but hopefully a return in the not to distant future will be possible. I must say I felt sad when I climbed back into the plane at Kabul International Airport to fly back to Dubai and Beirut. I was impressed by the Security Screener at the gate, a young man in his early 20's who took his job very serious and on top of it, spoke very good German! When I asked him why and how he learned my language, he told me that in todays world one needs to speak more then on language and since Germany and Afghanistan had always had close ties, he choose German, hoping that one day this will help him to live in work in Germany. 

During my stay in Afghanistan I had the fortune to be able to fly to Herat and to Bamiyan, getting an impression of a small part of this country, even only from the air. Most of it is of course brown and barren mountains, but the jewels are the valleys, especially if there is running water they become like emeralds in the parched landscape. Kabul has expanded tremendously in size, probably double from what it was in 1983. The traffic has increased and the traffic jams seem to have taken on epic proportions. The roads are still bad, big potholes and driving is still a free for all, any direction goes. Jalalabad road is passing through kilometers and kilometers of warehouses, truck dealer ships and whatever else, it looks like an industrial wasteland. The day I was leaving the weather was turning colder, one could feel the approaching autumn that morning, a cool air blowing down from the peaks of the Hindukush. By now a new president has taken office and a new established prime minister too. Let' s hope that this will work and the country will not return back to total chaos like before. The Taliban alone will be a big challenge to the government, with indications that the real fight will probably be starting after the foreign troops have mostly left and the winter is over in 2015. With the onset of spring and summer 2015 a clearer picture will emerge how well the government can deal and defend against the Taliban.

On the flight to Dubai, again one realizes what big a country Afghanistan is. Seeing the town and villages from the air, one can not really imagine how it is on the ground. It must be a nightmare to move around, everything is brown and dust, so much dust. Water is so available in so limited numbers that we from the West do not even imagine how precious it is to people living in a country like Afghanistan. As we can see from the news in recent days, things are not going in the right direction and violence is increasing. Just hope that one day this country will get the peace it so much deserves.