Afghanistan Arrival

A strange irony of the journey into Kabul is that one of the most popular transit points is Dubai. The contrast between these two places could not be more stark. Dubai is perhaps one of the most vulgar places I have visited. The tiny emirate seems to celebrate conspicious consumption in its most brash and unadulterated form. Anything that your most base instincts desire or imagine is attainable here, as the boundaries of excessive materialism are constantly being redefined – 7* hotels, the tallest skyscraper in the world, ski slopes in the desert. This tiny corner of the world is simply a giant temple to worship Mammon.

It is the first time that I have visited Dubai since the onset of the financial crisis, and its decadence seems almost anachronistic now. At a time when the prevailing narrative in Europe and the US seems to be based on sacrifice and thriftness and disdainful of greed, Dubai’s opulence appears entirely out of step. There is no doubt that Dubai’s economy is in deep trouble, but it seems that this message has been slow to reach the Emirate’s populace, a rigidly segmented community of entitled native Arabs, hedonistic western expats, and a south asian mamluk-like working class. It will be interesting to watch what becomes of it in the future, if the global financial system genuinely does change.

Fortunately my stay in Dubai was short. My flight into Kabul was severely delayed and then when it eventually took off was re-routed back to Dubai, as Iran had closed its airspace in response to the post-election political turmoil. After an hour of sitting on the tarmac in Dubai, we learned that the Iranians had now decided to re-open their airspace and we were allowed to begin our journey.

I would love to provide a detailed insight into life in Kabul but my existence here is too restricted to allow that. I reside with other expats in a large house that stands behind high walls and barbed wire, surrounded by armed guards. I have a room with an ensuite bathroom and a team of domestic staff that cook me three meals a day and do my laundry. I travel to work everyday in an armoured vehicle with my Afghan driver, gazing out of the SUVs window trying to soak up as much about life in the city as one can glean from behind bullet-proof glass. I am based in a small office in the Ministry which I travel to daily, which allows me some opportunity to interact with Afghans, although I recognise that these are hardly representative of the populace at large. In short, my life here is incredibly sheltered.

My main opportunity to learn something about Afghanistan comes through my work. I am working as a consultant in the Government’s Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD). This is a giant, cross-sectoral Ministry, used as a vehicle by many donors to channel large sums of money to the provinces to invest in rural infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. The Ministry’s work also stretches to the rehabilitation of schools, hospitals and power installations. From this sprawling mass of objectives, organisational chaos has been born. Poor co-ordination between donors, coupled with their desire to stick national flags on projects that they are funding means that the Ministry has become balkanized, with various fiefdoms within the beauracracy emerging and weak control from the centre over the delivery of flagship programmes.

The Ministry’s senior leadership are cognizant of the chaos within their organisation, and are also aware that the shift in the US’s strategy in Afghanistan will potentially bring them even greater resources in the coming months. They feel that unless they can get a grip on their Ministry, understand where the gaps in capacity are and make an assessment of real needs, their voice will not be heard when the American deluge – or ‘civ-surge’ as it is called – strikes.

The task before me is quite daunting. I have only a month to prepare a short, action-oriented report diagnosing problems within the Ministry and suggesting practical solutions that can be developed into a change management strategy. I feel that the amount of ‘unknown unknowns’ in this endeavour are considerable and it is not entirely clear to me how, or through whom, information can be acquired. I feel like the proverbial blind man feeling an elephant, as my eventual conclusions will be inevitably hamstrung by my lack of understanding of the whole beast. How I deal with this challenge is what I am spending most of my day thinking about.

The rest of my day I spend thinking about the beard that I am cultivating while I am here, stroking it like a sage while I do so. My hope is that my advances in facial fashion will give me the gravitas I need to at least fool my Afghan colleagues into thinking that I know what I am doing here. Any grooming tips would be gratefully received.

--Y