Attack on the Intercontinental Hotel

Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, where I stayed for roughly a week last year during briefing and debriefing for my observation mission in Bamyan Province, was attacked last week by the Taliban.

News stories on the attack have, curiously, all hewn to two myths – one harmless and the other more troubling. The first myth found its way into the New York Times when a headline in the paper referred to the Intercontinental as a “luxury hotel” in a story by Alissa Rubin and Rod Nordland on June 28. Likewise, AP reporter Amir Shah used the word “luxury” to describe the hotel. Another AP story tells us that the Intercontinental is one of Kabul’s “premier” hotels.

Evidently, none of these journalists have ever set foot in the Intercontinental, which before last week’s attack was a rather forlorn concrete box set high on one of Kabul’s many hills. The hallways are dark tunnels, the plumbing and lighting are primitive, and the carpets look like they were laid down roughly when Bob Hope was still making Road pictures.

At least Jon Boone at the Guardian got it right when he referred to the Intercontinental as “old” and wrote that the aging hotel “is not the magnet to western travellers it once was, many of whom now stay in more recently built hotels.”

But even Boone repeated the second misconception that has appeared in stories about the attack all over the world: that the Intercontinental was secure. As Boone put it, the Intercontinental was “well defended” and “is impossible to approach without going through at least two security checkpoints.”

The Times and other sources made the same error. True, the Intercontinental is supposed to be approached via a narrow road that climbs uphill, complete with checkpoints and concrete barriers. And it is also true that on a typical day, at least three or four Afghan security guards stand outside the main entrance near the circular drive and parking area, in addition to other armed security personnel who roam about the grounds and the interior of the hotel.

But I imagine that just about any guest at the Intercontinental has tried to envision, as I did when I stayed there, what steps a determined group of insurgents would need to take in order to overwhelm the guards outside and storm the building.

The grounds surrounding the hotel on three sides are hilly, steep, and cluttered with trees and other foliage – perfect for hiding stealthy intruders armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers as they approach the building on foot. It was obvious to me at the time that the hotel could be raided by even a small, coordinated group attacking from more than one direction.

To be fair, any large hotel in these circumstances is extremely vulnerable, and the Intercontinental’s isolated setting did have certain defensive advantages. But given the somewhat thin security at the Intercontinental, such an attack was inevitable.

Random Caucasus pictures

Just a few scans of Velvia and whatnot, done poorly in my opinion. (More on that later when I get the slides re-scanned in Chicago.)

First off are four from Azerbaijan - the Shirvanshah Palace an hour before sunset, followed by two shots of a sprawling oil field east of Baku on the way to Surkhany. Then is a shot of a not at all unusual fruit stall in Baku, just north of the police station on Rasul Raza Street.

Below, an old woman muses on life on her doorstep in Tbilisi. This was in 2006, and by 2010 when I last checked, the graffiti were worn away and the building appeared to be abandoned...

Finally, two night scenes taken with a Nikon D90: Rustavelli Avenue looking east towards Freedom Square, and a man in a pensive mood waiting at a currency exchange late one evening in 2010...

Zagzen word cloud

Georgian churches, Pt 1

Some random shots of Georgian churches, mostly taken with my Nikon D90 and 18-200 VRII lens, except for the photo of Svetitsxoveli Cathedral in Mkskheta (with the flags in the foreground), which I took with a $50 point and shoot.

The first two photos (taken in 2004 when I was an academic fellow in Baku) are of the Ananuri Fortress and Church along the Georgian Military Highway, on the way to Gaudari. This splendid church, heavily fortified, was built in the 17th century. A hundred years later, a rival clan laid siege to the compound and finally won, killing off the ducal family associated with the church/castle. The peasants soon revolted against their new overlords, however. The church is a candidate for a UNESCO world heritage designation.

Something should be said about the photo below. I know a number of artists in Tbilisi. One of them is by training a mathematician. He is apparently affiliated with the Georgian Institute of Cybernetics, and has published a number of pieces on mathematical models, including something on international theory. I dropped by a flat he provides to his late wife's sister, and as you can see, the available wall space is largely taken up with a huge array of Orthodox iconography.

We talked and had refreshments in the living room. Looking at the wall where the icons were displayed, he summed up his sister-in-law's past three decades:

"She used to be a fanatical communist," he told me.

"But now," he shrugged, "she is a fanatical Christian."

Hazarajat, Pt II

Bamyan is an extraordinary place from a number of perspectives. As I’ve mentioned, it is home to the famous carved Buddhas, built 1500 years ago and destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.
On our last day in the province, my colleague and I (along with our translator and British bodyguard) did a bit of exploring in the web of tunnels and caves, created centuries ago when the Silk Road was alive and well and Bamyan was a center of religious study and a hub of mercantilism.

But Bamyan is also many other things, including home to the Hazara ethnic minority. The Hazaras are Shi’ite in a largely Sunni country, and look distinctly Central Asian (with physical features similar to the Kyrgyz or Uzbeks).

The mosques are unusual, with poles mounted to the roofs, pointing skyward. These poles have multi-colored flags attached to them, nervously fluttering in the wind, and looking rather like Tibetan prayer flags. And I keep wondering if this is where the flag motif comes from: perhaps before the advent of Islam they really were Buddhist prayer flags, and the idea was incorporated when Islam came to the area.

The Hazaras suffered terribly during the reign of the Taliban, when thousands of them were murdered (and raped) in Kabul as well as in Bamyan. Many fought and died. Others fought and finally accommodated themselves to Taliban rule, in one way or another.

Ustad Akbari is one such figure, a former Hazara warlord who initially fought the Taliban, but decided that discretion was the better part of valor (to put it charitably) and switched sides when it became apparent that the Taliban would take over Bamyan. Akbari is an incumbent in the Wolesi Jirga (parliament), and my colleague and I tried mightily to get an interview with him prior to the election, but it didn’t happen. I keep wondering how the Hazara people reconcile his collaboration with the fact that he won a seat in the last election, and how he is seen today.

A very interesting interview with Akbari can be found here at the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies web site. Akbari puts his thinking at the time this way:

“…after the fall of Hazarajat in 1998, I thought the best way to serve the Hazara people was to join the Taliban. On the inside I thought I had a better chance of being able to prevent them from slaughtering my people. This is how I came to live under their dominion for three years. It was not because I supported their policies.”

Akbari still generates his share of controversy. One of my short-term observers was Ben Skinner, a journalist who writes occasionally for Foreign Policy magazine, among other publications. Ben wrote an excellent piece on Bamyani politics, emphasizing the role of women and including a priceless interview with the province’s governor, Habiba Sarabi – Afghanistan’s only female governor. In Ben’s article, the governor discusses Akbari’s backing last year of a law that included “provisions that women submit to their husband's sexual demands, and remain in the home unless accompanied by a male relative.”

Read Ben’s article for the governor’s comments on Akbari and her assessment of the election, which took place on September 18.

You can go here for one of several Hazara web sites.

Attached are a number of photos, with more to come in the next week or two...

In Hazarajat...

Just returned from nearly a month in Afghanistan, working as an election observer with Democracy International. Most of my time was spent in Bamyan Province - or Hazarajat, as the greater Hazara region is sometimes called. Bamyan is an exotic and wondrous place, the sort of place that you feel you could settle in, despite the fact that it's in Afghanistan and surrounded by not-so friendly people, such as the Taliban, who appear to be establishing themselves in Shibar, in the easternmost area of Bamyan.

In Bamyan, you can feel the history everywhere, moving around you invisibly in the mountains, or spectacularly lit up by the morning sun, as is the Buddha wall in Bamyan Center, the provincial capital.


Had the Taliban never conquered it during the civil war, Bamyan could have remained splendidly isolated, or perhaps gently interconnected, with its mountains and lakes and Buddhas and Hazara culture. With Afghanistan's future in doubt, that outcome could still express itself. Even in a distasteful power-sharing agreement brokered by President Karzai and the Taliban, one hopes that Bamyan may escape with some kind of autonomy, anything that will guarantee that the Hazaras will be left alone to determine their own future. We shall see.



At any rate, here are a few photos, to be followed by more in the coming weeks...

Tbilisi, evolving

Tbilisi has been changing incrementally over the last few years. By contrast, Baku is transforming itself at a dizzying pace and models itself on Dubai, with new, aggressive skyscrapers and demolition crews everywhere. (Dubai is a dubious model for Baku, given its staggering debt. And for many years, Azerbaijan has been a prime candidate for Dutch Disease.)

Most of my favorite cafes and restaurants are now only fond memories, and a facebook page has sprung up entitled "Stop Destroying Baku," which allows Azeris to vent over the almost violent transformation of the city.

Tbilisi, however, is evolving in a more relaxed fashion - typical for Georgia.

Everyone complains about it, but I am not so sure that all the changes are really diminishing Tbilisi's unique character. And again, in contrast to Baku, my guess is that the gradual pace and less frenzied determination to change the city will result in a comfortable blend of old and new. (Why do the authorities in Baku feel that a complete metamorphosis has to take place as the city evolves? What was wrong with the old Baku?)

So until I come up with some additional photos, I am submitting these two - of the old Iveria Hotel and its reincarnation as the Iveria Radisson. Pretty glitzy, eh?

The old hotel was an embarrassment to the government, having been taken over by refugees from Georgia's civil war in the early 1990's. They simply moved in, took over, and adapted - with generous use of plywood and drywall to extend the square footage of what was once hotel rooms. The old Iveria, then, was a semi-permanent refugee settlement, giving it a wildly improvised appearance in the heart of downtown Tbilisi. Thus the embarrassment, because it was also a symbol of the government's inability to integrate the refugee population.

There were rumors for years that a (Japanese? Finnish?) firm had bought the Iveria and would turn it into a high-end shopping center, but to my astonishment, it morphed into another hotel. And the Radisson, for whatever reason, decided not to raze the previous structure, but to keep it intact and gut it from the inside out.

I was happy to see it still standing and refurbished. Did Radisson decide that the building's form had aesthetic potential? I want to think that it's an example of the "golden ratio," a la UN Headquarters in New York.

But this article throws cold water on the notion that many of the buildings we think of as based on the ratio actually are.

Note the presence of the fine statue of King David the Builder in one of the photos I took in 2004. Unfortunately (and curiously), President Saakashvili ordered its removal to another site early in his administration. It's gone, and so are the refugees (who all got a buyout). And the Iveria has been restored to its former glory.

Ilyushin

Tbilisi, home for now

Am spending the month of November in Tbilisi, teaching international relations at GIPA (the Georgia Institute for Public Affairs).

My students are interesting, funny, smart. I really like them.



The odd thing is that I still don’t know quite what to make of Tbilisi, although I have been here many times and long ago was smitten by its charms. But I have to admit that in May when I was here covering the opposition rallies for Security Watch, I wasn’t all that sure any longer. Tbilisi, for some reason, was getting on my nerves. No doubt, this was due in part to the political tension in town.


I’ve been here for ten days now and I still don’t feel grounded and haven’t a clue as to how to approach Tbilisi, or on what level to integrate it. Perhaps I’m obsessing about it a bit much. But I keep thinking of Tbilisi as colorful chaos, and the chaos part can be problematic when you’re loaded down with groceries and your laptop and several books from class and wondering why the hell the #31 bus hasn’t shown up in 50 minutes as your back is throbbing in pain. The #55? Two of them. No, three. But you’d rather take the 31, which runs right by your apartment, which is down the street from the EU Monitoring Mission and across from the Japanese embassy in a weirdly under-developed part of Tbilisi.


This afternoon after a night of almost no sleep, I managed to get into town for some grocery shopping, and on the way I did a bit of exploring of Tbilisi’s side streets and alleys.


There is simply no way that I will ever know Tbilisi the way I do Baku, unless I live here for a very long time. But I did discover some incredibly colorful alleyways and an old, abandoned church with an iridescent, blue lapis dome atop a crumbling tower. In a corner, outside, is a stone and concrete bas relief enclosure commemorating – who? I have no idea. But the photos are here for you to see, including one of a plaque in Russian that perhaps explains the mystery of the church and the man’s identity.

Irving Penn, 1917-2009

Irving Penn was one of the most extraordinary photographers of the twentieth century, an artist who turned to photography in middle-age and defined a unique photographic style that was intensely personal and introspective but was simultaneously glamorous and chic. I found his portraits far more satisfying than those of Helmut Newton or Yousuf Karsh, whose work seemed rather artificial. Penn's subjects were always posed, like Newton's or Karsh's, but Penn's aesthetic was for me far more revealing and ultimately more real and psychologically complete. Go here for the New York Times obit.

Dogen

Clear water soaks into the earth -

the fish swims like a fish.
The sky is vast and penetrates the heavens -
the bird flies like a bird.

What professionals drink in Albania

I would have called it "What professionals drink in Korce," but in that city they drink Korce Birra, the local beer, which is, I'm sorry, dreadful.

But there are other beers in Albania, including the amusingly named Kaon, which is an anagram of "Koan." And it really isn't bad beer!

Albania was quite a surprise - a beautiful, mountainous country with dirt-cheap resort cities and cafes and lakes and endless opportunities to explore.

One of the truly weird things about Albania is the hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers that dot the landscape like a pestilence of gigantic mushrooms. These bunkers, most of which are roughly four meters in diameter and protrude from the ground by about two meters, were built during the Hoxha era and were meant to protect Albania from a NATO invasion. Hoxha got help from the Chinese, and every family was supposed to have at least one, especially in the agricultural regions. The idea was that mum, papa, Uncle Afrim and grandma would ensconce themselves in the bunker when the Americans came (or the British or the West Germans or whoever) and man the machine guns.

Nice.

According to this BBC story, the bunkers cost twice as much as the Maginot Line and used three times as much concrete.

I was in Albania on an OSCE election observation mission, and despite the grueling schedule, I enjoyed almost every minute of my time there (except for the last few hours of my 20-hour shift on election day, when I was non-lucid).

My area of responsibility was the territory north of Korce, stretching to a picturesque lake where we had lunch on the afternoon prior to E-day. Village life is what you would expect, with donkeys carrying bundles of brushwood here and there, curious children, and old women who might ask you in for a cup of tea - something my Icelandic partner and I were treated to in a sleepy village 10 km north of the city.

There is a significant Greek Orthodox community in the Korce region, something I hadn't expected, and Italian is spoken widely, a holdover from the days when Albania was in the Italian sphere of influence.
And in Korce there resides a fascinating Sufi sect, the Bektashi, who combine elements of Shi'a and Sunni Islam. The Bektashi were banned by Ataturk and then fled to Albania, where they settled in the early 20th century. The Bektashi web site is here.

I plan to return as a tourist and spend at least a week just driving and taking photos. There is a huge, eerie petro-chemical plant between Tirana and the Adriatic that one could spend two days at just framing and waiting for the right light and shooting. Just splendid dead-tech.

So here are a few shots of rural Albania, with a couple of pictures of downtown Korce, including the famous Greek Orthodox cathedral and a typical street scene. Incredibly lovely...