While everyone is reeling from President Karzai’s comments in his speech of 10 March and his remarks a few days later in Helmand province, the Ulema Council has released a statement that adds salt to the freshly opened wounds. By using the term kafir (infidel) in reference to US and NATO personnel, they have raised the level of rhetoric from inflammatory to incendiary.

Here is the treatment in the 17 March 2013 edition of Daily Outlook Afghanistan;

Ulema Council’s Inflammatory Statement

It will be curious to see how this story is handled in the Western press. Outlook Afghanistan seems to view this as crisis manufacturing in the run-up to the elections in 2014. The Ulema comments certainly won’t foster public opinion toward increasing NATO troop or funding commitments after 2014.

Last week saw the addendum to Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book Little America as USAID handed the work to complete the Kajaki Dam project over to the Afghan government.

This week, it was a major current in the book Ghost Wars that saw a major twist in the news headlines. The Unocal trans-Afghanistan pipeline that played so strongly in the activities in Steve Coll’s book was upstaged by the announcement of the agreement that will see the completion of the pipeline connecting Iran and Pakistan, skirting Afghanistan’s southern border. The agreement flies in the face of current sanctions directed against Iran by the United States who maintain that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons technology.

Just when you thought politics in this part of the world could not get any more complex. Right at the time when US and Pakistan relations have cooled enough to allow land transport for all the materials the US wants to withdraw from Afghanistan over the next few years.

On the brighter side, maybe we can view this as an easing of the strain in the relationship between Sunni and Shia elements.

I first saw this story reported by Al Jazeera;

Pakistan defies US with gas pipeline to Iran

I was planning on sending home my copy of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book Little America several months back. Instead, today it passed into the hands of the the fifth reader. I am glad to have chosen the hardbound copy. It may go through many more readings before it leaves Kandahar Airfield.

Last week the book’s author wrote an article for the Washington Post describing what is probably the last episode of USAID involvement in the development of the Kajaki Dam on the Helmand River. This dam dates back to US development aid to Afghanistan in the 1950s and was part of the irrigation scheme devised by the Morrisson-Knudson firm. The dam construction was completed in 1953. Two of three turbine generators were installed in 1975 with the goal of providing hydroelectric power for the city of Kandahar.

Now, sixty years after the dam’s completion, USAID is walking away from the project. They will task the Afghan state electric company with installation of the problematic third turbine and fund them for the remaining work which is estimated to cost 70 million US dollars. The area of the dam and access roads have been secured at the cost of the lives of more than fifty US troops. Security concerns will be passed to the Afghans for the completion of the project.

This is an embarrassing conclusion to the story of the largest monument to American development aid to Afghanistan. I am sure that other readers of Little America will want to read Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s description of the hand-over of the project as it appeared in the Washington Post on 04 March 2013.

I received an email request from the creator of my favorite Afghanistan film, Afghanistan – touch down in flight. Lukas Augustin is seeking initial funding for another film, this one documenting the work done by Tom Little in Nuristan.

Let me excerpt the details in his words;

I am at the moment doing a follow up with people who embedded our first short film Afghanistan – Touch down in flight. A lot has happened since then and we have been on many different smaller and bigger projects but this one is new and different for us and we hope you can help us.

Almost a year ago now we were asked by a PBS producer from New York to make our first feature documentary about a man who lived for more than three decades in Afghanistan to deliver eye care to many especially in remote villages. After Tom Little accessed Nuristan for several times, (one of the remotest regions in Afghanistan) he and his team were murdered. 
We met the widow Libby Little in New York and interviewed several others and with archive footage and some of our previous stuff we made our first trailer. We hope to get enough pledges by people from around the world in order to go back to Afghanistan and shoot that film. 
We think Tom Little’s story needs to be told. We want to see what is this man’s legacy but not only that we want to show what drove that man to dedicate his life to the people of Afghanistan. We also want to raise the question of what will be left of the work of thousands of NGOs and humanitarian aid when the foreign forces leave in 2014. Was it sustainable or will this country descend into chaos again?
As we also showed in Touch down in flight we want to go beyond making a conventional documentary but we want to use also an artistic approach, we want to try new techniques and we hope to present both the Western as well as the Afghan side well.

If you have viewed Afghanistan – touch down in flight you can appreciate the significance of having Augustin Pictures return to Afghanistan on another film making venture. If you have not seen the film, there is a link on the Kickstarter page that let’s you view in HD. Here is the Kickstarter page;

Kickstarter page for The Hard Places

Let me pass along some other Augustin Pictures links;

Vimeo page

Facebook page

Lukas Augustin page

Lukas Augustin blog

I hope that you might pass along these links to your friends and associates who have an interest in Afghanistan and film. Afghanistan – touch down in flight captured the beauty of this country which called me back here to work after visits here almost forty years previous. I can only think that The Hard Places will be an equally impressive film.