I met a friendly Canadian in Terminal 2 at Dubai International Airport. We were lining up for the flight to Kabul.
“Where are you staying?” he asked as we shuffled toward the gate.
“Dunno,” I answered. He twisted his face into a look that was one part incredulity and two parts mad dad.
“Have you ever been to a place like this?” he asked. I glanced at the card he’d handed me: Colonel Michael McLean, Canadian Defence Attaché.
“A place like what?”
“A place where they’ll kidnap you and cut your throat. Listen to me,” he said sternly. “You need to stay at the Serena Hotel. It’s safe there.”
It was an audacious recommendation. The city’s “safest” accommodation had recently become its bloodiest.
The Serena was built from the bombed out skeleton of the sixty-year-old Kabul Hotel. After President Hamid Karzai presided over its opening in 2005, the city’s only five-star hotel became a popular gathering place for well-paid aid workers, security contractors, and consultants eager to escape the dust and chaos. Kabul was a shambles, but the lucky few who made it through security at the hotel’s iron gate could enjoy two fine restaurants, a co-ed pool, an air-conditioned health club, and a spa specializing in Elemis brand skin therapy. From the rose garden, guests could gaze at Sher Darwaza, the arid mountainside where returned refugees built huts from the scree. Rooms start at $280 (US). The Serena was, as one of its press releases proclaimed, “an oasis of luxury in a war-ravaged city.” Perhaps that’s what made it a target.
Last January, suicide bombers stormed the hotel. One of them exploded at the Serena’s gate. During the ensuing confusion, two of his pals charged into the compound, armed with machine guns and grenades. One marched through the marbled lobby into the Serena’s gym and spa, shooting at everyone he saw. Seven guests and staff were killed before he was captured. It was the first suicide attack on a soft target in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban.
I didn’t need the defence attaché’s encouragement to visit the Serena, however. I had read dozens of accounts of the attack, and was struck by one particular detail: the attackers didn’t hunt down the Norwegian foreign minister (a guest at the time) or any other politician. Instead, they laid siege to the hedonistic heart of the oasis. Why would insurgents choose the heavily guarded Serena when there were easy marks throughout the city? It was as though the building itself, with its high walls and unheard-of luxuries, had been the real target. If so, the Serena and places like it had a story to tell about the relationship between architecture and violence.
Comments (3 comments)
ross Hermiston: My dream would be to be a professor of a compulsory course for all Canadian Members of Parliament. I would assign the excellent, informative essay by Robert Montgomery, THE ARCHIPELAGO OF FEAR, to the class as compulsory reading. I would require them to write an essay on the reasons why we should abandon our complicity with the American - Nato dominated International Security Assistance Force. I would also require them to comment specifically on the following statments by Mr. Montgomery:
(1)"I was fascinated and troubled by the possibility that foreign aid might be helping remodel Kabul into an even more dangerous place."
(2)"During the Soviet occupation, the Russians were despised for situating their bases in urban areas, effectively using locals as shields and shutting down parts of the city. It had occurred to many Afghans I spoke to over the next two weeks that the West was essentially doing the same thing. "We expected the international forces not to follow the same mistakes as the Soviets," said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an architect and deputy chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission."
(3)Shravan Kashyap, a long-time UN hand, told me over an English breakfast in the rose garden that he was working on a project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, to improve refugee settlements near Kandahar. CIDA was doing fantastic work, he said.
"So what are those settlements like?" I asked as he munched on his toast.
"Oh," he said matter-of-factly, "I'm not actually allowed to go there."
(4)After seven years and billions dollars in aid, Kabul still lacked a fully functioning sewage system. The streets were a moonscape. Electricity flowed to only a few neighbourhoods, only every second night, and only for a few short hours. Most homes lacked running water. Most of the three million–odd refugees and returnees crowding the city lived in informal settlements with no services whatsoever.
(5)What do you want?" I took to asking people. "Security," answered many. When I pressed them, I realized that they were talking mostly about jobs, food, and a way to take care of their families.
November 16, 2008 12:27 EST
RickW: I simply cannot believe our politicos to be as naive as Hitler supposedly was when his commanders assured him that whole divisions were still in reserve, when they were in fact non-existant.
I can only conclude that there is another, far more sinister, agenda behind all this. I mean, in this age of instant communications, how can it be anything else? November 16, 2008 17:08 EST
Anonymous: I'm currently under a UN contract here in Afghanistan. And although my duty station means I reside in the North-Eastern Region, I've spent a fair share of my time in Kabul - mostly in transit to and fro Dubai's Terminal 2.
Names like the Serena (where I had brunch for the first time precisely one week ago today - Friday being the national day of rest) and the unnamed compound where the author stayed (adorned with a swimming pool and bunker bar playing background to a United Colours of Benetton ad) being an only too familiar reality of my time here. While the rare escapes into the cities various rose gardens and strolls through commercial streets leave me with a sense of anxiousness (or, even worse, worry that I’m not being anxiousness enough). Since I arrived a few months back, a South African teacher, two British NGO workers, and one French NGO worker have been shot, in broad morning day light on the streets of Kabul. Their crime, coming here wearing their hearts on their sleeves and being precisely where their attackers knew they would be. Regardless of, the effectiveness of their work (of which I admittedly know nothing about) or the overhead costs of their respective organizations, was the punishment fitting?
The author leaves an ambiguous message here, one that I have no clear answer for: Given that these architectural monstrosities breed suspicion, rage, and inevitably violence ; yet, as the good Colonel so clearly pointed-out, death by IED’s and well aimed bullets are a relatively common (and escalating) occurrence here – how does one mediate immediate security concerns with constructing a city that will one day no longer require heinous rolls of barbered wired perched atop every second wall and at least one automatic weapon in sight regardless of where you stand? Who lays down their shields/weapons first?
(Please note that following the authors suit I’m discussing only international civilian daily realities, and not those of the various international militaries. That in itself is a whole other story…)
December 11, 2008 23:48 EST