Sleepless @keargonza-blog - Tumblr Blog

Afghan children watch through a window frame as the director of the World Food Program visits their school in the village of Yakawlang near Bamyan, June 27, 2002. The WFP helped to improve their school, and have numerous other projects in the village. © Natalie Behring Photography http://www.nataliebehring.com/

The much-publicised anti-Taleban ‘uprising’ in Ghazni’ s Andar district is almost one year old, yet no side has managed to consolidate its control over the area. Violence has not let up during the last 12 months and the year ahead looks set to be just as bloody. Our author, Emal Habib, has been closely following developments in one of the most complicated and controversial stories of the Afghan war and says people’s discontent with both warring parties continues as local power brokers try to revive tribal and jihad-era factional differences in order to control the area. He concludes that the transformation of the once proudly hailed ‘popular uprising’ into what some are now calling an ‘American(-made) uprising’ could be a bad omen for the prospect of real popular movements in Afghanistan.

#Afghan #Andar uprising #Transition #local police #ALP #Arbakai

via PhotoToaster, using these settings.

#Chicago #millennial park

From one Crisis to the Next

Fiscal cliff, sequestration, forced furloughs... and on the all important day when our congressmen and politicians should have stayed up all night to find a solution to the crises they created, they all skipped town.

We are barely even surprised. We are barely even disgusted. What a travesty.

#sequestration #congress #fiscal cliff #politics

afghanistaninphotos

The pomegranates of Helmand are rightfully regarded by Afghans to be the best in the world

Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

#ozymandias #buildings #architecture