Aren’t pleasant surprises great? Especially when they are a bright spot in the otherwise dark horizon print publishing? Somehow, I had missed entirely that there was a magazine called The Walrus. Moreover, it is a solid, quality, long form magazine. Like a Candian Harpers. And wouldn’t you know it, a cursory investigation via my secret research tool, called Wikipedia, revealed that The Walrus is not only all those things, it is new, and meant specifically to be like a Canadian Harper’s. much more after the jump…
The article that brought me to The Walrus is this one. “The Archipelago of Fear,” it’s called, and it’s about how the security-driven architecture of development and reconstruction in Afghanistan is obstructing the very goals of development and reconstruction. Or, as the subhed asks: Are fortification and foreign aid making Kabul more dangerous? The writer, Charles Montgomery, goes to Kabul and discovers a schizophrenic landscape: crumbling infrastructure, housing and roads lined with open sewers and sqatter settlements highlighting the country’s forty five per cent unemployment are punctuated here and there by high-priced villas, hotels, and security compounds catering to the international military presence and aid community:
We couldn’t afford more than one night at the Serena, so Tilo had found us another island in Kabul’s archipelago of high-security compounds. And what an island it was. The guest house (whose name and location I won’t disclose, due to the security concerns of the international organization that runs it) inhabited a pair of walled gardens lush with honeysuckle and rose bushes. There was a badminton court, a gym, and a party room that shook on its weekly salsa nights. But it was the pool bar that distinguished the place, especially on Fridays, when bikini-clad babes and their beaus draped the lawn or frolicked in the California-blue pool. The beer was cold, and the burgers dripped with American ketchup.
It was hard to believe we were in Afghanistan. And really, we weren’t. Kalashnikov-armed guards kept Afghans from approaching the compound gate unless they happened to be employed there as waiters, cleaners, or bartenders…Like the Serena Hotel, our walled country club was a monument to the failures of reconstruction that could only serve to inflame and alienate Kabulis.
We’ve heard some of this before: the shocking $10,000 monthly rents in Kabul; the opium-fueled warlord villas side by side with UN agencies where officials who can’t visit the sites they’re funding; the five layers subcontracting that causes causes a project to lose half its money to skimming. But Montgomery suggests a cause and effect between the mode of development and its failure:
Seven years after the Taliban’s ouster, Kabul was supposed to be a bastion of stability, from which peace and prosperity would ripple across Afghanistan. But if Maiwandi was right, then the failures of reconstruction were actually contributing to a feedback loop of fear, fortification, and instability. I was fascinated and troubled by the possibility that foreign aid might be helping remodel Kabul into an even more dangerous place.
And this isn’t just some fun with critical studies! Montgomery has done his homework, and makes the case:
Can the shape of a city really change the psychology of its inhabitants? It’s not an outrageous thesis. In 1997, the citizens of Bogotá elected as mayor an adherent of what some call the “economics of happiness.” Armed with studies suggesting that people could be made happier and more engaged by boosting feelings of safety, equity, and trust, Enrique Peñalosa ordered that fences around neighbourhood parks be ripped down, and handed road space to bikes and pedestrians, among other measures. Despite Colombia’s ongoing civil war, feelings of optimism in Bogotá spiked during his three-year term. Traffic accidents plummeted. So did the murder rate. Peñalosa’s ideas are now being adopted elsewhere, including in crime-plagued Mexico City.
This was more than an aesthetic critique. Those who look at the intersection of psychology and urban form suggest that the short-term gains from fortification might be overshadowed by the hostile response it fuels. Aggressive architectures — such as high, bare, cement walls — have been found to produce a backlash of vandalism and incivility in peaceful cities. Buildings offer cues suggesting how people should act. They tell us about our relationships with one another. University of Victoria environmental psychologist Robert Gifford once put it to me this way: “Buildings are symbols. They communicate to people, even if it’s not what their architects intend.” Fahim Hakim suggested that in Kabul, the fortifications around foreign compounds reinforce Afghans’ suspicion that those inside the walls have more in common with their former Soviet occupiers than they admit. “We just don’t know if they are here to protect us or themselves,” he said.
But beyond the thesis what makes this story is the flat-footing. And the word count to tell the story of what it means to really see Afghanistan. Long form triumphs again. Montgomery makes some brave forays into Kabul, unaccompanied by security, to provide a unique view at the bizarre reality of Afghanistan. Highlights are his visit to Sherpur, a fancy new neighborhood:
One sunny morning, I convinced Tilo to join me in a common pastime for internationals in Kabul: the hunt for a Sherpur dream home. The streets were a mess of broken rock and open sewers clogged with garbage, but amid this public poverty lay a phantasmagoria of private wealth. The mansions stood three, four, even five storeys high, with champagne-tinted windows, candy cane columns, mirrored cupolas, and gold paint so chaotically collaged that the loops of razor wire adorning the balconies seemed almost a whimsical flourish. Roman fountains! Swimming pools! Concrete fauna! Sherpur’s aesthetic roots were international —there were splashes of Dubai, Peshawar, and Miami — but fuelled by a local phenomenon: buckets of booty from war, corruption, and the opium trade. We couldn’t agree on the nomenclature. Was this narcotecture or warlord kitsch?
Zing! Makes you wish that the photographer, and his stunning special ghostly technique, had gone along that day. Or, if he did, that The Walrus had published his pictures online in an extra photo essay.
