues a little more openly, and most departments of the central government are supportive. By contrast... well, my co-worker Mumtaz has a great story from his days in the late 90s as a translator with the UN. He accompanied a UN delegation to the new Taliban government to negotiate the conditions for UNICEF, UNHCR, and other groups to continue work in Afghanistan.

The Taliban Minister of Planning began their first meeting by leaning over the table and pointing straight at Mumtaz. "We are willing to talk about these aid programs. But tell them that if they so much as mention gender, I will f--- their mothers," he said with ferocious emphasis. "Translate!"

Mumtaz nodded gravely, turned to the UN staff, and said, "He says you are under no circumstances to mention gender. He will not hear of it." The UN staff nodded gravely, and Mumtaz turned back to their host. "Did you tell them?" insisted the Minister. "Did you tell them that I would f--- their mothers?"

"Of course," said Mumtaz, unflappable. "They do not look shocked," said the Taleb dubiously. Mumtaz shrugged, raised his palms in a helpless gesture. "They are Westerners. They do not mind such things."

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