Afghanistan's parched earth is so thirsty that it has forgotten how to drink. Rather than the rains being soaked up, they roll off the land and the runoff quickly becomes flood waters in the flat lands of the southern desert. These waters follow the nation's southwestern slope into a large basin in the southwest corner of the land locked nation. Here, heavens rejected gift of life pools in this corner pocket, shortly before the heavens steal it back away, leaving a vast and barren salt crescent that straddles the border of Iran and Afghanistan and stretches over a hundred miles end to end.
Kandahar Airfield sits on a similar flood plain, and although the airstrip may have once sat on a small island of high ground, the base has now expanded beyond those seasonal shores. In the rainy season, residents quickly learn where they stand - or swim - as those minor changes in elevations make all the difference in whether your office and desert home are dry, or half sunk off the southern shores of the airfield.
Most residents who have been around for a year can speak of at least one heavy rain that turned intersections into river crossings. Or how the deep ditches along the road quickly swallowed up the untrained newbie, who drifted too far off the shoulder as he was wading into work in the muddy waters.
When I first experienced these floods in 2010, I thought surely this is rare event, since such a large section of the base was flooded, but more seasoned residents swore it happened every year, and that my experience was mild. This was highlighted when I began receiving e-mails titled 'Operation Noah' every time the forecast called for rain, warning me to put electronics up on tables to avoid losses as offices flood. I missed this years big flood but I was greeted with the tales of water three feet deep on some roads, and water stained walls on ground floor housing units, now condemned due to water damage.
Another interesting aftermath to flooding are the potholes. During flooding they are the lurking menace that keeps traffic traveling at a crawl as motorist tentatively navigate once familiar dirt roads that are now littered with new hazards under the murky waters that threaten to swallow a tire or submerge an engine block.
After the waters subside, the roads new topography hardens into bone rattling washboards that quickly snap axles of overworked rentals. The weeks after a flood the streets take on the look of a ghetto as abandoned vehicles begin the litter the curbs with one hub on a cinder block, or a tire curled up under the vehicle, because a driver was too slow to realize the rough ride wasn't just the road conditions.
Having experienced one flood and heard stories of so many others, my next obvious question is, why did we expand further out into the lowlands? I can only assume that the persistence of the dry season lulls people into believing the last year's floods were a fluke, and there is no way this desert is going to give way to lake side property again. Inevitably it does. Lessons are learned. Then the replacement unit arrives in country and the cycle repeats.
The new guys suffer through the summer heat and convince themselves the stories of flooding must have been exaggerated. After all, we haven't seen a cloud in the sky since we hit the ground. Construction represents progress, so we need to expand the base further south. Ten years of lessons learned, and still today the construction cranes of progress dot the southern horizon and new foundations litter the landscape. Maybe next year will be different.
More likely the drumbeat of 'development' will drive the expansion forward until we are forced to stop building and hand the whole thing over the an Afghan force who will watch the flood waters of international aid recede and the oasis of development fall into ruin. We have not learned our lessons, but I think the Afghans have seen this storm pass before and have learned all the wrong lessons. I can only hope they will weather the storm far better this time, and the aid that has seemed to roll of the back of most of the nation and pooled in the pockets of new political powers will be invested in more worthy development.
However, much like the desert rain, the foreign aid is beginning to evaporate from this parched land back into the western banks from wince it came. The newly minted upper class fear their riches will not bear fruit in their land. Instead, remembering the long dry spells and chaos that have racked this development desert, they would rather water investment properties in Dubai, instead of gambling on growth at home. Already, the money markets of Kabul are rich with the speculations of financial crashes to come. As coalition forces plan their withdrawal, the familiar dry years of old loom on the horizon.
Kandahar Airfield sits on a similar flood plain, and although the airstrip may have once sat on a small island of high ground, the base has now expanded beyond those seasonal shores. In the rainy season, residents quickly learn where they stand - or swim - as those minor changes in elevations make all the difference in whether your office and desert home are dry, or half sunk off the southern shores of the airfield.
Most residents who have been around for a year can speak of at least one heavy rain that turned intersections into river crossings. Or how the deep ditches along the road quickly swallowed up the untrained newbie, who drifted too far off the shoulder as he was wading into work in the muddy waters.
When I first experienced these floods in 2010, I thought surely this is rare event, since such a large section of the base was flooded, but more seasoned residents swore it happened every year, and that my experience was mild. This was highlighted when I began receiving e-mails titled 'Operation Noah' every time the forecast called for rain, warning me to put electronics up on tables to avoid losses as offices flood. I missed this years big flood but I was greeted with the tales of water three feet deep on some roads, and water stained walls on ground floor housing units, now condemned due to water damage.
Another interesting aftermath to flooding are the potholes. During flooding they are the lurking menace that keeps traffic traveling at a crawl as motorist tentatively navigate once familiar dirt roads that are now littered with new hazards under the murky waters that threaten to swallow a tire or submerge an engine block.
After the waters subside, the roads new topography hardens into bone rattling washboards that quickly snap axles of overworked rentals. The weeks after a flood the streets take on the look of a ghetto as abandoned vehicles begin the litter the curbs with one hub on a cinder block, or a tire curled up under the vehicle, because a driver was too slow to realize the rough ride wasn't just the road conditions.
Having experienced one flood and heard stories of so many others, my next obvious question is, why did we expand further out into the lowlands? I can only assume that the persistence of the dry season lulls people into believing the last year's floods were a fluke, and there is no way this desert is going to give way to lake side property again. Inevitably it does. Lessons are learned. Then the replacement unit arrives in country and the cycle repeats.
The new guys suffer through the summer heat and convince themselves the stories of flooding must have been exaggerated. After all, we haven't seen a cloud in the sky since we hit the ground. Construction represents progress, so we need to expand the base further south. Ten years of lessons learned, and still today the construction cranes of progress dot the southern horizon and new foundations litter the landscape. Maybe next year will be different.
More likely the drumbeat of 'development' will drive the expansion forward until we are forced to stop building and hand the whole thing over the an Afghan force who will watch the flood waters of international aid recede and the oasis of development fall into ruin. We have not learned our lessons, but I think the Afghans have seen this storm pass before and have learned all the wrong lessons. I can only hope they will weather the storm far better this time, and the aid that has seemed to roll of the back of most of the nation and pooled in the pockets of new political powers will be invested in more worthy development.
However, much like the desert rain, the foreign aid is beginning to evaporate from this parched land back into the western banks from wince it came. The newly minted upper class fear their riches will not bear fruit in their land. Instead, remembering the long dry spells and chaos that have racked this development desert, they would rather water investment properties in Dubai, instead of gambling on growth at home. Already, the money markets of Kabul are rich with the speculations of financial crashes to come. As coalition forces plan their withdrawal, the familiar dry years of old loom on the horizon.
excellent writing! very poetic. Tolstoy would approve.
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