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Saturday, October 17, 2009 1:14 PM EDT

What this woman wants

Gloria Galloway

A male colleague, who has spent far more time in Afghanistan than I have, told me that every female reporter who comes here decides she must write the definitive piece about the living conditions of the country's women.

This is Afghan culture, not ours, he wisely explained. And the poor dirt farmer who spends 13 years feeding and clothing a girl child must receive something in return. So, if women are sold by their fathers to their husbands to become virtual house servants who are confined to their compounds for the rest of their lives, that's life in Afghanistan.

There are far more pressing issues facing the Afghan population, he said, like staying alive in a war zone and feeding families in one of the poorest countries in the world.

And to a large extent, I agree.

Even so, I was very glad to see the wonderful series by my colleague Jessica Leeder last month. And, on my travels about the country (which are largely limited to cities because of safety considerations), I cannot help but be preoccupied by the lives of Afghanistan's women, if only because they are so different to my own.

So what follows is a collection of disjointed gender-related observations.

Picnic sausages

Afghan men love going on picnics – it's how they often spend their Friday afternoons. But women are not invited. Wives make the meals and pack the baskets. But they do not get to travel to parks or recreation spots, pull out a blanket, and feel sun on their faces in natural surrounding. Picnics are a men-only affair.

House-bound and shrouded

Some women literally never leave the confines of their homes. But most do get a chance to do some shopping. Kandahar City has a market that caters only to women. I am told that the Taliban don't like it. They would prefer that all outside activities are performed by men. But, so far, they have not targeted it for attacks.

The first time I drove through the city in a military convoy after arriving here in September, there were no women in the streets. A year ago, there were many burka-shrouded figures buying food at the stalls and quickly going about their daily business.

I wrongly concluded from my perch in the light armoured vehicle that the city had become so dangerous they were not leaving their homes any more.

When I travelled through the city this week in the back of a cab (in my own burka) there were lots of women out and about. It became clear that, on my previous trip, they had ducked into homes and shops when they saw the military convoy coming.

Last year, however, I estimated that about 10 per cent had their faces uncovered. This year, almost all are veiled – another sign of the increasing Taliban influence in the city.

A woman's way

One of the Afghan men I met this week, a man from a farming region, was quite amused by me. He walked into the room as I was working on my laptop.

The women of his village cannot read and they certainly do not know how to work computers, he explained, grinning. He seemed impressed by my skills, but it was clear that he did not believe his own women could be capable of learning such things.

The dating game

Another man asked The Globe's excellent Afghan fixer to explain the meaning of the word girlfriend. The fixer knew the answer because he had asked me, just last week, to explain the difference between girlfriends and wives.

I had replied that a girlfriend is someone very special but there is no agreement between her and her boyfriend that they would stay together forever. A wife, on the other hand, is forever. It seemed kind of simplistic. But the concept of dating is just so foreign to an Afghan man.

The men here must save thousands of dollars to give to the father of the girl that they marry. It's not unusual for this to take them into their 30s. Their brides are often half their age and, in Kandahar at least, someone they have never actually met.

But things are changing – ever so slightly.

Mike Capstick, who is now country leader for Peace Dividend Trust, a group that helps Afghan companies get foreign contracts, pointed out a couple of weeks ago that almost all of the young men on the streets of Kabul have cell phones. You see them standing on the corners texting like crazy. Who are they texting? Girls, said Mr. Capstick.

It will be a long time before you see similar sights in Kandahar. And it would be wrong for me to argue that dating is better to arranged marriages. It's a cultural thing and both have their pitfalls.

The global sisterhood

But I can't help wishing some things for my Afghan sisters. I wish more of them could be educated. I wish more could leave husbands that are abusive. I wish more had the ability to earn their own living.

And I wish they had more freedom of movement. It sounds silly, especially given the famine and the fighting, but I wish they could go on picnics.

Saturday, September 26, 2009 8:48 AM EDT

The no-nookie rule

Gloria Galloway

I saw the oddest thing on the boardwalk at the Kandahar Air Field yesterday. A young man – looked to be North American, but maybe I am not the best judge - and a young woman were sitting on a bench holding hands.

Now, that might be a common sight in Ottawa or Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal, but it is positively astonishing here in Afghanistan.

The Canadian and American militaries have a strict no-nookie rule. No hugging, no kissing, no hand-holding and certainly no carnal relations between men and women (and presumably between people of the same sex) while on the base. That goes for journalists too, by the way. And even married couples who happened to be deployed here at the same time.

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Sunday, September 20, 2009 11:40 AM EDT

A woman's world most can only imagine

Gloria Galloway

I am sitting here in Kandahar reading the wonderful series on Afghan women by my colleague Jessica Leeder.

Western reporters, but especially (I presume) female western reporters, are struck by the fact that it is all but impossible to interview 50 per cent of the population of this country.

As Jessica points out, the women of Kandahar largely refuse to be in the presence of man who is not a close family member. And there are few women in Afghanistan who can or will serve as translators. All of our fixers are men.

But every time I have passed a burka-clad woman walking long the dusty country roads or negotiating the streets of Kandahar City, I have wondered about her life.

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Saturday, September 19, 2009 8:53 AM EDT

Going wireless in the desert

Gloria Galloway

I don’t expect anyone to have sympathy for me because, well, I am surrounded by thousands of square kilometres of desert in which people are thankful just to get to the end of the day with food in their bellies and all of their body parts attached.

But this Internet thing is driving me crazy.

This is my third tour to Afghanistan and the web connection in our work tent has always been slow. By which I mean really slow. As in, a page may open 15 minutes after I have clicked on the link.

But the Internet is the lifeline for journalists working in a place like this.

It’s not just our source for e-mail. It’s our library, our fact-checking machine, and our window to what’s going on in the world.

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Thursday, August 27, 2009 1:10 PM EDT

In the echo of a deadly blast

Sonia Verma

We had just arrived at the headquarters of Afghanistan’s International Election Commission, a sprawling compound on the city’s edge, where thousands of staff are busy making last-minute preparations for Thursday’s election.

It was dusty and oven hot. We had been promised a tour of the building where the ballot counting would take place, and were keen to get an up close look at the mechanics of how Afghanistan’s massive electoral machine would work.

Suddenly, we heard a blast, far enough away to produce an echo, but close enough to send IEC staff into a panic.

A car-bomb had struck somewhere on the busy road near Kabul’s Customs we were told by a security guard, listening to his walkie-talkie.

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Friday, August 14, 2009 9:03 AM EDT

Behind every great story, there's a great fixer

Sonia Verma

Kandahar, Afghanistan --In war-torn countries like Afghanistan, journalists are often only as good as our fixers – local reporters who act as our assistants. Here in Kandahar, The Globe has a great one. He arranges interviews, acts as an interpreter, and works his contacts to help us untangle complex stories.

We live on the base. He lives in Kandahar, risking his life every day in a place where the very act of working for a foreigner can get you killed. Our fixer's family is under the illusion he earns a living doing something else. His secrecy is for their safety.

I am always in awe of my fixers' bravery. Of course, they are partly motivated by money, working to provide for their families, but there are easier ways to earn a living, especially for English speakers.

They are not out for glory. Their work is not rewarded with a byline or fame. What motivates them more is a desire to expose the truth, to tell the stories of their countries to the outside world. The risk, to them, is somehow worth it – until their luck runs out.

Which is what happened to my friend, and former fixer, Tahir.

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Wednesday, August 5, 2009 11:09 PM EDT

Sunday Night Lights

Omar El Akkad

So I'm sitting in one of the base cafeterias having dinner a while back, when I look at the next table over and see the New England Patriots' cheerleaders.

I've never seen anything as conspicuous in a military facility as a half-dozen beautiful women in bright purple short-shorts and a Mexican soap opera's worth of makeup. Seriously, Santa Claus and Mullah Omar could have been standing there fighting over the last piece of cheesecake, and it wouldn't have looked as out of place.

It's difficult to explain just how boring Kandahar airfield is. Granted, it's a military base in the middle of a war zone, not a theme park. But even if you're working 18-hour days here, there'll always be some part of the day where you have absolutely nothing to do. Some of the gyms are open 24 hours a day, so I've found myself working out at 2 in the morning some days. (Conversely, the Pizza Hut is also open 24 hours a day, and is closer to the media tent). But otherwise, there's not much to do, especially given that some soldiers hardly ever go outside the wire, and so are stuck here. To combat this, the military sometimes brings in various celebrities, ranging from A-list to Z-list, to sign some autographs, sing a few songs, whatever they can to boost morale a bit.

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Monday, July 13, 2009 6:13 PM EDT

Snapshots of base life

Omar El Akkad

A tents situation

It's 8 a.m. and I'm the only one around in the media tent. There's a knock at the door, and a soldier walks in.

“Hey, how's it going?” I say.

“It's alright,” he replies. “Say, is this the place where they issue [secret military item I'm probably not supposed to tell you about]?”

“If it is, no one told me about it,” I say.

Soldier pauses momentarily. “Then what is this place?”

“This is the media tent.”

“Oh.”

Soldier quickly leaves.

A river runs through it

As far as the senses go, there are two constant onslaughts that the residents of Kandahar airfield have to contend with: the sound of planes and the smell of sewage.

Both become tolerable pretty quickly. There seems to be no rush hour as far as air traffic is concerned. Everything from civilian passenger planes to helicopters to fighter jets are taking off and landing around the clock. After a while, the sound they generate begins to mimic thunder, and it feels a bit like there's a brooding storm just around the corner.

The smell of sewage comes and goes, depending on your location in the base and the way the wind's blowing. There's a ditch running through the camp that has been given the delightful name of Emerald Lake.

Emerald Lake is basically a small river of raw sewage. First time I arrived here, I was told the legend of the guy who, on a $50 bet, jumped into this thing. Any hope I have in basic human rationality forces me to believe this story is probably apocryphal.

Same food, different pile

There's a rule here we tend to refer to as the “sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll” rule. Basically, nobody's allowed to “fraternize” (read: have sex), drink or do drugs on the base. For some reason, I think the Belgians might be exempt from at least one of these, but I'm not sure.

So that pretty much leaves food.

Most everyone here gets fed at the cafeterias – these massive buildings that look pretty much like no-frills versions of your average college caf. There's some differences between the various cafeterias – for example, I ate at the Asian cafeteria for the first time recently. Some people seem to prefer one cafeteria over the other, but it seems to me like the difference between beef with red sauce and beef with brown sauce. Regardless of what the menu is, there's always a substantial lineup near the grill, where people opt for the simple burger and fries.

As with every military base I've been to, meals start ridiculously early. Show up at the caf at 9 a.m. and you've already missed breakfast.

If you want to pay for food, there are a bunch of options, most of them located along the square wooden boardwalk that serves as the base's social hub. This is where the Pizza Hut, Subway and Tim Horton's are.

The food tastes slightly worse than the same outlets back home, and the individual menu options are much more limited, but after a few days of caf food it's nice to eat just about anything else. There's also an ice cream place on the boardwalk, and it is the greatest thing in Kandahar airfield.

The downside of all the boardwalk eateries is the smell. In the middle of the sandbox square created by the boardwalk are a bunch of sports fields, including a floor hockey rink where the Canadian soldiers play all their games. A couple of soldiers are mighty angry that, when the wind swings the wrong way, the entire rink instantly smells like an old pan pizza.

What goes bump in the night

I opened my eyes and began to wonder, “Why am I lying underneath my bed?”

My sleeping tent at Kandahar Airfield is a six-person unit split by walls of flimsy fabric, sort of like the sheet curtains that separate hospital beds. Inside each subdivision is a small cot, a plastic set of drawers and a couple of shaded light bulbs hanging from a wire. For a room the size of a cubicle, it's surprisingly comfortable.

But on this night, I lay on the floor under my bed, trying to figure out what was going on.

Eventually it came to me. I was asleep when I heard what sounded like some kind of siren start blaring. Apparently, whatever part of me controls self-preservation roared to life before any other part, and in one smooth motion I flipped off the bed and under it. That's when the rest of me woke up, deeply confused and breathing in months' worth of built-up dust.

I lay still for a minute, listening to the noises outside. A helicopter was floating somewhere nearby, drowning pretty much everything else.

After a while, I got up, dusted myself off and went back to sleep, very groggy and not entirely sure what just happened.

Thursday, July 9, 2009 12:36 PM EDT

Kandahar then and now

Omar El Akkad

It has become customary for Globe and Mail correspondents arriving in Kandahar to post their thoughts about how the NATO base here has changed since they last visited. In my case, the last visit was in late 2007.

I arrived in Kandahar Wednesday morning after clearing a Dubai airport security check-in that can best be described as casual.

Dubai’s airport authority is not at all subtle about regulating all the most, well, interesting flights to Terminal 2. In addition to my Kandahar flight Wednesday morning, the Terminal 2 departures screen showed flights to Kish (an Iranian duty-free shopping paradise, I’m told), Baghdad and Kabul. If you’ve ever been to Dubai, you know that its public face is the statement “home of the world’s blankiest blank,” where the first blank is usually something like “biggest,” “longest” or “most expensive,” and the second blank is something like “building,” “luxury yacht” or “stable of gold-plated ponies.” There are no such pretenses in Terminal 2, populated almost entirely by Third-World immigrant labourers and former-military-type contractors.

These are the people who make Kandahar Air Field – NATO’s massive base-city and my home for the next month – function. There’s plenty of money to be made in shipping cargo, digging ditches and constructing myriad other services to feed the voracious appetite of a fighting force.

There’s considerably less money to be made in shift-work at the cafeterias and the actual hands-on tasks of digging ditches and constructing buildings, but many “third-country nationals” – the vast majority of them Indian, Pakistani or Filipino – believe such work will pay better than anything they could find at home.

The guys sitting next to me on the plane wore T-shirts with the logo of Prime Projects International, a firm that specializes in getting low-wage TCNs into war zones. PPI was created shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and is probably as vital to making a large-scale war work as the suppliers of bullets and the tanks.

Last time I came out here, there were maybe a dozen people on the plane. On Wednesday, I could hardly see an empty seat.

Kandahar Air Field is growing. It has also gotten more American. The United States is in the middle of sending another 20,000 troops here, as President Barack Obama shifts focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. You can see the effect of this from the moment the plane descends towards the airfield’s runway, with ongoing construction projects and rows of helicopters visible below.

The first thing that hits you is the heat. Dubai and Kandahar have virtually nothing in common, except the searing antagonism between man and environment. But the heat is different in each place. To get a sense of the summer heat in Dubai, open the door to your dishwasher after running a hot wash – glasses fog up, the heat is wet. Afghanistan’s heat is closer to an open oven door: a straight dry blast. It almost acts like a weight vest – the five-minute walk from the media tent to a nearby Subway sandwich kiosk felt like a slog through wax.

The other environmental constant in Kandahar is dust. It gets on and in everything, and wrecks particular havoc with electronic equipment. In the media tent, we tend to go through those compressed air canisters like chewing gum.

Even as the base sprawls to accommodate its surging population, it still feels the same. From what I’ve seen, soldiers from different nationalities don’t mingle all that often. There are a few new stores, including what looks like a French bakery and a bookstore. The hallmark of architecture here is still very much the ever-versatile shipping container, accompanied by waves of concrete barriers and plenty of razor wire.

Hummers and old-school Toyota trucks drive around at walking speed, kicking up dust tornadoes in their wake. There are makeshift living rooms for the various troops: tents with big screen TVs where the soldiers can relax, usually while watching some sporting event. The Canadian tents are usually glued to hockey, but there’s none of that to watch right now.

Entertainment is a big deal on a military base. The simple fact is that you never really stop working here, and you can’t just hop in a car and get away from your surroundings. I arrived at one of the Canadian media tents to find an impressive collection of mostly pirated DVDs. (You know your copy of Wanted is legit when the blurb on the cover reads: “Mind Blowing Exicement! – Siskel & Ebert.”) Every weekend the Afghan bazaar comes to the base, and virtually everyone living here stocks up on these things.

There aren’t as many reporters around here as I remember from my last trip, though I suspect that will change in the next few weeks, as the Afghan election coverage begins gearing up in August. It’ll be interesting to see how the Western nations involved in this war balance their desire to see this election go smoothly with their desire to keep a low profile and let Afghanis work their own democracy. It’ll also be interesting to see just how much more or less violent things become as (at least some) Afghans prepare to go to the polls.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10:52 PM EDT

The lighter side of Afghanistan

Colin Freeze

Kandahar, Afghanistan -- Forty candidates are now running for the job of Afghanistan's president, one of them saying his country risks becoming “the biggest tragedy of the 21st Century” if changes don't happen, and soon.

That may or may not be true. But whether the country's turns out to be a big tragedy or not, the small comedies that arise can't be ignored or taken for granted. They can be like silver linings on an unremitting dark cloud.

So here then are some of the goofy things witnessed in Afghanistan:

The loneliest pig in all Afghanistan

The Kabul Zoo is a sight to behold, filled as it is with smiling families and young children. They gawk at polar bears, lions and even the newborn baby monkey. There's even a rickety Ferris Wheel too. So, the zoo is a nice slice of normalcy in a country that's often bereft of it. A great place to forget the war.

But lately it's been in the news during the global spread of swine flu.

The zoo's pig – allegedly the only one in all of predominantly Muslim Afghanistan – was placed under quarantine last month. I bumped into zoo director Azis Gul Saqib and asked whether I could visit the pig in question: “Can I see?” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?,” I said. “Because we not let the people and journalists to go there,” he said.

“Oh, okay,” I said. “But you don't think the pig is sick?”

“No. But it's possible the pig might get sick from humans,” he said.

“Well, I am from Canada,” I conceded. “Where we do have swine flu.”

The Karzai Times

I'm sorry to report the Kabul Times has not quite got this newspapering thing down yet. (I know, I know, nobody does, any more.) It's design editor and staff photographers appear to be mailing it in.

For example, the June 10 edition had a picture above the fold: President Hamid Karzai at a boardroom table meeting a group of wise men.

“President Karzai meets Badakshan Elders,” the headline said.

That was a lot like the front of the June 9 edition. The A1 photo was President Karzai at a boardroom table meeting a group of wise men.

“President Karzai Recieves Hussain Khil Council members,” the headline said.

These same editions had similar pictures on the inside too.

“President Karzai Instructs Ministries to Solve Smangan, Paktya, Paktika, Khost's Problems,” read one headline. The picture was of the president at a boardroom tables meeting wise men.

“Badghis elders ask President Karzai to Address their Problems,” read another headline.

You can guess what the picture was.

King Harper v. King Osama

You meet all kinds of characters on military bases, and one popped into our work tent the other day. He's ex-military and now helps operate private flights in and out of Kandahar. But he wanted to talk about his sideline, Terror Chess .

For only $250 (U.S.) you can buy a handcrafted “Canadian” set.

In it, King Stephen Harper squares off against King Osama bin Laden.

Queen Elizabeth II faces the blue burqa-wearing Taliban queen. (It's not clear who is under there, maybe it's Mullah Omar.) In the American version, King Obama has just replaced King Bush. But he remains flanked by the Statue of Liberty, with the World Trade Center towers at the corners.

A computer version of the game is in the works. In it, certain squares may be booby-trapped with improvised explosive devices.

Kafiristan

The Afghan Parliament has just passed a law banning alcohol under penalty of up to 60 lashes.

But Westerners pictured in a glossy Kabul magazine don't seem worried about this.

Scene is a monthly publication I would never have thought existed. It actually has a society column.

Afghans don't generally drink. So the five-page centre-spread features young good-looking expats.

This is the NGO crowd at play, blowing off steam in Kabul bar and restaurants.

The editors say this is the future of Afghanistan – and beyond.

“Now that Mr. Obama has come down so decisively on talking to the insurgents,” they write in the latest issue of the magazine “we're hoping to include a few photos of fiestas in Quetta in the months to come.”

Quetta, Pakistan, is the religiously austere city within which the Taliban leadership plots suicide bombings and the like.