Sylvia's Journal

Our local (all English) newspaper, the Afghanistan Times, has two front pages: one for the people who read from left to right and the other for people reading right to left. They are different headlines. I haven’t figured out in what ways they are different.

Today the right to left front page had no news on it – only two enormous advertisements. One for the cellphone company Etisalat and the other for Azizi Bank that is building Dubai type office residential towers portrayed as artist renderings; gleaming and situated on an endless plot of manicured grasses. Where would that be, one wonders, in Kabul, or for that matter, in Afghanistan?

The absence of news on the right to left front page was unusual. Maybe the various anti-government-element (AGEs) attacks are getting tiresome and stop being news for the people who read right to left (Afghans). For more than half of the population, they don’t know any better. For us foreigners, the left to right readers, knowing about attacks still appears relevant and out of the ordinary.

A debate last night on Tolo TV (in Dari and past my bedtime), made it to our (left to right) front page. Ashraf Ghani, presidential candidate and organizer of the Kabul Conference, made a case for why the conference was a success. The key indicator should be visible in two years when 50% of foreign aid is supposed to be channeled through the Afghan government.

The implications of this intention are huge. For one, it requires a huge shift in the way the government deals with talent and prepares new talent because how else are ministerial departments going to manage this? Fifty percent of foreign aid is no small change.

The intention also requires a serious look at red tape and the efforts to both control and evade stringent transparency measures – something’s got to give because now all that is stifling anything from flowing through the system.

At lunchtime we said goodbye to one of the members of our USAID team, who is leaving Afghanistan for Liberia after a three year stay here, a one year twice extended. Most Americans employed at the US embassy compound stay one year, occasionally extended another year. It is easy to understand how one year in the bubble can be enough.

As a result of these short tenures, about 80% of the staff is rotating in and out during the summer months, each year. I asked about institutional memory. Not surprisingly, it is a problem.