![\"Sayed](\"http:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/DHF_AF_Elections_4.jpg\")
<\/a>Sayed Mansoor Naderi, leader of Afghanistan’s Ismaili minority based in Baghlan Province, voting for the reelection of then Afghan President Hamid Karzai. \u00a92009 Derek Henry Flood<\/p><\/div>\n
Kabul\/Dubai\/Sharjah-<\/strong>At exactly 9am I arrive at Lt. General Hadi Khalid\u2019s gated, sunlit home on one of central Kabul\u2019s ubiquitous dust and rock backstreets. I\u2019d been put in touch with Lt. Gen. Abdul Khalid by an Afghan friend I\u2019d met during the initial post-9\/11 war in the fall of 2001. That friend, Idrees, who now lives in Santa Monica where he works quietly on his PhD, was back in his homeland to visit family and gather material for his thesis. Idrees was a kind of stateless, post-modern intellectual who easily navigated between the corridors of American power and the strictures of his central Asian Islamic culture by which he was bound. He had arranged for me to interview the General for a Washington think tank that I was freelancing for as one of a string of clients I was trying to please under duress during a recent month-long stay in the Afghan capital.<\/p>\n Hadi Khalid had a falling out with President Hamid Karzai the previous summer and was now at loose ends, eager to talk and concerned about his personal security. A sinewy, refined Pashtun from Farah Province, Khalid welcomed me into his home with the best efforts of Afghanistan\u2019s generous social code. We got on like two old friends as we tore into the minutiae of Afghanistan\u2019s political and security relationships concerning the six nation-states that the country borders. Wanting to tackle the most difficult issue first in terms of obscurity, I launched into a line of questioning about the particulars of the Afghan-China border in the extreme northeast and we wound our way counter clockwise around the heart of Asia until we reached nearby Pakistan a short three hours later.<\/p>\n Near the end our time together, we were talking about a pilot programme of anti-insurgent local militias that was being tested in Maidan Wardak Province just west of Kabul. I\u2019d heard from a visiting Indian reporter at my hotel that Obama\u2019s top man in Kabul, the no nonsense General Stanley McChrystal had visited the area to have a look at this attempt at the Afghanization of \u201cObama\u2019s Viet Nam.\u201d I politely asked my very warm host if he could recall the name of the militia for my notes.<\/p>\n The name in English slipped his mind and he picked up a small, worn Nokia phone and quickly rung a friend of his that was still in government. I watching his face sink as the pace of his Dari accelerated and I picked out a few words here and there. The colleague he phoned to ask about something that was now utterly unimportant was telling him that two mutual friends of theirs had just been killed in an act of suicide terrorism in Laghman Province. It was not news yet, it was breaking reality. Khalid\u2019s eyes winced and he shifted in his plush chair as a white hot sunbeam moved across the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first we used to cry when our friends died. After thirty years of war, I cannot cry anymore. I have lost hundreds\u2026thousands of friends.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m terribly, terribly sorry.\u201d I did not know what else to say. This genteel, intelligent man invited me into his home to talk politics. Politics in the abstract. Politics in Afghanistan were often, most often, conducted at the point of a gun.<\/p>\n \u201cThese men were very good friends of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n I felt at once awkward and sad. Afghanistan was tragic culture of neglect and stalled progress that I had developed an emotional attachment to over the years. Abused at whim by its neighbors and used as a hardware parking lot for the power projection of military technology innovators since the Great Game, Afghanistan seemed hopeless in the long term and dangerous in the short. But I grew to love the place nonetheless. It was time to leave.<\/p>\n As a foreign reporter in a war zone, there are psychological Berlin Walls that one builds between self and subject to remain above the fray and justify his presence in a place where in actuality he has no verifiable business and whose justifications are slim on the best of days. Khalid insisted his driver drop me back at the hotel for me to make it in time for checkout at noon. I had a flight to Dubai in six hours and still had errands to run. I told myself that what had just happened to the General\u2019s friends out in Laghman must somehow be normal in context of a decades long, unrelenting jihad with constantly morphing internal and external stressors and that I should not question such things in order to make it out of the country by day\u2019s end.<\/p>\n I had a ticket for the last flight of the day on a small Afghan airline called Pamir Airways (defunct since 2011). The Pakistani travel agent who sold me the document said, when asked, that the airline was essentially a glorified money laundering operation owned by Kabul Bank.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cSure. Kabul Bank has one of the only working ATMs in the city, I use it all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n I then asked specifically who owned Kabul Bank. The affable travel agent chirped that a man named Sherkhan [Farnood] whom he described as \u201cOnly the biggest drugs dealer in Central Asia.\u201d (Farnood would be jailed in 2014<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u201cOh OK\u201d I replied. Again, normal and justifiable in the context of Afghanistan. Who was I to object to flying on a drugs trafficker\u2019s for-profit airline? I mean, hey, we all need it to get to Dubai. Everyone in Afghanistan is complicit in everything in one way or another. Just by being in the country, you are often supporting businesses run by criminal networks.<\/p>\n After a normal hour\u2019s delay on the tarmac and a short 2 \u00bd hour flight across the Persian Gulf, I landed back in what passed for civilization. Walking into the immigration queue in the infamous Terminal 2, I spotted several families from Somalia. I had looked at the wikipedia entry for Terminal 2 and remembered that an airline operated flights to the horn of Africa\u2019s perennial basket case. I approach an unusually friendly Emirati immigration officer in his ironed, white dishdasha.<\/p>\n I handed him my passport.<\/p>\n \u201cHow long will you be in the UAE?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh just one day, inshallah. Wow, so you do have flights to Somalia from here. I\u2019d read that you did. I see a lot of Somalis in line.\u201d<\/p>\n He smiles back; \u201cI think those people are from Nigeria. I don\u2019t know anything about flights to Somalia.\u201d Pound, he stamps a page in my passport with little room left.<\/p>\n \u201cUh no, they are definitely Somali. Don\u2019t you see the women\u2019s distinctive hijab?\u201d<\/p>\n I walk away from the desk and look up at a flat panel monitor. Basra, Baghdad International, Hargeisa, Kish island, Djbouti, Kabul, Berbera, Khartoum, Peshawar and on. Terminal 2, the gate to hell. Jubba Airlines, Jupiter airways, Air Blue.<\/p>\n As I walk over to the baggage carousel, a panoply of people from failing states, outright failed states and nervous economic migrants wait for their twined and taped luggage. Sri Lankan Tamils, Swati Pashtuns, Uzbek elders in embroidered Turkic prayer caps and Terai Nepalis all stand around anxiously. The only other Westerners in the hall look to be mercenaries, often called \u201cSecurity Contractors\u201d or \u201cPMC\u2019s\u201d (\u201cPrivate Military Companies\u201d) in the new perverse lexicon of militarized journalism. I see two young men who appear to be Somali with angular cheekbones and gaunt posture. Waiting for my bag, I sit next to them on a bench and interrupt.<\/p>\n \u201cI beg your pardon. Are you guys from either Somalia [proper] or Somaliland?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSomaliland\u201d the one with wire rim glasses says with a London accent.<\/p>\n \u201cI see there are flights to your country up on the departures board. May I ask, how does one actually go there? I mean Somaliland is not an internationally recognized state but I see you have an airline. Where do you buy tickets?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can go to any airline office here in Dubai that specializes in tickets to East Africa. A round trip costs maybe $270 US.\u201d<\/p>\n My imagination is set alight. \u201cWhen I show up at the airport what takes place? Is there a visa for a place doesn\u2019t exist in the eyes of the world?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think you have to pay $20 for a visa when you arrive and then you must change another $50 into \u00a0shillings<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre they ‘Somaliland’ Shillings as opposed to Somali Shillings they use down in Mogadishu? Do you have a separate currency for a separatist state?\u201d<\/p>\n The two affable young men laugh. \u201cYou seem to know a lot about our country\u201d the one in the brand new Asics hi tops says to me.<\/p>\n \u201cOh well, you know where I\u2019m from, San Diego, is a major refugee resettlement area in America and we have quite a number of your people living there since Black Hawk Down. Plus I like to read a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Before I could ask their names, they jumped up upon seeing their luggage. \u201cIt was nice speaking with you sir but we must be going, you know, with how things are here.\u201d And with that they disappeared into the anxious crowd.<\/p>\n