Afghanistan & Egypt in the time of the plague

[netllama]

The pix of the Afghans sitting on top of the plane at a gate at Kabul airport reminded me of buses and trucks with people and goats on top... very sad. One thing that travel does for you, as netlama knows well, is that you get exposed to real people in places that become real to you, too (of course that depends on how long you stay and how close to local life you travel). As a result, you feel their pain when disaster strikes. I spent three months and traveled all over wild places in Afghanistan in the early 70s. I loved the country and the people, despite the huge gulf in our cultures and standards of living. There has been so much pain since, in so many of the locations I was fortunate enough to have visited while the country was still free and independent.

Indeed. The worst part (for me) is that all the recent photos in the news of the airport (the tarmac, inside the terminal, on the streets nearby) are all too familiar for me, as I was there 6 months ago. That airport was easily the most intense, bonkers airport I'd ever been through, both in terms of security, but also procedures and layout. Unlike literally just about every other commercial airport on the planet, there is no driving up to the terminal, or parking. Everyone has to get out of the car, with all their luggage, and haul it across the airport grounds, to the terminal. And that's only after they've cleared two layers of security to ensure that they haven't brought weapons/explosives with them. Once in the terminal, there are 3 more rounds of security, where they repeatedly do ID checks, and x-rays, and pat downs. Then just before actually boarding the plane, there's yet another person verifying that the name on the boarding pass matches the passport, and that the passport photo matches the human holding it.

Last week, when seeing those photos, I kept thinking, the situation has clearly gone down the toilet if all those people are able to get out onto the tarmac like that. I had to clear so many layers of security to get out to the tarmac to board my flights (i flew twice out of that airport, once domestic, and then international when leaving the country), and still there were guys with huge guns around ready to shoot if I decided to wander somewhere that I didn't belong. I also clearly remember the massive concrete blast walls around the airport perimeter which are were so noticeable in a few photos and that horrifying recent video where someone was passing their infant up to the US military person on the other side of the wall.

All of it is horrifying and feels so real. If anyone has the means, please donate to one of the numerous reputable groups that are collecting funds to get people out of the country. The clock is definitely ticking before everyone's attention drifts away to the next disaster, and Afghanistan falls off the news.