Coming Back to Kabul

i have been back in Kabul for 2 weeks now. If you told me it had been 2 months, or even 2 years, I'd be inclined to agree. There is something about this place that stretches time and twists it round until you have no idea what day it is, what year it is, when you came, when you're leaving. Sometimes I wonder if I left at all. Maybe it is the sameness of it. From the car every street looks the same, dusty, yellowy...sometimes the road is good, sometimes its hardly recognisable as a road at all, work is in a new building, but the view is the same (a wall), in the evenings the restaurants we go to are the same and after a while all the faces are the same too. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's not boring, it's just...the same.

So what's changed?

There are more bombs. In the last 2 weeks alone there have been 5 suicide bombs in Kabul. At the moment the AGE's (Anti Government Elements) are targetting Ministries and police in an attempt to undermine Karzai's Government, so the International Community are not directly under threat but people are definately jumpy. Although, having said that, the 'jumpiness' really only lasted a couple of days...and then Thursday rolled round and on a Thursday there are parties to attend and a new Mexican place to checkout and things are back to normal and the veil of war zone? what war zone? descends again.

I have spent more time with journalists. In some ways this is a really good thing. Journalists have seen a lot and know a lot and do things like spend 6 days under seige, embedded with the British military in the South. In other ways, this is a really bad thing. Jouranlists have seen a lot and know a lot and sometimes you don't want to be party to this. If you do spend 6 days under siege in the South and come back with shrapnel wounds in your finger, having had bullets rebound off your helmet, you will have some scary stories to share. If you have seen the South, first hand, you know how intense the situation really is, you will know that the Taleban attack in waves and that this is not a situation easily won. I know it is important not to bury my head in the sand. I do want to know more about the politics and the conflict and the problems and the fears. And I enjoy walking away from conversations with a little more understanding of this incredibly complex country. But I also need a little of the Kabul denile. I need to dance at parties to cheesy music and imagine that this coffee shop I am sitting in, drinking a latte, surfing on wireless internet, listening to jazz is not in imminent danger of attack. It's not, don't worry...but some of the talk may lead you to believe that it might just be!