Qala e Now - 1
Friday, February 23rd 2007 - 4:52 PM
I flew to Qala e Now last Saturday. It's the capital of Badghis province, which is in the north west of Afghanistan, about 500km west-north-west from Kabul. We're going to be upgrading the radio station there, working in conjunction with the Spanish PRT.
"PRT" stands for "Provincial Reconstruction Team" and most provinces have them. The PRTs in the various provinces come from a number of different countries. The one in Badghis is Spanish, and part of the reason why i went on this trip was because i can speak Spanish. Also, as far as i know, i'm going to be managing this project when it starts - which it hasn't really, yet, as it's still only at the proposal stage, although it's pretty certain to be happening.
The flight was operated by PRT Air, which i know nothing about, but i assume it comes under the umbrella of the military in some way. It was due to leave from Kabul airport at 8am and we were supposed to be there by 7.30. That meant getting up at six o'clock, before it was light, and getting picked up by a work car at seven.
We got to the airport with twenty minutes to spare and it was a very cold morning. Not being too keen on standing around outside in the freezing cold, we thought we'd have a go at getting into the UN "departure lounge". This is a smallish building which is really only for people flying on a UN flight. I told the Afghan security guard we wanted to go in there because it was really cold standing around outside. I showed him my work ID card and Gavin, who hasn't got one for some reason, showed him his Australian driving licence. His supervisor came over to find out what was going on but they both seemed to think it was a reasonable request to get inside out of the cold.
In the building, there was a waiting area, with a couple of dozen chairs, a small snack bar in one corner - which didn't seem to be open yet - a television, which was on, and a table with a couple of computers on it. These computers were available for free internet access, so i thought i'd check my email while we waited.
At half past, we walked back out onto the runway area, where several planes were parked, and found the one we were flying on. On the tarmac, near the plane, we met up with Pablo and Luis, who are employed by AECI - a Spanish aid organisation - and work with the PRT in Qala e Now. They were off to Herat on a different plane, but a couple of their colleagues were going on our plane. This was good, as we didn't know where we were going in Qala e Now and didn't have anyone with us who could speak Dari.
The plane was a little seven-seater Beechcraft with a South African crew and the flight left a fair bit later than it was scheduled to. But eventually we were in the air and flying over the snow-covered mountains outside Kabul. This was the smallest plane i'd flown in so far, by quite a long way. The previous smallest had been about the size of a bus - this one was about the size of a minibus. The mountains looked pretty much the same as they had when i'd flown over them last - arriving from England, a month before. They were still covered in snow. I got my camera out and took a few photos of the landscape through the plane window.
The flight to Qala e Now takes about an hour and a half. And a while before we got there, the snow came to an end - mercifully! From there on, the landscape was miles and miles of bare, grey hills. It reminded me of when i'd flown over Afghanistan in February 2004, on the way from Australia to England. Then, i was quite amazed by what seemed to be many hundreds of kilometres of bare, grey mountains - all apparently devoid of any sign of human occupation. It was stunning - in the same way as flying over Australia had been, the first time i'd arrived from Europe in 1985. That was thousands of kilometres of bare red and fairly empty land. In February 2004, i couldn't possibly have imagined i'd be living down there, among those grey mountains, in three years time!
As we came closer to Qala e Now, the landscape opened up a bit, in places, with greenish flat areas in valleys between the mountains. This certainly didn't look like it was a suitable landscape for FM radio.
The landing at the small airport in Qala e Now was smooth enough and the guys we were travelling with were met by a couple of cars, which we climbed into too.
It was just a short drive from the airport into town. Qala e Now looked like a fairly standard country town, with lots of little shops lining the dirt main street and quite a few people walking around. It seemed about the same size as Mehtarlam, but not nearly as crowded. Overall, it had a nice feeling about it. It seemed like a friendly little town.
After driving down a couple of streets, we turned into the PRT base. It wasn't as heavily fortified as the bases i'd been into in Kabul, but it had all the usual stuff of double gates, razor wire, etc. Once inside, it felt a bit like i was back in Spain. Spanish was being spoken all around me and the soldiers were all obviously Spanish.
We had to get a couple of guest passes to clip onto our lapels and then we went to the AECI office with Paco, where he and Lance, a US state department representative, who had also been on our flight, gave us a bit of a rundown on the layout of the province and where the population centres and trouble spots were. A senior officer came in a bit later and welcomed us, and filled us in on the security situation. This town, apparently, was quite safe - being Tajiks, rather than Pashtuns, the people around here supported the coalition forces. And people were used to seeing foreigners around now, so walking round the town wasn't a big deal.
The airport at Qala e Now. The plane in the centre of the picture broke down here about 15 years ago and has been partly dismantled now.
You can see some of my photos of Afganistan at
WillKemp-Photos.com/afghanistan