We recently took a trip across the river into Beshud District to the village of Little Barabad to photograph the old caves that line the northern shore of the Kabul River.

The people of Little Barabad are Kuchi tribesmen who are dirt poor and from a different tribe than the Shinwari’s who live up the river in the village of Big Barabad. Because the elders from these two villages cannot agree on anything, Little Barabad suffers and cannot spend its NSP (National Solidarity Program) funds on building a well or making other infrastructure improvements. The NSP money comes from the World Bank, and each household receives $2,000. However, this money can only be spent on projects that collectively benefit the village. The only recognized village in this area is Big Barabad.
The San Diego sister cities project is scheduled to build a foot bridge over the Kabul River, which would allow the kids from Little Barabad to attend school. There is a large school located just 300 meters away on the Jalalabad side of the river, but it is a one-hour drive by road. The people of Little Barabad do not have a vehicle or much of a road, for that matter, so their children are unable to attend school.
San Diego and the La Jolla Rotary Club have been very active in Jalalabad, which is a sister city to San Diego. How that happened remains a mystery, but they have invested a substantial amount of money in Nangarhar University and Jalalabad. Here is the current method of crossing the Kabul River, and the reason why a footbridge will be such a good deal. When you look at this float, keep in mind the river is swift, and these folks aren’t swimmers.

One goal of today’s trip was to get a proper picture of my new SOMA FM t-shirt to send to their website. Inshallah, they will post it, so getting the pistol in frame was important. From looking at my fellow donors at the Soma FM site I’m sure to be the only one who even owns a gun. Soma is based out of San Francisco, so I’m sure they’ll find the pic of an armed American to be innately disturbing. Guns = authority = bad to them. To me, guns represent keeping authority in check, and are good. Plus, there is a war going on here, and even though it is easy to avoid drama, one must be prepared. Be friendly to everyone you meet, but always have a plan to kill them. That’s a Marine motto that is worth remembering in this line of work.


The village kids love to have their pictures taken and always enjoy it when we come by to hike up to the caves. We hook them up with a bottled water and a dollar each for being our guides. See how blond the kid in the middle of the photograph above is? You see that a lot of that is in Nangarhar Province. The Soviets kept their presence relatively quiet while they were here and even had an R&R camp in Jalalabad. They also allowed their troops to leave the base and enter the bazaar, where they could support the local economy. I go to the bazaar all the time myself, and the local merchants seem to enjoy it when an international visitor stops in to chat with them and buy their goods.
Many of the locals think our troops are cowards because they only see them in armored trucks racing through the town and pointing weapons at anyone who they think is too close to them. The Soviets flooded the bazaar when they were off duty, and I believe our troops and the Afghan people would both benefit if our military adopted the same liberty policy as the Soviets. Getting close to the locals is a good thing, and it is a basic tenet of our counterinsurgency doctrine. Judging from all the blond and red-headed kids we see in Jalalabad, some of the Russians got a little too close to the locals, which is a dangerous game to play in Pashtun lands.


The bats were “nishta” or all gone this time because they seem to occupy the caves during the heat of summer. We will have to wait until next year to get a good picture of the bats. I