By Dawn Lloyd
Editor’s Note: Dawn Lloyd is a guest columnist that spends most of the year in Kabul, Afghanistan. Throughout the term, she’ll be sharing her experiences living in Kabul with Ethos. Any opinions she expresses are solely hers and are not necessarily held by the editorial staff.
Her other entries can be found here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8
The most common question I’m asked is, “What will happen in 2014 when we leave Afghanistan?” Perhaps if I didn’t live here, I might have an opinion on the topic. But as with many things, the more personal experience one has with Afghanistan, the less certain one’s opinions become.
There are many theories about what will happen. The Taliban will return. The country will fall back into civil war among the various warlords. The current government will continue to hold the country insofar as it does now, although attacks will increase. The current government will hold Kabul, but the rest of the country will fall to the Taliban, or to civil war among the warlords. The Pashtuns will come back to power. The Tajiks will maintain their current level of power. (President Karzai is Pashtun, but the Tajiks have a high level of representation in the current government.)
Afghans, at least those in Kabul, discuss politics freely and often. However, I’ve heard little consensus among them as to what they expect will happen. A few optimistically proclaim that they think things will remain much as they are. Nevertheless, our students enroll in as many classes as possible, and when advised that they need to cut back, they explain that they need to finish as much as possible before 2014. I’m an examiner for the IELTS English exam (the British version of the TOEFL test,) and we have seen an increase in test takers whose goal is to get a visa to nearly any other country.
If I had to pick the most common prediction among the Afghans I speak with, it would be that they expect Kabul to remain relatively peaceful, aside from the periodic attacks, but the rest of the country to fall back into civil war among various warlords, the Taliban, and any other competing factions. A few months ago, while driving through the city, I asked one of our security escorts what he thought would happen in 2014. He told me he expected the warlords to go back to fighting in the countryside while the government concentrated its energy on Kabul. Then he began a rundown of which parts of the city had been, and still did, belong to which tribe. Since I don’t share the Afghans’ ability to recognize tribes, I asked what tribe he was and learned he was Tajik. He pointed out the area we were driving though, (the south side of town where the university is located) as Hazara territory, and explained that he’d have been afraid to venture into this part of town for fear of being killed, but that now all tribes move freely throughout the city. He was one of the optimistic ones who expected Kabul to stay this way.
Of course, the expats know even less of the future than the nationals do. The university has assured us that, in the event that we need to evacuate, we will not lose our jobs and will return when things stabilize. I have my visa for India, providing me with one more exit port besides the standard Dubai or Istanbul route. When I first came to the country, I was advised to keep $1000 – $2000 cash on hand in case of emergency, and this practice is relatively common. Even if not currently needed for evacuation, credit cards are extremely rare and risky to use due to the risk of credit card numbers being stolen. ATMs exist in a few isolated locations, but they seem to be out of order almost as often as they work, so keeping cash on hand is a wise idea even if we are not under any imminent threat of danger or evacuation.
In short, everyone talks about what will happen, and most people worry, but the reality is no one knows, and even the most educated guesses seem to be little more than that.
About the author: Dawn Lloyd is an American who got bored and set out to find adventure. Four continents later, she’s settled in Kabul where she teaches English at the American University of Afghanistan. She is Editor in Chief for The Colored Lens magazine and writes speculative fiction, a list of which can be found on her personal site.