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AuthorSAHunt t1_j55tgrf wrote

Before you come up with another joke, this area receives blizzards pretty regularly, and there are plenty of innocent people there just trying to live their lives in what is basically a mix of prehistoric ruins and a Fallout 3 dirt wasteland of Soviet warfare. Lots of women, old people, and kids who have very little to do with the Taliban and have probably never even met them. Afghanistan is the size of Texas, and the west has been kicking them around since the Victorian era. Arthur Conan Doyle's Watson was an Afghanistan veteran way back in the Sherlock books.

I spent a year there in 2010-2011, and it's not all camels and durka-durka.

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neuromancer64 t1_j565ijx wrote

I was in Mazar-e-sharif in 2012. Those baby camels are so fucking cute.

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AuthorSAHunt t1_j56g33n wrote

I was in Herat and, for the last two or so months, Kabul. I didn't see any camels, but at the bazaar, I saw a canary with what looked like Beatles hair. Cute little guy! And a wild dog down by the airfield that looked like a corgi with long coyote legs. And a camel spider on a door handle by the Lithuanians' office. Fuck that.

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swing_axle t1_j56in4u wrote

Gloster canary!

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AuthorSAHunt t1_j56mchb wrote

Aren't they adorable? He was in a cage, hanging from the eaves of one of the shops. I really want one, both because he reminds me of my time there, and because they don't sing very loud. I love cockatiels and cockatoos but I can't handle the screaming.

Sometimes I feel like I went to Narnia. I don't have much to prove I was there except a photo album, and since I'm the one that took all the photos and I'm not in any of them, I have a hard time making it feel real. I wish I had a little Narnia bird of my own that I can look at and remember that it happened.

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Anon_throwawayacc20 t1_j56smsf wrote

It's a shame Afghanistan is so plunged by conflict in all the years of my life I've known it.

Geographically it's one of the most interesting regions on earth due to its mountainous terrain. (There is a reason a lot of buddhist monks went there to meditate)

I don't know if I will see it free in my lifetime, sadly. But I hope my children and grandchildren can see Afghanistan in a different light.

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AuthorSAHunt t1_j56t6pm wrote

Yeah, oh shit, the landscape is gorgeous. I got to see the western quadrant from the open door of a helicopter and it was like flying over a country from a fantasy novel.

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petit_cochon t1_j57we67 wrote

Oh yeah, I read a memoir once about Afghanistan where the author described that almost nobody he encountered had actually heard of 9/11. They had no idea why Americans were there.

It's just sad.

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38384 OP t1_j5ecks9 wrote

Many parts of the country are extremely remote that's why

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40mm_of_freedom t1_j579yxf wrote

A buddy of mine was in a very remote region and met a sheep herder that asked if he was Russian. That was like 2013.

The rural afghans barely recognize Afghanistan as a country. They recognize their family is tribe we’ll before a country.

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