A Blast From Kabul's Past

Photos

A title here is required | Photo 721

see larger image

uploaded by MilanSturgis

REPORTING FROM KABUL

This morning I was woken up at about 3:30 am or so, and quickly went back to sleep. Having my coffee on the roof a few hours later I realized that it was seven rockets that had briefly disturbed my sleep as I watched US Apache gunships circle Kabul with an occasional burst of automatic weapon fire in the distance.  Kabul had woken from its slumber of the past years to find itself back in Afghanistan, the country that Kabul struggles to keep at a distance from itself.  Several of the rockets hit in the Wazir Akbar Khan district which is home to the diplomatic community in Kabul.    Several of the other rockets hit various unrelated parts of the city with one girl being reported injured. What was thought of as its past has now returned to Kabul-at least for this morning.  Kabul was the scene of horrific rocket attacks during Afghanistan’s civil war in the early 1990’s and many of the buildings still show the scares of those battles.  Over the past several years , though, this city has become an island of sorts in relation to the violence in the other parts of the country.  Restaurants reopened, a new shopping center downtown and all the trappings of a capital of a developing country began to appear.  Many people forgot that just outside this city a war was being fought, many people forgot except the insurgents who woke the city up this morning.  This wake up call comes with just sixteen days left before Presidential elections which were once considered a formality and now is beginning to look like a real contest with President Hamid Karzai facing real challengers for the office he now occupies. No matter which candidate wins the security challenges will be daunting as this morning pointed out. As we inch closer to August 20th Kabul could see more of what the rest of Afghanistan has been living  with over the past years-more violence. If no man is an island then certainly no capital city is truly in a bubble.