Looking back on Afghanistan with doubts and hope

Hal Bernton, just returned from nine weeks of reporting in Afghanistan, offers his perspective on the accelerating violence and signs of hope that he found there.

KABUL — After spending two weeks in the field with Stryker Brigade soldiers in southern Afghanistan, my camera was in sorry shape. Dropped once and choked with dust, the Panasonic Lumix managed to capture one last group image of the 2nd Platoon, then quit working.

During my time in Afghanistan, that camera had been a trusted friend, and I desperately wanted it healed.

Back in Kabul, I took it to a 34-year-old repairman named Ahmad, who had a small, fourth-floor workshop with all manner of camera innards spread out chaotically. I felt like I had walked into Geppetto's workshop, and Pinocchio might be helping out in the backroom. Charmed, I turned over my camera.

We returned several days later to pick it up. But as soon I got out the door, the Panasonic malfunctioned. I got it fixed again. It still didn't work. I took it back a third time, having largely lost trust in this guy.

The camera man smiled again, and said something more mystical than mechanical: "You need to keep working with it. Keep trying. Don't give up. Your camera will get better over time."

In the weeks that followed, a strange thing happened. I kept using the camera, and it seemed to revive. Ahmad was right.

As I leave Afghanistan, I keep thinking back to the camera man.

Sometimes I have been discouraged by what I have seen here, and, on some occasions, I've been overwhelmed.

On my way home from Afghanistan, I went through four separate body searches at the Kabul airport. The security reminded me one more time of the violence that darkens this nation for so many people — Afghans, Americans and others meeting untimely deaths in so many different ways.

I have plenty of doubts about what will happen in the months and years ahead to this country. Will it stay a single country or eventually splinter apart? How long should troops from the United States and other NATO nations be the glue that binds this nation?

These questions fuel the debate in Washington, D.C. There are many who remember how Western nations largely abandoned Afghanistan after the fall of Communism, and how Afghans fought each other in a bitter civil war that culminated with the Taliban taking power.

Old Afghan hands in D.C. are determined to not let the West abruptly withdraw support from Afghanistan again, and they back the call for more troops. Others believe it may be too late for Americans to end this civil war among Afghans.

Talks quietly go on between U.S. officials and elements of the Taliban. Some members of Afghanistan's Parliament also are reaching out to insurgents in search of common ground.

I'm reasonably sure of one thing: There is no easy way forward that doesn't involve more pain and suffering.

And the policy questions, which go beyond debating future troop levels, command urgency as Americans die at record rates.

As I return home, the Fort Lewis-based soldiers I stayed with in the Arghandab Valley in the southern province of Kandahar continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of the losses.

Week by week, their casualties rise. They still have eight months to go in a region known for huge roadside bombs capable of tearing up the Strykers and most other Army vehicles. Last Thursday, another huge bomb gutted a Stryker vehicle, killing Spc. Gary Gooch, of Ocala, Fla., and Spc. Aaron S. Aamot, of Custer, Whatcom County.

Still, there are some signs of progress.

There was a recent seizure by Western troops and Afghan police of some 500,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a key component for building roadside bombs. As time goes on and the U.S. intelligence network grows stronger, the Taliban may come under more pressure.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Helmand province, residents are returning to villages now free of the Taliban.

But I also think back to a party I attended in Kabul at a United Nations guesthouse, where young European men and women danced the night away to blaring techno rock in a backroom outfitted with a bar. It seemed so far removed from the violence of the Arghandab.

A few weeks later, the insurgents stormed another U.N. guesthouse close to the party site, killing five U.N. workers.

After 30 years of conflict, the war here has become many things, including a business.

Taliban fighters raise money in areas they control with taxes imposed on villagers and the sale of processed poppies. Organized-crime elements make money by smuggling arms and other supplies, as well as by kidnapping rich businessmen.

The United States and other Western nations have become huge players in the war business by pumping billions into the bases that have sprung up all over Afghanistan.

While embedded with troops in southern Afghanistan, I was impressed by the sheer size of Kandahar Air Field, a key hub of our military operations. Driving back into the airfield from the Arghandab Valley, our Stryker vehicle passed the initial entry checkpoint and then drove several miles through a vast fortified city that grows each month.

The amount of money at stake creates its own momentum to carry the fighting forward.

When I left Kabul for my final trip north to the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, I was somewhat burned out on Afghan politics.

I had lost count of the number of news conferences I attended. And I had heard plenty of stale rhetoric offered up by President Hamid Karzai, his chief foe, Abdullah Abdullah, and others involved in the bitterly disputed election.

Abdullah, in an interview with me and McClatchy News Service's Jonathan Landay, warned that any U.S. partnership with an Afghan government based on fraud would ultimately fail. Then Abdullah bowed out of a runoff, paving the way for an election commission to declare Karzai the president.

Abdullah continues to cite election fraud. But he's not calling for the United States to back away from Afghanistan. He wants America and the rest of the international community to step up support.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I reached Mazar-i-Sharif. Here, as elsewhere, many women still wear burqas and marriages are arranged by parents. Even without the Taliban, Afghanistan remains a conservative Islamic nation.

But things are different here in some important ways.

In areas of the country where the Taliban have asserted control, schools for girls have been shut down. In the Arghandab, villagers were fearful of sending even their boys to school because they worried the Taliban would come to their homes and kill them.

Here, girls are heading off to school, including thousands from small villages where that option had never been offered.

I met a young teacher named Shabona. She was 20 years old, and absolutely passionate about her work. She teaches mathematics, Dari language and several other courses to eighth-grade girls, as well as offering literacy courses to older women. Now, she is trying to raise money so the women can start a sewing cooperative.

Shabona isn't about to give up on the future here.

I figure I shouldn't either.

While in Afghanistan, Hal Bernton reported for McClatchy News Service. Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com