They haven't heard over here about U.S. bigots' fantasy of President Obama's secret Muslim identity. He bombs them and permits the burning of Korans, so they burn him and the Floridian preacher in effigy.

The 4th April saw the murder of two U.S. soldiers by an Afghan policeman in the north, and smaller protests in other cities. But the United Nations decided not to evacuate, as had been quietly under consideration. And in Kabul, where President Karzai had ordered the use of force against any demonstration with the "potential for violence," nothing was reported in the news or observed by me on the 4th. 

People had been warning on the 3rd that Kabul had been "too quiet" for months, this being a sign of likely danger. But the line between informed speculation and superstition is thin. Nobody knows what to expect. Rage at the recent photos of American soldiers posing with the corpses of civilians they've killed for sport never materialized. Instead fury at the burning of a book caught foreigners by surprise.

Kabul is a city of millions stuck between huge, jagged mountains, some with snow atop them. The roads are jammed with cars, but the cars are old and many of the roads are dirt and extremely rough. The air is filled with dust, not to mention the highest content of fecal matter in the world. 

Open drainage ditches line the roads. The buildings, mostly three or four stories high, look like they've all seen better days, even the new ones that are under construction. 

Also—of relevance to posting this story—there is no internet faster than molasses for anybody outside the U.S. military.

This place could be a beautiful city unlike any other. And making it such, or restoring it to such, could employ tens of thousands of unemployed and hungry people. The money to make that happen could easily be found in the world, and wouldn't top one percent of what the United States has spent on this war. But to whom exactly would the money go?

U.S. "reconstruction" efforts and Afghan government efforts are notoriously corrupt. Much of the money never reconstructs anything other than fabulous vacation homes for officials on the take. NGOs providing services in Afghanistan are also famous for their high overheads, not to mention their arrogant imposition of outside visions on the local people. The only way to invest in credible development here seems to be on a small scale through Afghan groups carefully identified and monitored but permitted to pursue their own goals. One place to learn more is http://jobsforafghans.org 

I'm here with a group of international advocates of nonviolence assembled by Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and a group of young Afghan artists—photographers and film makers—at the Open Society (an Afghan organization not related in any way to George Soros' operation). We're also meeting with young members of Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, and Hakim, one of their organizers, is providing his wonderful interpreting services at meetings in Dari for those of us whose Dari is badly limited.

We've been navigating streets and traffic that make any other country I've been to seem tame. An Afghan is driving, of course, and driving here is probably a skill requiring more training than anywhere else. The horn must be used frequently, and sometimes the voice. An old man kneels, head-down, in the traffic and everyone drives around him. Eight very angry men approach our van on foot. It turns out we've just banged our side-mirror into theirs. After five or ten minutes of conversation with our driver, they go on their way. Afghan soldiers are everywhere too, and in some neighborhoods there are checkpoints, but they have tended to be friendly.

Below are accounts of some of the people we spoke with on 4 April. Of course, this is only one day, but I'm already beginning to draw some tentative conclusions, such as these: 

1. War propaganda for the inhabitants of the war zone is as big an industry as war propaganda in the far off imperial "homeland." The United States pushes the message of its good intentions and the threat of the Taliban here, as at home, through the media, and through the funding of colleges and NGOs, not to mention the Pentagon's fake FaceBook members, etc.

2. Almost nobody wants the Taliban back in power; almost everybody remembers its horrors. But only a minority recognizes the power of this huge anti-Taliban majority to resist the Taliban.

3. Almost everybody wants the U.S. occupation to end, but many do not want it to end right away. The latter group is slanted toward but by no means entirely made up of those better off, those financially dependent on the occupation, and those in Kabul as compared to some rural areas.

4. Almost everyone who is worried about what will come after this occupation views the United States as duplicitous and self-interested, but just not as evil as the Taliban. At best, they believe the United States is doing some good for its own unrelated reasons. This does not mean that many necessarily know of former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's pride in having armed the mujahedeen and provoked the Soviet Union into "its Vietnam War," or his dismissal of the Taliban as of minor significance compared to the fate of the Soviet Union—despite the horrific civil war that came after the Soviet withdrawal, or of the amount of funding the United States currently pays the Taliban for safe passage around the country.

5. Nobody I've heard of has a good word to say for Karzai's government. People recognize their ability to overturn that government should the occupation end.

6. The majority of Afghans are young, and the young are best able to envision change.

7. Afghans are extremely friendly and want the same basic things in their lives that Americans want.

8. Those who are advancing a deep understanding of nonviolence in this nation whose living population has not known peace, those who are teaching the possibility of alternatives to both the Taliban and the United States military, and of multi-ethnic unity, are courageously offending powerful interests on all sides and are onto the only real solution.

http://warisacrime.org/content/afghanistan-country-not-war