the chinatown connection

peaceful protests again today throughout the city.


apparently, yesterday's demonstration that i was told had to do with banking instead involved water management!

afghanistan's mountains accumulate a lot of snow in the wintertime, + the melting of this snow fills the kabul river basin. this good, clean water flows through streams, rivers, + other bodies throughout afghanistan (which does not have adequate facilities to deliver it -- hence the huge issues here with water contamination). it also provides neighboring countries (iran, pakistan, tajikistan, uzbekistan, turkmenistan), with a great deal of what constitutes their water supply. afghanistan receives no benefit for this.

discussions about water management always make film nerds like me think of roman polanski's chinatown, in which there was sneaky business going on with dam-rigging, well poisoning, + other aqua-intimidation tactics. in afghanistan, there is some of the same, but perhaps for more community-oriented purposes (although there is always the issue of palimpsest--story within story--that one has to consider here).



from what i can gather from afghan colleagues, a member of parliament has called for afghanistan to immediately block (dam?) all mountain water flowing out of the country to other nearby countries. the reason: by cutting off the water supply, it is hoped that this will force these countries to stop collaborating with the taliban by secretly (or not so secretly) furnishing them with arms and other tools to be used in their insurgency operations in afghanistan. the protesters are making their support of this proposal known by gathering at parliament.

the simultaneous demonstrations happening here this week: one, against nato/isaf/u.s. forces for the alleged quran destruction and the other, against the neighboring countries in the region, indicate to me just how confused + fragmented things must feel to people here. depending on whom you talk to, the enemy is the u.s., the enemy is iran, the enemy is taliban, etc., etc., etc.

it is good that the people are demonstrating their will, and, by + large, it sounds like the protests have been peaceful. it will be interesting to see if anything comes of this water ban proposal, which sounds like it has the grain of a good idea (dams) but would be nearly impossible to implement in a timely manner, when urgency would seem the critical factor.