wrote to BBC

I was born when the soviets had already spent a year in Afghanistan. The only image which I clearly remember from soviets is when I was six.
On my way to school in a very bitter winter day with snow up to my knees and blizzard blowing to my face. I saw a Soviet soldier standing in the middle of the main Karti-Parwan road.
He was standing on this slope road, rapped in thick warm woolen military uniform. He had big wind glasses on through which I couldn’t see his eyes. He was pointing a very big gun toward pedestrians and traffic; everyone was passing by with extreme caution.

The next day I didn’t take the main road to school; my grandmother advised me to avoid bumping into Roosah (Soviets). She told me they are barbarians and tyrant and they are here to kill good Muslims. She was telling me stories of how they entered Afghanistan through air and ground; it was a very noisy night. The roaring of Tanks entering Kabul and big planes landing in Kabul airport made people sleepless. She was saying the city was ordered to put black curtains on all windows so no light could be seen.

Few months later a unit of Tajik soldiers delivered some gifts and letters from children of communist countries to my school. A Tajik soldier gave me a toy and talk to me about life, home, family and children. He was full of love, feelings, humanity and affectation. When talking to him I totally forgot that their red army killed a million of my brothers and sisters and our warriors with bare hands killed tens of thousands of them. I found qualities and feelings in him that mattered to me; the massacre the invasion and the resistance was neither his nor mine fault, we were just specks stuck in the middle of a big horror and crime.
The entire war was part of a big thing, organized by systems and cleverer people than both of us setting in huge red and white castles.

I hope history doesn’t repeat it self, today I meet wonderful Americans who I could understand and are here definitely with good faith and mean to help. These people are too good to do any harm. But what about the system and administration, sadly the system and administration is always stupid and irrational.

The photo attached is the cover of a USAID publication and it says in bold letters “Building Afghan Democracy”, the editor forgets the first thing about democracy which is you can’t impose democracy on people, democracy is a process, not an answer or outcome. It has taken several hundred years in the US and other democratic nations to emerge under each nation’s VERY UNIQUE SITUATION.
I wonder how it (Bush Administration) could help if they have such a predetermined opinion and position.

Afghanistan wouldn’t be able to make it without their help and presence, but the administration should stop controlling Afghans and telling them what is good for them. The sooner the Afghans are able to run things the better it is for both sides.

I don’t know if it’s something wrong with Afghans or something wrong with the armies or maybe it’s the hospitality, for thousand of years when they arrive in the land of Faghan they tend to control things and they don’t learn from each other. They don’t learn people here hate to be pushed; other armies prior to them tried to control them, but they even couldn’t make it out of this place in each corner of this country you could see grave yards of invaders.

Abasin

Abasin just stepped into my office very upset and frustrated, he said the police in a chinese restaurant question him for 10 minutes, because he had lunch there.
Afghans are not allowed to go there.
He was almost arrested yesterday by the police because he was dropping a girl colleague home. Apparently, the cab-driver freaked out when he saw a boy and a girl chitchatting in a very un-triditional way and he wanted to report to police.

Last year he was in police costudy for a couple of hours because he went out camping at midnight, in the winter, in 30cm of snow, with a bunch of friends.
made a big fire and all those stuff… and had a lot of fun, the chief of police could understand the concept and was angry why young chaps showed that much freedom.

It's Abasin and people like him who are pushing the envelope and are trying to make a difference…. He is the man who will ensure the freedom of others.

Rules & regulation

Unnecessary rules will suppress people. Young Afghans are having some freedoms for the first time, and they don't know ways to maintain them and gain further freedoms, unless they are provided with a situation and are encouraged to obtain more freedoms.

Any unnecessary restriction might discourage them and they will lose their confidence and will never try new things. There are a lot of things young people in the west would do that afghan youths can't and it's because they don't have the confidence. When you come to rules and regulation it's not important to have it and implemented because it has traditionally been done so, but it should be put in place if it's required.

kabul security

The reason they are called terrorists is because they are trying to terrorize people, if we start to freak out it is exactly what they want us to do.

You are terrorized when you confuse precaution with unnecessary restriction and panic.
They want you to stop thinking. Terror and confusion brings two things, it either breaks you down (happens most of the time) or gives you reasons and strength.

One is confused and terrorized when you establish restrictions which you can't stick to; like xian and david's ideas, every Int'l should go out with an Afghan or they shouldn't leave homes for a certain period of time; these are not precautions because you can't follow it.

you are broken when you don't think what the issue is and how to set up plans to deal with it.
you are broken when you establish unnecessary restrictions. terrorists usually organize cluster attacks to confuse and terrorize people. But kidnapping can't be organized clustery it is not like smuggling a lot of explosives into the town. the moment a kidnapping happened the security organization goes on alert and another one is very unlikely to happen.

The reason I think it was a very organized thing is , why it happened in Kabul, if they wanted to kidnap foreigners they could have ambush them when they are going to Paghaman or somewhere else for partying.

Also kidnapping election workers should be more than a coincidence.
Precaution is usually taken to minimize the amount of risk. How far are you willing to go with that? Even 1% risk is too much far a paranoid person; what if you are at the wrong time in the wrong place? By coming to Afghanistan every foreigner should take (I don't know maybe) 5% risk.

Minimizing 5% risk is panicking. You could analyze the amount of abduction likelihood by playing around with the number of foreigners in Kabul, and the number of kidnapping in the last two years and half. I bet the number will be very small.
You could also find more data like how many of kidnapping was done by taxi drivers? To enable you to decide whether foreigners should take taxi or not; And etc.
if you want have more fun you could match the percentages against other normal risks; like getting killed in a traffic accident in NY.

Saturday 0940hrs:
it shouldn't be a surprise, but it could be. Staff breaks the rule. Hugo, Saira and I went to birds street in a Taxi and climbed the TV mountain. I would say its more important to train people how to handle a kidnapping situation, conflict management, negotiation skills than setting up rules which we know people won't observe.
It's also definite that the kidnapping was a deliberate plan.
Let's not forget a major factor setting up such restriction; which is called FUN. It's fun to panic.
If the security is bad, that how it is. We can only imporve it by doing our job in the best possible way. If you think you are afraid now, you are gonna be afraid if you want to be afraid you are afraid for the rest of you life.