An average Wednesday in Kabul..

I traveled to Bagram Airfield today.   It was my first trip out of Kabul and we took a Beech 1900 flight owned by Embassy Air. I was surprised to learn the US Embassy in Afghanistan has had its own airline since September 2004.  It originally was used to shuttle embassy and USAID personnel to the various provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) throughout the country, but has grown from two fixed-wing planes to more than twenty airplanes and helicopters as our mission size has grown.

I boarded the plane and took the 8 minute flight (yep - 8 minutes) to Bagram with my USAID colleague and Information Specialist to attend a media conference at Regional Command East (RC-East).  The civilian structure overlays the military structure so RC-East has 14 provinces (PRTs) divided into larger Task Forces (between one-four provinces).  Sometimes the provinces are broken up into smaller districts.  Each of these "platforms" has at least one, and sometimes many more, civilian representatives of the State Department  and  USAID or even USDA.

My friend from Dari language training who is the PRT representative in Ghazni was at the conference.  He was somber because of the unfortunate death the day before of the Deputy Governor of Ghazni who was killed by a suicide bomber.   The Deputy Governor was working with the U.S. Embassy to improve the lives of the people of Ghazni.  Luckily catching up a bit helped put a smile on his face (but not enough to drop the phone!).
There were Afghan journalists from each of the provinces, as well as public affairs staff from the military and the embassy (that's me!).  We met for 6 hours, talking about training opportunities for journalists and ways to enhance communication between all the actors in Afghanistan, and then it was time to go home.

Unfortunately, our flight was cancelled because the pilots couldn't get to the plane at the Kabul airport due to the President's travel...so what to do?  Well, in Afghanistan, you hitch a ride on a Blackhawk helicopter!  So I flew home with eight participants to Kabul airport, where we were picked up by motorpool and driven to the Afghan Cultural House for a dinner with 6 international journalists (from Poland, Georgia, Japan, Latvia, Australia and the Czech Republic) who were finishing up a USNATO -sponsored tour of Afghanistan.   Home by 9:00, write this blog, bed.  Not a bad Wednesday but Thursday is going to be spent digging out of emails.

One of the random parts of living overseas and working for the US Embassy is the booty you collect from various contacts and attendance at meetings and host government colleagues.  I have an odd assortment of plaques and bowls from all over India and Bolivia, so I figured I should capture my Afghanistan loot.  First items, a pen and mug from RC-East.  Pretty cool.

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The Black Tulip - A Movie Premiere in Afghanistan

So the reviews in the New York Times weren't great.  (see review here)  But since only one film was 

shot on location in Kabul this past year, The Black Tulip is going to be Afghanistan's entry into the Academy Awards.  The advertising here said "Afghanistan's nominee for the Academy Awards," but full disclosure would mean saying there was only one film.  It reminded me of Eric "The Eel" Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea who swam the 100 meters at the Olympics.  He had only learned to swim 8 months prior, so while it took him over one minute and 47 seconds, he still won his heat because the other two swimmers had false starts.  

So this movie, Black Tulip, is THE Academy Award entry for foreign films from Afghanistan.  But I worry it is "The Eel" of the competition.  It tells the story of a family targeted by the Taliban, and it tries to capture life in Afghanistan during this timeframe, but the problem is the film isn't realistic.  I think Afghans were most shocked by women and men kissing, something not seen in South Asian cinema (not even Bollywood).  
 The premiere was at the Ariana Cinema, and the event kicked off with the Afghan Elvis (yes, there is apparently an Elvis in every country), and a few songs by Natalie Cole (yep, that is what I said).  It wasn't entirely safe for us to be there so the journalists were met there, and then most of us left while the event went on (with a few hitches but not too many security concerns).

For all its flaws, the movie's cinematography really captured Afghanistan's beauty.  There were views and scenery I really hope to experience once I have a chance to get off the compound.  In 24 days, I have only gone out five times.  Better than some people here, but not enough to really get a flavor for Afghanistan.  I hope this changes soon.