Kabul’s foreign-correspondent watering hole is much harder to find than the Yurakucho Denki Building. And notwithstanding signs in the Denki Building that say “Increased Security Measures Now Bring Implemented,” Kabul’s measures are more impressive.
“Gandamack Lodge,” I repeat to the driver of my 5-ton bulletproof Toyota Land Cruiser. “Gan-da-mack… Sherpur Square, next to UNHCR, near DHL… across from Iran Embassy visa office.”

The driver cranks across the boulevard into our sixth U-turn in as many minutes, cowing oncoming traffic with a short siren squawk. As we head into the square yet again, his colleague, who cradles an AK-47, radios base for guidance.

Base responds with advice obvious to anyone… except any three men in any car, armored or otherwise. So driver and I nod earnestly as the gunman translates: “He say stop for asking someone direction.”

Fortunately, Kabul abounds with “boy scouts” on every corner, just waiting to offer directions… or generate a lethal crossfire. “Gandamack?” the gunman asks the first armed group we meet.

Two arms swing up to point the way. “They saying ‘green gate over there,’ ” the gunman grins.

Even before three decades of war, the need to shield women from view made Kabul a city of high, blank walls and anonymous metal gates. Today, gates are thicker, walls are buttressed by Hesco-brand blast barriers, and no signs direct attackers to the few places an infidel can buy a pint.

As we stop just short of the green gate, the gunman hops out, quickly surveys the perimeter with his weapon then raps on the gate. Dark eyes appear inside as a metal slot opens. After a few words exchanged, the gate swings open, and a gunman emerges to join my guard in monitoring the busy street. The Land Cruiser lumbers into a dim archway sealed at the other end by a second gate. Once the outer gate clangs shut, mirrors on poles flash out to inspect the car’s underside.

“OK, can getting out now,” the driver says cheerily.
I’m ushered into a narrow vestibule with two doors and a small cashier’s window. The door locks behind me, and I wait sweating in the dark, confined space. Finally, a young Afghan appears at the window, smiling as he says, “Passport, please.”

Having confirmed I am indeed an adult, non-Muslim foreigner legally able to consume alcohol in Afghanistan, he buzzes the inner door open. “OK, you can buy a book of bar tickets from me – $20 cash.”

Blinking in the sunshine, I emerge in the garden courtyard of a grand but crumbling villa that would not seem out of place on Lake Como. But where in Italy a nymph might grace a fountain, Kabul presents a small cannon on wheels, a relic of the 19th-century Anglo-Afghan Wars.

It’s mid-April 2009 and I’ve been closeted for days in the gaudy bridal suite of a mid-size central Kabul hotel. I’ve come from Japan to write communication strategies for an Afghan electoral candidate… whose name professional discretion does not permit me to mention. Suffice to say, when you hang out your shingle as a speechwriter, work comes from the strangest places.

Mid-size and small hostelries became fashionable among Kabul visitors on Jan. 14, 2008. That was the day the Taliban blasted their way into the 220-room, 5-star Serena Hotel and massacred six foreigners, mostly in the fitness-club locker room.

The Intercontinental, Kabul’s luxury icon since 1969, was already shunned due to the magnificent view its hilltop location offered anyone wielding a rocket-propelled grenade. So “dispersal” became expat Kabul’s security buzzword.

My hotel apparently passed muster for U.N. staff, but I doubt security auditors would approve the suite I got. Floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides offered a dramatic, 180-degree panorama of the snow-capped Hindu Kush – and an equally fine field of fire from dozens of nearby buildings. Plus, the windows didn’t open, and the hotel had neither garden nor bar. After three days I felt exposed, confined and thirsty.

No matter how thirsty, though, a foreigner in Kabul dare not just stroll out in search of a drink. Even if you don’t meet the Taliban, chronic unemployment and ransom rates at $300,000 provide irresistible incentive for opportunistic kidnapping.

That’s why full-court-press for U.N. and embassy staff, the elite among Kabul expats, is a two-car convoy of bulletproof Land Cruisers manned by beefy foreign “security contractors.” Hailing from as far afield as Texas, Israel, Scotland and South Africa, many are veterans of Iraq.

As the guest of Afghans, I rated only local guns manning a single Land Cruiser – albeit one with very persuasive credentials. This was provided to relieve my claustrophobia, along with advice to limit travels to the supermarket and Kabul’s security-vetted eateries. And so I finally got to Gandamack.

Gandamack Lodge (www.gandamacklodge.co.uk) is Kabul’s de facto foreign correspondents’ club, and among few secure places three key needs are met under one roof: bed, beer and decent food.

Established by British TV cameraman Peter Jouvenal in 2001, shortly after the Taliban’s fall, Gandamack is named after the home of pulp-fiction hero Harry Flashman. Before moving to its current address in 2005, the Lodge was located in a villa said to be the former home of Osama bin Laden’s fourth wife.

Freed from the stuffy confines of my hotel, strolling about the flowering trees in Gandamack’s garden was a relief. Flying in from Delhi’s 45-degree heat, I expected more of the same. But at 1,800 meters above sea level and ringed by snow-capped peaks, Kabul in April was like the best of Golden Week in Japan. Struck by the rugged beauty of the place, I began to see why visitors back to Alexander the Great have raved about Kabul.

As the sun moved over the yardarm, I ventured up the stairs and through Gandamack’s front door in search of a drink. While surveying the lobby’s impressive display of antique weapons, I learned from the desk clerk that options were the adjacent restaurant/garden terrace or the cellar pub.
With its low ceilings and brick arches, the Hare and Hound Watering Hole feels like a bomb shelter – which in Kabul equates “cozy.” As the evening’s first customer there was ample time to befriend Kabul’s finest barman (admittedly, he has few competitors), a cheerful and engaging young man named Samim Zazai, whose dream is to study journalism in Canada.

Gradually the bar began to fill with a fascinating, end-of-the-universe clientele: a pair of grizzled, Gauloise-puffing French narcotics officers looking down the bar at a trio of “baba-cool” French aid workers in Afghan dress; the rosy-cheeked north-of-England lass who clears mines (“It’s jolly-good fun!”) and steers clear of the English clique huddled in the corner; the bearded and turbaned Boer farmer from the Limpopo (“For security contractors it’s better if you don’t stand out.”); the amiable Scottish fire chief of Kabul Airport; the sparkplug Aussie woman scriptwriter doing an Afghan TV soap opera; the voluble and funny Canadian colonel (ret’d.) who runs an NGO.

There are some 30,000 expats in Kabul, including diplomats, security personnel, aid workers, hordes of consultants and a bizarre assortment of others. According to a senior Afghan government source, including salaries, security and first-world imports, it costs $300,000 a year to maintain each of them.

Cautious by habit as a community, Kabul expats are not overly preoccupied with the city’s dangers. Stress comes more from being suffocated and frustrated by the security cocoon that restricts work and social life. Isolated and bored, they shuttle between Kabul’s dozen secure drinking places. Having jobs where alertness is indicated (like mine-clearing), few drink to excess, but most are eager to meet new people.

That makes Kabul’s bar scene fascinating and fun for the short-term visitor. But it’s an odd little universe. Bubbles don’t come thicker than the double layer of segregation imposed by security and the act of drinking alcohol in a Muslim country.

Still, with so much bar talk, plus blog chatter, Kabul’s “bush telegraph” buzzes with news from the “native quarter.”

Kabulis and expats alike seem to agree on one thing: the presidency of Hamid Karzai has been a failure. The machinery of Afghan government barely functions. Police prey on peasants. The army is near-toothless. Corruption is rife, from the judiciary on down. No matter how much money the “donor nations” pump in, no progress will be made unless and until government is fixed.

The consensus was that although Karzai himself may not have dirty hands, he can’t control corruption around him. Insiders say he is easily distracted and that weekly video conferences with George W. Bush inflated the size of his famous karakul hat.

It’s hard to find anyone who believes things will improve if Karzai is re-elected on Aug. 20 – but almost everyone believes he will be. Expats joke darkly that if Kabul were Saigon in 1963 the CIA would be soon paying a visit to President Diem.

Regardless of the election outcome, though, in a land that has not seen a bloodless transfer of power in 108 years, talking politics instead of shooting is a healthy development. And with 40 challengers running against Karzai there is talk aplenty.

Former foreign minister and ophthalmologist Abdullah Abdullah (who’s not my client) is seen as the only one who might force Karzai to a runoff. But in a land highly conscious of its multiethnicity, being half-Pashtun and half-Tajik is no advantage. So Pashtuns (the dominant ethnic group) see Abdullah as a Tajik, and vice-versa. This could leave the door open for a “none-of-the-above, compromise candidate.”

One certainty is that few Kabulis want the Taliban back.
“I used to love soccer,” said Yama, the 28-year-old in charge of my security arrangements, as we drove past posters for South Africa’s World Cup. “In the Taliban time, I was a teenager and I watched soccer every Saturday at the stadium. Then one day a mullah in a black Mercedes drove into the stadium followed by a Toyota pickup. The mullah lectured us about crime. Then they pulled a thief out of the truck, held him down and cut off his feet and hands. Now, even if I watch on TV, every time I see soccer I see only that image.”

“On the other hand,” the driver chipped in, “you could leave your bicycle anywhere and it never got stolen.” ❶