Afghanistan

The first time I heard of Afghanistan was in 1998, year 10 modern history. It was described as the USSR's answer to Vietnam, a complete money sink and an embarrassment to half the world's super powers. A few years later it was making itself known as the host of Osama bin Laden, a man driven to usurp Ronnie Biggs’ claim to being ‘The World’s Most Wanted Man’(TM). Now it is appearing all over the shop, most notably… in every aspect of my life. It started slowly, appearing as case studies during my international politics courses at university. Then AIESEC Germany sponsored an expansion to Kabul. And then I was shown the literary world of Afghani novels:

• Shantaram – (aka Best-Book-Ever). Australian on-the-run assists Bombay based underworld figures transporting supplies to Northern Alliance fighters in the Soviet War.
• Lost in Transmission – Australian journalist Jonathon Harly reports on his time as an ABC correspondent to South Asia (India, Pakistan and Afghanistan) from 1999-2003)
• Absurdistan – Australian journalist Eric Campbell reports on his time as an ABC correspondent to ‘north asia’ (Russia, China and Afghanistan)
• The Kite Runner – boy escapes from Soviet era Afghanistan only to return twenty years later to a Taliban ruled country. (interesting: Microsoft don’t seem to recognise the word Taliban in their automatic dictionary, how ironic)
• The Bookseller of Kabul – tba

Now five books may not seem like a lot, but given I read the first in June 2005 it seems that there is quite a wealth of material out there. Then there are the blogs:

• Mike, an English trainee in Kabul: blog
• Mike, an American trainee in Kabul: blog
• AIESEC Afghanistan: homepage

Finally: Kyle has started planning her CEED, an internal AIESEC exchange, to Afghanistan in 2006. Yesterady’s shock was when we/she realised it is going to be a balmy minus 10 to plus 2 degrees in sunny Kabul come February next year.

Both Eric and Jonathon make mention of Harry Burton and the impact this had on their experiences, a sobering memory for all travel junkies.