Bad Situation, Pleasant Experience

As you may know from any of the news sources, the situation here in Afghanistan is tense these days. Parliamentary elections were held months ago; however, the election results were delayed pending investigations into fraud by both the international community and the Afghan government. Well, parliament was finally scheduled to begin on Jan 26; however (too many howevers associated with elections here), President Karzai delayed the sitting of the new Parlimentarians for another month until his investigation is completed. Some folks are claiming dictatorship, I do not have a position on that. The international community did push back on this delay decree and so did the people of Afghanistan. Given all this, the threat of explosions and attacks are pretty high inside Kabul right now. That's the bad situation.


The Pleasant Experience: The Deputy Director of Criminal Investigations (first on right) for the country of Afghanistan asked me to his office the other day, immediately. I had a lot going on so was initially frustrated with this abrupt "demand" for a meeting. He then related to me he was concerned about my safety given the current threat and told me stories of past high threat situations where he and the Director had to personally arm up to protect their facilities. He then told me how brave he considered me to be for coming in to continue my work and how much he appreciated all the hard work I'd been doing the last couple of months. He then told me I should be careful in my travels and should wear a large head scarf when outside the building to blend in better as this is my best defense. Note: ALL Afghan women wear head scarves, so this was good advice. Have I told you I despise wearing a head scarf? Anyway, my heart melted and I thanked him for his concern.


Interestingly, I then told him how my family is relying on him to keep me out of harm's way and that I had told you guys all about him. This appeared to cause him a degree of stress... he now feels personally responsible for my safety because he cares about you. For me, this is a good thing. So, please keep the pressure on from there.


And yes, I am wearing my large head scarf when outside our safe zones and during travel. I don't think he could handle the stress if I didn't.


PS: Please send me snow pictures, electronically will work. I've been telling my Afghan colleagues about the amount but they won't believe me.