Wikilieaks wonderings

destroyed house in Bala Baluk district

Some thoughts

“Supposedly the biggest leak of military information ever”, appropriately summarizes the response by the likes of CNN, Al Jazeera and Euronews to the leak of military logs from Afghanistan on Wikileaks and in three international newspapers. Over 92000 incidents have been ‘made available’ for public scrutiny and paint a clearer picture of the daily intensity, insecurity and pain involved in this conflict.

My response: are people really surprised? Surprised about the high numbers of civilian casualties; the hunt for 2000 AQ leaders; or the mechanical descriptions of loss of human life and goods? I do wonder, because I’m not surprised and find it hard to understand that there is astonishment…but I also do understand that not everyone is here in the field on a daily basis and that indeed people do not have to be thinking about it over breakfast (because, please don’t).

I immediately spent some hours going over the log entries for my province and recognised a number of the incidents described. About an incident described as having happened at a bridge at this or that latitude in which LN 7 KIA and LN 5 WIA, I know that those 7 killed (KIA: killed in action) were in fact children and I have pictures of the wounded (WIA: wounded) on my laptop, as well as of the burned out auto-bus and the surviving relatives.

Obviously I recognise the reaction from a number of journalists and maybe the general public that the logs are extremely mechanical in dealing with human lives, but that is the way it is and there is no other way. Logs are not meant to convey an opinion or a feeling. Next to that it’s not always possible for an army to go and visit the village they air-struck the night before to assess the damage, so numbers and acronyms are what we are left with.

What can be done is making sure that information is forwarded whenever an army suspects civilians have been caught in conflict, this happens, but not in all cases; not by a long shot. I (very) regularly receive army-made short descriptions of incidents with a date, maybe a place, numbers of KIA and WIA and an explanation of the action. With these short descriptions I can send my team to the field to further investigate. My team coming back and their information being typed-up is often the moment that names, ages and families are added to the numbers and acronyms you see in the logs, if they weren’t known yet.

The information we receive from the troops is often incomplete (understandably so) and from the responses I get from these troops I know that they appreciate the human story that we assemble from our investigations. Not just for information, but also because they know this means that an organisation that can provide assistance is working on it. No human lives can be brought back or blown-off legs replaced, but for the troops and international politics it means: “we hit civilians, we won’t make any statements concerning that, but we know that either compensation or assistance (my work) is in the pipeline, which might stabilise this community again.”

The information isn’t always correct either. I’ve had a man that supposedly died at an army hospital, but was still very much breathing and talking. Nevertheless the information I get from troops, however incomplete or flawed, is often more reliable than the information we can get from afghan civilian sources. Village-councils happily keep people off victims-lists if they have no ‘interest’ in specific victims’ tribes or families; one family will accuse another of Taliban relations on absolutely no grounds whatsoever; an elder declares with his hand on his heart that a certain person has never existed; and another one damages his own house, that escaped a bombing, so he can get compensation. Even during meetings at my office victims will argue about who has suffered most, or should have suffered more. Human behaviour? yes, in all it’s indescribable, unrelentless and shadowy glory.

The fog of war, that’s what we’re collectively in and anyone you meet will tell you to go and search either left or right, but never under his roof. In this fog shocking mistakes are made and horrifying numbers of lives are lost. But who is guilty when you can hardly make out friend or enemy, or more appurtenant, who is innocent and innocent on what account? When an American rocket hit’s a family-car, if a soldier never returns to his family due to a Taliban IED, if a donkey is turned into a mobile explosive device which blows up a marketplace, if a NATO missile can’t distinguish between the children’s’ bedroom or the explosives workshop under the same roof…

The fog of war is never an excuse though...

short notes from the log

Short notes from the log

In addition to popular ‘knowledge’ that the UN and NGOs bring fraud or waste to a country, cats are to be considered as the next threat. The international compounds in West Afghanistan seem to have a cat-population explosion, which is why as a matter of redistribution, I have brought two little kittens from the UN guesthouse in Herat to the compound in Farah. After 4 hours in the air and a first day of reconnaissance of their new home, including ridiculously hot balcony and their first bath, they accept their fate. I have named them Bala and Buluk, after one of Farah’s most violent districts: Balabuluk. The district can do with some good PR, or should I say good Purrrrrr.

After a couple of weeks in Herat and Kabul, it’s good to be back in Farah: The balcony now has sandbags as well, the blast-walls are higher and we now have a car-slalom, to reduce the speed of approaching cars. Good investments? Yes: we’ve had a prison break, hostile take-over of checkpoints, RPGs and a couple of grenades.

Because of all that and due to the now finished international Kabul Conference we have been living under security status ‘White City’, which means that no one is allowed in or out of the compound. My staff has thus been working from another location. Compared to Kabul we should actually always be under ‘Red City’, one level up, but we’re tough guys.

Had a meeting with 8 village elders from Balabuluk district whose villages were bombed one year and one-and-a-half years ago, resulting in wounded, dead and sizeable property damage. The elders say that the Taliban used their village as a hide-out and launching pad, against their will…but how to prove that? Apparently, my predecessor wasn’t sure either and just ignored their further calls and requests. After the meeting and an investigation by my team, I am sure that they are victims though and have started the procedure to provide them with assistance, which they should now receive within the month. I apologised on behalf of my organization to these men of whom some had lost wife and children, what an embarrassment to keep people waiting this long.

The airport security guard that defied common sense and opened the box with my kittens is now walking around with very bright red scratch-marks. He did provide a service to humanity by using almost a whole role of tape in closing the box up again: dangerous cats.

In 3 separate incidents: driver of one of our transporters beheaded; 5 trucks of goods stolen by Taliban; 8 beneficiaries kidnapped and the goods they received set on fire.

Had tea with the guards from the Afghan police, something that we’re not exactly advised to do..but hey…although we could hardly understand each other is was fun.

Sigh, ok….better and real story next time….soo busy

may the best pictogram win

In September Parliamentary elections will be held here in Afghanistan, something that is increasingly seeping into daily news and life. With people whispering that they might be delayed, might be held earlier, or not at all, all bets are off. The most visible sign of what is to come are the candidates' election posters though: Kabul is increasingly looking like one giant billboard and even every taxi-van seems to have a favourite candidate.

The printing bazar, with tens of shops that can print anything on anything, is working overtime and every shopwindow proudly shows the election posters printed on their presses. I have not yet seen National Party teddies or Progessive Party teamugs, but I'm sure they are being ordered.

One of the most interesting features on the very colourful and already chockablock posters are the candidate's pictograms. In order for illiterate people to more easily identify or remember who to vote for, the election committee has come up with different illustrations that will be on the ballot paper next to name and photo and should be used by candidates on their promotion materials. The pictograms have already been used in the Presidential elections and are a clever initiative in a country where substantial numbers of people have difficulty reading. But...

Every candidate is allocated a pictogram / illustration by the election committee according to a simple system: the candidate blind-picks 3 illustrations from a box and chooses the one she/he likes best / dislikes least. If you are lucky enough to pick 3 illustrations that you like and can then pick your favourite from that set, you're gonna be a happy campaigner, but I just don't think there are too many of those as the illustrations are rather 'divers' to put it diplomatically. A short overview might clarify what I'm talking about. Illustrations: a candle, a parachute, a laptop, a typewriter, a stove, a motorcycle, 2 or 3 frontdoors, a birdbassin, 3 neckties, globes, a tape-cassette, a lock, cherries, a bulldozer, a pencil sharpener, the buckle of a belt, a box of matches, a fridge, a staircase, a ceiling fan, an iron, an empty table with tablecloth, a tankwagon and a well. That's just a small selection of a very wide and diverse range. The creative civil servant must have also been very inspired by his working environment judging from illustrations depicting a desk, a deskchair, a desklight, a pencil, a stapler and a teapot.

Potentially problematic is that not everyone understands what the illustrations are all about and that they do not have any meaning or intended message in themselves. One of my drivers is convinced that the laptop-illustration shows that the candidate wants to invest in technology, whilst the butterfly depicts a green candidate. There are candidates that have a prayermat or a book, so they must be very devout, right? I wonder what people make of the flatiron, ruler and 3 ships: candidates with policy on housework, mathematics and a navy (Afghanistan remains land-locked though), maybe?

Most bizarre are the illustrations that depict items that are not necessarily widely recognised by the Afghan public like the tennis-racket and the binoculors, or illustrations that depict a different version of the same item. I'm sure that the big teapot and the smaller tea-kettle will cause a row; the 4 different types of lamps and lightbulb a riot; and the laptop-computer and desktop-computer a stand-off between two candidates of which one has a flexible office-space policy...

My favourite is a comb, as a co-worker jokingly said: "that's because more people need to dress well"..sounds like a policy to me. I wish all Afghan voters the best of luck in the run-op to 18 September.