Afghanistan!

8th December, 2009

If there were ever a place of such squalid and dry desolation, of such bitterness, violence and despair that we would have no option but to believe it was made in anger - that place would be called Afghanistan.
 
The country is located in a place that should make it the crossroads of the world - and for a time it was - but no road stops there, because no-one; except those born there, by a stroke of cruel fate; will stay:
 
Every single thing in Afghanistan is sour and ugly. The wells are poisoned; the women covered from head to toe in dusty, ugly burqas; the men in matted beards with leathery, grumpy faces and the alarmingly ever-present AK47s. The trees that grow there grow crooked and bear few leaves and no fruit; In winter it is arse-paralysingly cold and in summer it is searingly hot. Rivers don't flow for much of the year and there are few wild animals to be seen anywhere. Opium is the only thing that grows and it does so at the express behest of the wickedest feudal warlords in modern history. If you can find anything redeeming about this truly horrible country, I will be happy to recant.
 
I read Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner three years ago, when people were still interested in Afghanistan. It is a lovely story, but it does no better than my description above to endear you to the place. It is an unmitigated misery.
 
Why am I telling you this?
 
I tell you this because this is the country that broke one superpower in the 70s and looks likely to break another in the 21st century. Somehow, as the opening of the movie The Beast (1988) will tell you, in the words of Rudyard Kipling:
 
When you're wounded an' left on Afghanistan's plains
An' the women come out to cut up your remains
Jus' roll to your rifle an' blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier
So will Afghanistan turn the most popular President in US History into the greatest loser?

It is a great irony that any caring deity should give his very worst part of the earth to his most loyal and dedicated followers. Surely this thought must occur to Afghans – and especially to the Taliban, the religious riot-police of this severe and deeply orthodox state. You will remember them as the movement who blew-up the great human treasures that once were called the Buddhas of Bamiyan, pretty  much the only wonders of the world Afghanistan would ever have. They were also the group that made it criminal to be a woman, and the same group that aided and abetted Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lunatics.

So how the hell does this affect you?
Go to the airport. You’ll see.