This idea seemed academic until my friend Tilo and I left the razor wire hedgerows of Kabul International Airport. A parks planner in Vancouver, Tilo is a fastidious and cautious fellow. He had done his reading, and concluded that Kabul was a post-conflict city, perfect for an architectural holiday. He could take photos of bullet-strafed monuments without actually having to dodge bullets. But having arrived a week before me, Tilo had been sobered by the city. He had yet to walk the streets alone. His eyes were wide open, and his nostrils were an angry red. He had developed a nasal infection he insisted was the result of breathing dust-borne fecal matter. “The air is shit,” he said. “And it’s not safe here.”
Our driver sped us toward the city on a highway that had been refurbished by the Americans. From here, Kabul resembled a junk-scape of cracked mud huts, woodpiles, and rutted dirt side streets, punctuated by gleaming new glass low-rises and cellphone transmission towers. Pockmarked shipping containers served as workshops and vegetable markets. Now and then, a tremendous stench blew in through the open window. Amid this chaos, the airport road’s four lanes of slick asphalt felt like a miracle. But the fresh pavement ended a block from the American Embassy. The road disappeared under a gauntlet of loopy razor wire; giant concrete blocks; and stacks of Hesco brand blast barriers — wire mesh cubes lined with polybags and filled with dirt. They looked like refrigerators in bondage.
Evidently, the main road through Kabul had become a private driveway for the US Embassy and its neighbour, the International Security Assistance Force. In fact, Wazir Akbar Khan — the upscale neighbourhood made famous by The Kite Runner — was largely off limits to traffic and to Afghans. We joined a fuming mass of battered taxis making a halting circumnavigation of the barricaded heart of the city. “Look,” Tilo said, pointing at the sandbagged walls, razor wire, and watchtowers. “Look,” he said again, nodding at the fleets of unmarked pickup trucks that pushed through the streets, their boxes loaded with gunmen in generic uniforms. Finally, our driver steered into a canyon of concrete blocks and under a pole gate — pausing briefly for a guard to check the van’s chassis for explosives — and eased into a garage-like chamber between two house-high iron gates. He waited for the first barrier to close and the second to open, then delivered us into the light.
We couldn’t afford more than one night at the Serena, so Tilo had found us another island in Kabul’s archipelago of high-security compounds. And what an island it was. The guest house (whose name and location I won’t disclose, due to the security concerns of the international organization that runs it) inhabited a pair of walled gardens lush with honeysuckle and rose bushes. There was a badminton court, a gym, and a party room that shook on its weekly salsa nights. But it was the pool bar that distinguished the place, especially on Fridays, when bikini-clad babes and their beaus draped the lawn or frolicked in the California-blue pool. The beer was cold, and the burgers dripped with American ketchup.
It was hard to believe we were in Afghanistan. And really, we weren’t. Kalashnikov-armed guards kept Afghans from approaching the compound gate unless they happened to be employed there as waiters, cleaners, or bartenders. A few years ago, one aid worker felt so comfortable, so fancy free inside the compound, she once opted to swim topless. She was ejected from the country.
That first night, a gang of engineers and security consultants lingered at the bar until late. The Guinness cans piled up. From my bed, I could hear Texan voices howling, “We are the world. We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving.” Their song echoed off the compound’s high walls.
I had spoken with Maiwandi months before arriving in Kabul, shortly after the Serena attack. He’d answered his mobile phone in the middle of the public garden he was rebuilding on the banks of the Kabul River. The cherry trees were pushing out the first buds of spring, but Maiwandi’s thoughts were dark. While it was unlikely that Kabulis had carried out the Serena attack — suicide bombers were known to be coming in from elsewhere — he pointed out that insurgents have a tough time blowing up hotels without sympathetic Kabulis to feed, house, and hide them.
The foreigners who ousted the Taliban back in 2001 had vowed to rebuild the country, but the failures of reconstruction were written all over Kabul’s landscape. The city’s fancy fortresses symbolized seven years of broken promises. “The city is a tinderbox,” Maiwandi despaired. “All it needs is a little spark.”
Seven years after the Taliban’s ouster, Kabul was supposed to be a bastion of stability, from which peace and prosperity would ripple across Afghanistan. But if Maiwandi was right, then the failures of reconstruction were actually contributing to a feedback loop of fear, fortification, and instability. I was fascinated and troubled by the possibility that foreign aid might be helping remodel Kabul into an even more dangerous place.
