Door to Afghanistan is still open

The words were not the ones you expect to hear from your wife over lunch on an April day.
“Promise me you won’t go there again,” said Connie.
I concentrated on the food in front of me.
We’d been talking about an attack that day on two journalists attempting to cover the election in Afghanistan. An AP photographer — an immensely talented German woman of 48 — had been killed, and a former AP bureau chief in Kabul had been seriously wounded.
My wife’s words echoed in my head: “Promise me you won’t go there again.”
The attack had occurred in Khost province, an area familiar to the Indiana National Guard.
Jay Schools administrator Jeremy Gulley has served there. So has Jay County’s Purdue extension educator Larry Temple. So has Brian Williamson of Museum of the Soldier. So have many other Hoosier members of the Guard.
By their standards, my Afghanistan experience had been tame.
A couple of weeks rather than a tour of duty, and as a civilian trying to do some training. A walk in the park.
And most of my experience was in a much safer region. Mazar e-Sharif where I was working for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting is not Pashtun country. It’s more Tajik than Afghan in some ways. The warlords of the Northern Alliance are still revered there. It’s much safer.
But try telling that to your wife.
I ate quietly, trying to think of ways to reassure her.
Sure, I had taken a different route every time I walked between the hotel and the office.
Sure, I didn’t go out at night unless accompanied by at least one other American and an Afghan interpreter/journalist/fixer that we knew.
And the hotel was safe, if uncomfortable. My biggest danger came from a propane space heater in my room that gave off fumes. My biggest concern had been staying warm enough.
Then again, I knew how easy it was to get too comfortable. How easily you could find yourself in a risky position surrounded by people you didn’t really know. I’d made those mistakes way too many times in other countries on other projects.
I’d ended up in a decrepit orchard in Moldova drinking wine at sundown out in the middle of nowhere with men and women who said they were journalists but whom I barely knew.
I’d found myself — way too many times — in the back seat of a car in the Caucasus that was traveling too fast because the apparently inebriated official driver wanted to get home to see his girlfriend. And then we turned a corner and found the highway full of sheep.
I’d stood at the roadside while the KGB of Belarus searched the trunk of the car for contraband in hopes of having an excuse to kick me out of the country and arrest my friends.
So when it came to reassuring words, I was hopeless.
And still, her words hung in the air: “Promise me you won’t go there again.”
Was I wrong not to give her that promise?
Probably.
But I’m not yet prepared to close that door.[[In-content Ad]]