Note to self - eating street food may lead to extreme sickness. Funny how hindsight is often where we learn our lessons.

There is an increased sense of vigilance on the streets these days with the death of Bhutto. Instability breeds instability, and there are many people waiting to use any sign of instability for their own purpose. Right before the Eid festivities last week, there were four suicide attacks in Kabul, an attempt to destabilize the smooth runnings within the city.

Sickness has prevented me from being the most "adventurous" the past few days, but I have commenced taking interview with various people in Kabul to get their opinions on the status of Afghanistan, the Taliban, and people's personal situation. I must make a disclaimer that most of my interviews will be from the more educated cohort of the population (i.e. who speak english) and will be slanted away from support of the Taliban (since its supporters are in the South of Afghanistan). A quick few facts about Afghanistan, there are huge rivalries on sectarian grounds. There are a number of ethnic groups in the country - Pashtun, Hazara, Turkomen, Uzbek, Tajik, and Aimaq. And within each of these groups, there are Sunni and Shia denominations. The Taliban are mostly constituted by the Pashtuns, but since the Taliban build on an ideological (versus purely ethnic) base, there are Taliban from within the other groups.

I was reading the Globe & Mail a couple of days ago, and I came across Prime Minister Harper's comments on how important it is to remain in Afghanistan. His vision of defeating the Taliban and setting up a stable governmental structure are simplistic and wholly misguided at best. The Taliban may be a problem but by no means are they the problem. Before the Taliban, the Mujahideen has power in Afghanistan and conditions were not better all. The Taliban only yield the power they have today because of their previous support by the Americas, the very group that is now their worst enemy. But the fight against the Taliban has done little for the majority of people of Afghanistan, who suffer increasing poverty, human rights abuses, and no clear indication of better days to come (I have yet to come across a garbage dump that hasn't had children roaming through the items). The so called government here is simply a means of giving legitimacy to warlords who can usurp the country's funds. In considering the plights of Afghanistan, two often overlooked points must be stressed. First, the increase in security needs by international projects in Afghanistan has caused a huge rise in "civilian contractors", which are basically hired militiamen. These militiamen drain a huge amount of the country's resources and funnels them to warlords. Second, the extreme poverty and lack of education of the people here are by far a bigger problem than any threat posed by a sectarian group. The work I do with WCLRF does not target any specific group because all groups suffer massive illiteracy in their populations. The conditions for women and children are like pre-Islamic Arabia, where tribal rules were dominant force. And in this patriarchal tribal structure, women and children are afforded very few rights, regardless of which tribe they belong to.

I did not take as many pictures as I has hoped to because I realized that the reason internationals face so few problems is because there are no civilian internationals in sight! All of them are heavily guarded in their entourage of military personal (even my hotel, a luxury since it has electricity most hours of the day is guarded around the clock). Thus, the climate makes it difficult place for the average tourist, and one doesn't really do a benefit by attracting attention to oneself (luckily, it seems that I look Afghani to most people!).

P.S. Videos will be up in the next 24 hours.