Preparing to leave for Afghanistan.

It took us two days to get there. We flew from Baghdad to Qatar, on the Persian Gulf, on June 2nd. We stayed in Qatar overnight and flew to Kabul, the Afghan capital, the next morning. The top two pictures are sunset in Baghdad the night before we departed. We basically stayed up all night--our "show time" for the flight was 0120 in the morning! The last shot is the flight line in Qatar when we arrived there. We left Qatar about 0745 on the 3rd.

My first look at Afghanistan.

The gray sky, we were to discover, is caused by dust--which is pretty much everywhere!

Kabul Airport

Driving through downtown Kabul. In the third shot you can see how the build houses into the hillside. The houses don't have running water or underground sewers. The trade-off: live at the top of the hill and haul your water up in cans and buckets, or live at the bottom near the water source, and have your neighbors' sewage run down hill at you!

Bagram, Afghanistan. They told us that Afghanistan is the 5th poorest country on earth, and when you see Bagram, you know what that means. The way of life for some of the tribes here hasn't changed since the 7th century--that's seventh, not seventeenth!
Those are mud houses in the pictures. The whole village reminded me of "Bedrock" in the Flintstones!

Miscellaneous shots from Khandahar, Afghanistan. 1) My folks from the Khandahar office. 2) Presenting a medal to one of my folks. 3) This building is where my folks work. It's nick-named "the TLS"--Taliban's Last Stand. It's where the last of the Taliban fighters in Khandahar holed up in 2001. The hole in the roof was made by an Air Force bomb--It's what convinced the Taliban to surrender! Yes, we were standing on the roof! 4) "Jingle Trucks." These garishly decorated trucks are all over Afghanistan. The Afghans regard the decorations as signs of prosperity, and prosperity as a sign of competence. Therefore, whoever has the most decorative truck, must be the most competent, so he's the one people want to hire!

Near Bagram, the fields are still littered with wreckage from the Russian invasion and occupation (1979-1989). The last photo shows two guys on top of a hill--they're clearing mines...the old fashioned way, by probing the ground with a long rod. They don't get paid enough!

Ur of the Chaldeans.

Home of the Patriarch Abraham! These shots show us descending into the tombs of the Chaldean kings; standing on top of the walls of Abraham's house (Saddam restored them); an example of Cuneiform, the oldest known form of writing; the Ziggurat of Ur; and me standing with our guide, Dait.

Sandstorm! May 6, 2006. We could see it rolling in from behind our building like a special effect from "The Mummy!" The sky turned orange! As you can see, it blows everywhere!