�10 nationalpost.com national post, Monday, February 7, 2011

H e i d i K i n g s t o n e

in Kabul

O n Jan. 28, 2011, a bomb went off at Finest super-market in Kabul, killing

six members of a prominent af-ghan family and injuring many others. For the city’s ex-pat com-munity, the tragedy served as a stark reminder that the place we now call home sits in the midst of a conflict zone. it is the kind of incident that shocks you back to reality, and out of the false sense of security you develop while liv-ing in a parallel universe.

that same day, before the car-nage, i had planned to have a small party at my house. i had spent the previous day buying flowers, organizing food and en-suring there was enough diesel in the bukhary (heater) to warm up the freezing room. When the bomb went off, a friend was on the way over with a delicious chocolate cake from the local lebanese restaurant. Food for 20 people, including two almond and pear tarts, mini pizzas and mini quiches, all cooked under the aus-pices of a Frenchman, clocked in at $350; but then, there is a res-taurant here that charges $4.00 for coffee. ex-pat life is not cheap: as in other conflict zones, prices are inflated by the presence of a foreign community with lots of cash. in more ways than one, ex-pats form a captive market.

the chawkidors, unarmed men who guard the house, were primed for the guests’ arrival. then sud-denly everyone was on lockdown, unable to leave their home be-cause of the intense security con-cern. Whenever an incident like this happens, it always feels like shutting the stable gates after the horse has bolted. a few people did eventually turn up at my house, and we each ended up eating a lot more canapés that any of us had intended.

the most insightful comment about the tragic attack on Fin-est was made to me days later by a French woman. “the attack on the un two years ago was an at-tack on the un,” she intoned in her mellifluous, heavily accented

english. “they knew they were a target. When there was an attack in the centre of town around the safi hotel, people con-cluded that was a fight between the pakistanis and the indians. but what brought the Finest at-tack home to many ex-pats is that everyone shops there.”

indeed, the supermarket stocks products from imported food to shampoo, catering to well-paid for-eigners and well-heeled afghans. all the ex-pats frequent the store; many people had just left, others

were about to go or had been there recently. an afghan-american had opened up a fast food counter that sold healthy salads, bread and piz-zas, while upstairs another new area had opened that sold clothes, including Gucci shoes, one friend reported, for $300. i, meanwhile, had stocked up on low-fat yogourt and Quaker oats just days before. “the point is,” the Frenchwoman said, “it could have been any of us.”

in Kabul, that “us” breaks down, roughly speaking, into two groups: ex-pat men and women in their 20s and 30s, who do a range of work from legal reform to social outreach to advising ministries on a number of issues, and a lot of men in their 60s, who do exactly the same thing. estimates calcu-late that there are about 28,000 internationals here. some of those come for the Klondike-style Gold

rush, with the hope of striking it rich by making the winning bid for multi-million dol-lar contracts put up for tender by governments, aid projects and the military.

in 2002, when the foreign for-ces came in, Kabul had been pretty much destroyed. With the amount of development now going on in the capital, you can easily forget that the rest of the country still suf-fers from great poverty. the capital is graced with bakeries, a music store, a shop that sells surveil-

lance equipment, a car showroom, malls, hotels and a remarkable number of “poppy palaces,” huge houses built with the proceeds of the heroin trade. influenced by pakistani architecture, they are loud and gaudy, with an enormous number of largely unheatable rooms in the cold winter. Chande-liers hang outside, and mirrored tiles glisten in the sunshine. nGos and security companies often are the tenants.

there are all sorts of reasons why people want to live here. the surroundings are beautiful — perhaps not Kabul itself, but the snow-capped peaks that ring the city, 1,800 metres above sea level. While the mountains trap pollu-tion, the sun shines almost every day and the light is spectacular. despite the war, this exotic coun-try has lost none of its fascination,

and for the most part the people are kind and friendly. they of course have much more to lose than the foreign community, and the many government ministers who have second passports and foreign bases. it is also, especially for journalists, a historic time to be here.

Many ex-pats also feel that they are doing something worth-while, even if there is a lot of de-bate about that both inside and outside the country. For them, it can be difficult not to have an overweening sense of self-im-portance as they attempt to bring stability to afghanistan, and in many respects, drag it into the 21st century. advising ministries, keeping the peace, learning the language, reforming the legal sys-tem, understanding the culture and making massive amounts of money are all in a day’s work.

this is life in the Kabubble, the Kabul bubble. days go by in a normal, mundane way in many re-spects, making you forget that out-side the city’s sandbag-and-blast-wall “ring of steel” perimeter, life is completely different for the vast majority of afghans. they live in rural villages, are mostly illiterate, and struggle to survive in an pol-itically and economically unstable environment. then an attack like that on Finest strikes, and you are reminded that you are all together in this conflict.

during my first trip here in 2007, i remember sitting at a res-taurant called l’atmosphere, in the garden amidst the afghan roses that grow so incredibly tall. it was a warm summer day. Girls in bikinis swam in the pool, and men sat drinking beer and cock-tails. outside the barriers, where you have to leave your weapons upon entering, burqa-clad afghan women miraculously navigated the churned-up, muddy roads on sky-high heels, following a very differ-ent social code. in 2011, that is still afghanistan: a place of fascinating contradictions, where every day is precious in its uncertainty, and the future is still up for grabs.

National Postz Heidi Kingstone is a freelance journalist living and working in Kabul

R onald Wilson reagan was a great man. He lived the american dream. He lifted a na-tion out of the doldrums and made amer-

icans feel good about themselves again. He was a component in an almost providential convergence of minds and leadership that changed the course of history. However ...

not to be the pooper at the centenary party, but the political and historical legacy of ronald reagan bears very little resemblance to the cult of personal-ity that has sprung up in the wake of his extraordin-ary life. as Newsweek observed in a cover story last July: “Grown men don’t tend to worship other grown men — unless, of course, they happen to be profes-sional republicans, in which case no bow is too deep, and no praise too fawning, for the 40th president of the united states: saint ronald reagan.”

to contemporary conservatives ronald reagan is more than one of the 20th century’s most suc-cessful presidents. He is a god who introduced a radical and unassailable new system of econom-ics, conquered communism and righted everything that was wrong with america. tea partiers have such a distorted view of his tenure that they have concocted a reagan-inspired political purity test that he himself couldn’t possibly pass.

to be sure, reagan accomplished great things. but he cannot be assigned sole credit for many of these achievements, nor can the many failings of his presidency be ignored.

reagan did not single handedly defeat the soviet union. the soviets were an enfeebled and doomed re-gime by the time reagan came to power. He battered at the doors, but even a breeze can topple a decrepit house. the president called on Michael Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in 1987, but the first blow against communism was struck by pope John paul ii, whose 1979 visit to his native poland sparked the soli-darity movement before reagan even took office.

His economic legacy is more vexing. present-day conservatives are convinced that because reagan introduced the largest tax cut in american history that any and all tax cuts are a good idea. they ignore two things: that he subsequently introduced the greatest peacetime tax increase in american hist-ory and that on his watch the debt ballooned from some $700-million to approaching $3-trillion. rea-gan said the debt was his “greatest disappointment,” which is a bit like a homeowner saying that his big-gest regret about his mortgage was losing the house.

reagan’s conviction that markets are self-regu-lating led directly to the savings and loan crisis and arguably the stock market meltdown of 1987. it is a lesson his acolytes obviously did not absorb, as we saw precisely the same grim financial death march under George W. bush.

lastly and perhaps most significantly, we have the iran-Contra scandal, in which the president violated the constitution by selling arms to the enemy in order to meddle in the affairs of another country. He would later say that his “heart and best intentions” told him he hadn’t done these things but conceded that the facts might say otherwise.

i bring up these unfortunate blemishes on rea-gan’s tenure only because his idolaters are so quick to excuse or forget them. in reality, ronald reagan was a greater man than the congenitally partisan tea partiers would have him be.

He was a moderate. a Christian who put princi-pal first when he denounced a California ballot in-itiative to push gays out of the teaching profession. a realist who understood that even a smaller gov-ernment requires a certain threshold of taxation. a steadfast conservative who routinely floated above political pettiness.

What some of ronald reagan’s greatest fans can’t bring themselves to admit is that in our time the figure cribbing most actively from his play book is not his unworthy self-declared disciple sarah pa-lin, but the sitting president, barack obama.

National Postz John Moore is host of Moore in the Morning on newstalk 1010 aM toronto. outside of southern ontario he can be heard at newstalk1010.com.

issues &John Moore: ‘Tea Partiers have concocted a political

purity test that Reagan himself couldn’t pass’

FarZana WaHidy / aFp / Getty iMaGes

Afghan women buy gold jewellery at a Kabul gold market.

The cult of Reagan

J o H n M o o r e

Surrounded by Afghanistan’s carnage and poverty, a small, wealthy ex-pat enclave thrives in the country’s capital

Days go by in a normal, peaceful way. Then comes an attack like the bombing

of Finest Market. And suddenly, you realize where you are

r o n A l D r e A g A n A T 1 0 0

MiCHael Caines / KatHarine MulHerin ConteMporary art

A contemporary painting, The Little Lamb of the GOP, shows a Christ-like Reagan cradling

Glenn Beck as a lamb.

Welcome to the

K ea lubb b