Thursday, September 15, 2005
Baghdad - Kabul
The weather is awful!!! indeed between two autumns not necessarily there's a summer :(
Yesterday, before visiting friends in the Bijlmer i was in chat with a friend in Kabul, and another one in Baghdad. Contemporaneously.
From Kabul came words about dangers, beheadings, 'Talibanfear' and people being very afraid.
Elections postponed for four days.
From Baghdad only too short extremely worrying phrases, "about bombs, ya know? boom-boom! explosions all around, plans canceled." (Stay inda house).
Both connections popped out and in, failing electricity in both places.
Fear as a common ground.
The simultaneous contact with these two places sort of hustled my brains.
Later:
The two small chatscreens on my monitor, side beside, connected the capitals of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It left a different impression than when i see the Afghan blog on the Streamtime site, where it stands between the (Blogs Tunisiens) and the not-anymore functioning link to the Iraqi Witness 'Al Muajaha'.
A different view also from reading newspapers, that in some odd way seem to disconnect the various places described on their frontpages.
I felt a strong urge to try to connect the two persons on the other ends of the keyboards by telling them both about the other one.
Similarities between their situations struck and yes, upset me.
Not exactly simultaneously, but near to, their connections popped out. After a while they were there again. What was told from Afghanistan didn't sound at all positive.
The guy from Baghdad usually talks a lot when we chat, very vividly, rich in his words, never short on putting up complicated questions. But now he was short. And rather quickly changed to another complexe subject.
But, Iraq has a very good and growing number of bloggers posting through all kinds of difficulties about daily life, unsafeties, heavy metal, their changing opinions or feelings towards -political- processes and so on.
Afghanistan is as far as i know far less represented in these blogging ways of exchanges. What do we hear about what is going on in Afghanistan except for some rare and exceptional story?
Warmachine happens to be in both places. Same craziness of killings and such as well. Same shortages on energy.
A lot of problems are not comparable, obviously. But some are.
Dutch radio this morning eared that a 'critical period' for Afghanistan is foreseen. The interviewed experts, just back from Afghanistan, tended smoothly towards optimism.
It contrasted pretty much with what i had heard the day before, in the chat: "The election is going to be held on the 18th of this month, four days later. Taliban warned to interupt this. People are very scared and alerted to be carefull outgoing. Especially foreign people. This would be very dangerous, the Afghan government won't be able to perfomance well. 'They' are doing the same the job as the Arab version - al qaeda beheading people. To those who likes the Afghan goverment and American forces."
¶ Thursday, September 15, 2005
The weather is awful!!! indeed between two autumns not necessarily there's a summer :(Yesterday, before visiting friends in the Bijlmer i was in chat with a friend in Kabul, and another one in Baghdad. Contemporaneously.
From Kabul came words about dangers, beheadings, 'Talibanfear' and people being very afraid.
Elections postponed for four days.
From Baghdad only too short extremely worrying phrases, "about bombs, ya know? boom-boom! explosions all around, plans canceled." (Stay inda house).
Both connections popped out and in, failing electricity in both places.
Fear as a common ground.
The simultaneous contact with these two places sort of hustled my brains.
Later:
The two small chatscreens on my monitor, side beside, connected the capitals of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It left a different impression than when i see the Afghan blog on the Streamtime site, where it stands between the (Blogs Tunisiens) and the not-anymore functioning link to the Iraqi Witness 'Al Muajaha'.
A different view also from reading newspapers, that in some odd way seem to disconnect the various places described on their frontpages.
I felt a strong urge to try to connect the two persons on the other ends of the keyboards by telling them both about the other one.
Similarities between their situations struck and yes, upset me.
Not exactly simultaneously, but near to, their connections popped out. After a while they were there again. What was told from Afghanistan didn't sound at all positive.
The guy from Baghdad usually talks a lot when we chat, very vividly, rich in his words, never short on putting up complicated questions. But now he was short. And rather quickly changed to another complexe subject.
But, Iraq has a very good and growing number of bloggers posting through all kinds of difficulties about daily life, unsafeties, heavy metal, their changing opinions or feelings towards -political- processes and so on.
Afghanistan is as far as i know far less represented in these blogging ways of exchanges. What do we hear about what is going on in Afghanistan except for some rare and exceptional story?
Warmachine happens to be in both places. Same craziness of killings and such as well. Same shortages on energy.
A lot of problems are not comparable, obviously. But some are.
Dutch radio this morning eared that a 'critical period' for Afghanistan is foreseen. The interviewed experts, just back from Afghanistan, tended smoothly towards optimism.
It contrasted pretty much with what i had heard the day before, in the chat: "The election is going to be held on the 18th of this month, four days later. Taliban warned to interupt this. People are very scared and alerted to be carefull outgoing. Especially foreign people. This would be very dangerous, the Afghan government won't be able to perfomance well. 'They' are doing the same the job as the Arab version - al qaeda beheading people. To those who likes the Afghan goverment and American forces."
¶ Thursday, September 15, 2005
