Kabul Diaries-I

Arrive to a surprisingly cool Delhi morning for August. Straight to office and the morning edit meet. Afghanistan President election is not a TRP story. We just have to show our ground presence. Get Karzai is the only brief. Head to the Afghan Embassy for visa. Ambassador Raheen is gracious. Talks of great common heritage between Afghanistan and India. Qutub Minar is a copy of an Afghan original. The passport is stamped. On Shantipath. It was Nehru’s original of Gujral doctrine to give the most precious real estate next to Rashtrapati Bhavan to neighbours including Afghanistan and Bhutan for their embassies. Of course United States, UK, Germany, and France too get their chunks.

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Air India to Kabul. Half the flight seems to be full of RAW types, including a woman marshal. If only she was little more discreet. Kabul airport – almost a military hardware shop with an air strip running in between. Received by Ashraf, the cab guy and our anchor during the stay. Streets look busy. Has the feel of Lucknow or Old Delhi. Straight to Roshan for mobile services. The girl at the counter speaks fluent Hindi through her Hijab. We buy the SIMs. But my mobile does not work. Ashraf takes to a shop, dingy, inside a dark lane. The man in Tablighi pyjamas does some wire transfers, connects my phone to a 486 machine. Ten minutes later it’s done. To the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The scene undergoes a cultural transformation. Suits and ties are en-vogue, girls are professionally dressed, and the staff speaks English. All of them in chunks of 50 are being trained by the Ministry of Personnel in Delhi.

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The phone gets activated. Desk starts calling. Lesson: whichever country you are in, desk remains same. They want this and they want that. They already know what’s happening courtesy wires APTN and Reuters. There’s a suicide bombing on Jalalabad Road. I give my first international phono as I rush to the spot. In the evening there’s a live in Newshour. It remains very basic on the mood ahead of the presidential poll.

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The city is under siege. The Afghan police and army are still outnumbered by foreign forces even at street corners. It is a standing joke that Karzai is more a Mayor of Kabul than President of Afghanistan. Taliban are in the ascendant and there is already talk in NATO of strategically engaging the moderate Taliban at 20 US dollars a day. Karzai is not playing along as of now but seems to have little choice. Technically 90 per cent of Afghanistan still does not have central government’s writ. On the day of our arrival, the presidential retreat is hit by a rocket. So one can imagine what is safe.

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