The car is quickly herded to the side of the street by army personnel pointing automatic weapons. As we come to a screeching halt, dozens of trucks with armed personnel whiz past us. For a moment I think the Taliban have returned. But my driver screams, “No, it is President Hamid Karzai’s cavalcade.” The airport has electronic jammers in place, air space is frozen and US security guards that protect the president of the world’s most battle ridden country, Afghanistan, appear. All heavily armed and ready to kill for this very vulnerable leader. This is not my first time here. I have been to this very beautiful country many times, a lot of those in very troubled eras.

My last trip to Afghanistan was in October of 2001, shortly after the World Trade Center bombings. The world watched as the US prepared to provide air support to the Northern Alliance to take back the reigns of Afghanistan from the Taliban. Months of air bombardment and invasion by ground followed. I came across dozens of fighters who had lost their limbs due to landmines as they tried to penetrate the Taliban frontlines. That was eight years ago. The US helped win back Afghanistan but, soon after the victory, took everything out of the hands of the Northern Alliance and dismantled them: this after they had fought from 1982 to 2001 to protect their country.

Now, Afghanistan stands at a crossroads again. The US army seems to control and run Afghanistan. US personnel are everywhere. The Afghan army is tiny at the moment – only 90,000 – and the US wants to bring troop levels up to 1,34,000 by 2011. Now, this is a very slow increase in a country where most people can take a Kalashnikov apart for you in minutes. A 12-year-old boy taught me how to open a pistol for servicing.

The country is full of weapons. But the troops you see being trained are so raw, that they seem a far cry from actual fighters. The US army’s attempt to alienate the Northern Alliance was one of their biggest policy failures. The new Afghan troops are only trained for three months before they are thrown into this war. All this when a trained Northern Alliance sits on the flanks, still waiting to be included in the main stream of the Afghan forces.

They are fighters who are today unemployed and struggling. So far the fighters have been listening to the elders in the valley, like Haji Taijuddin, father-in-law of Commander Massoud, and Atiqullah Baryalai, former vice-defence minister of the Northern Alliance. They have both been asking for restraint. The biggest challenge will come when these former Northern Alliance troops begin to attack the Americans in the north of Afghanistan.

It must be acknowledged that the Americans are also working very hard to build this country. But they only like to work in areas where there is trouble; so they can’t work. The places where they can work, are not part of the agenda, so almost nothing happens there. (In the Panjsher, one of the most peaceful places in north Afghanistan, we see a road being constructed at a cost of 28 million USD. It has taken more than eight years, and is far from over.)

At the tomb site of Commander Massoud, where we were launching a photo exhibition, I met a US soldier named Ashton Goodman and her colleague, Stacie. A few days later, I heard from Stacie that Ashton, who had already done two rounds of duty in Iraq and was on her second round in Afghanistan, had died in an explosion, trying to rebuild this war torn country. She was getting ready to leave the military and study biology, but she could never make it. It is not that the US is not putting in enough, just that its strategy of achieving its goals is off the mark. The soldiers on the ground are committed to helping the Afghans, but little is being achieved in terms of ‘winning hearts and minds’. And so, Afghanistan is continuing to see casualties. In my trip this time, I also made my journey towards the north, near Tajikistan. I was shocked as I travelled back on this road after eight years. The state of this road is as bad as it used to be during the war, and was under the control of the Taliban. I asked a very senior official why it had not been constructed. He said that road work had been slow, and it would happen in the next few years.

Not only had the roads not been built, but bridges over rivers were lying broken. During the days of the war, I had to drive across on a truck with horses leading us, as they knew the best way to take us across a flowing river. This time, the water level was higher and we had to use a boat created with truck tubes. I could not believe that a simple bridge was apparently beyond American capacity to rebuild. It is a possibility that the US wants to keep the relationship between Tajikistan and Afghanistan a little distant, as Tajikistan is still close to Russia. But the people who helped the US win the war in Afghanistan do not deserve this.

Any expectation I had that Afghanistan will one day become a developed country with basic amenities has been shattered on this trip. Every part of Afghanistan I travelled to people recited poems about the history of Afghanistan, which has seen the English come and go, the Russians come and go, and are waiting on the fate of the Americans.

Any hope I had of seeing it become a peaceful country again has also been shattered. Personally, I hope to return to partner with a group of Afghans, and help educate a few children in the north who find it hard to compete on the international level. A very small effort in a country that is going to desperately need help as it slips further into chaos.

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