What We're Missing While Afghanistan Is At War With Itself

It's pretty obvious that none of us will be visiting Afghanistan any time soon, and that's a real shame. While I am admittedly a pretty uptight and fastidious person, by the time I finished my readings, I wanted to sit down on someone's dirt floor in Kabul, shoulder to shoulder with multitudes of siblings and cousins, and dig my hands into a shared platter of food. The culture sounds amazing and the hospitality is world-renowned. Once Afghanistan loses its claims to being, by various accounts, "more wretched than any other country on earth," the "Poorest People in the World," the world's most densely land-mined country, and the No. 1 target of the War on Terror, it will be an incredible place to visit.

While I don't pretend to be at all well-acquainted with Afghanistan, there are a couple of places that especially caught my eye, showcasing its rich history and culture. You or I would be lucky to have the opportunity to see these at some point in our lifetimes. And, if anyone knows of less-publicized-but-equally-enthralling places to look forward to visiting in the year 2035 or so, please let me know!

The first is the Bagh-e-Babur gardens in Kabul. Some five hundred years ago, a Mughal emperor fell in love with Kabul, and when he left the city to conquer other lands he spent a great fortune to recreate Kabul’s beautiful gardens everywhere he went. Like pretty much everything else, Kabul’s gardens were destroyed during Afghanistan’s civil war, although it actually housed refugees for a time. Think about that: imagine Washington, D.C. being invaded and some of its citizens gathering to take shelter amongst the cherry blossom trees at the Jefferson Memorial or on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That’s the best way I can relate, although I can’t say if that’s an accurate comparison.

Several historic preservation organizations have helped to rebuild the gardens. When the families and visitors come back, I picture it feeling sort of like San Diego’s Balboa Park, Kabul-style and with the sense that you are one small, peaceful person in a place that has five hundred years of history and five hundred thousand stories to tell. How true “if these walls could talk” must ring here.

The second is in a place known alternately as the "City of Screams" or the "City of Sighs." Either way, I realize that it does not sound like a particularly welcoming locale; however, the Afghans do not hide their history, and so Shahr-i-Gholghola it is. Nearly the entire population of this city, 150,000 strong, was massacred in the 13th century by Mongol invaders.

Today, however, there seems to be a little bit of hope emanating from this location in the Bamiyan Valley, where Buddhist monks founded a monastery centuries ago. You may have heard about the Bamiyan Valley in March 2001, when its two massive Buddhas carved from pink sandstone cliffs in at least the fifth century were largely destroyed by the Taliban because they were “un-Islamic.” The Bamiyan is a World Heritage Site, and its beauty and peacefulness are apparently astounding. Local Afghans hope to revive tourism in the area. Hopefully for us, they are successful!