Lebanese food off the menu in Kabul

[flipflop]

I was here 4 nights ago with clients. One of the better secured expat haunts to be fair, but when these cunts want to get in and get you, they're going to do it easy enough. Reportedly 13 KIA. Used to give you gratis choc cake and ice cream with every order, and had the biggest, fiercest Afghan guard dog I've seen over there, it probably got blew into pink mist too. Real shame.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25781948

Cheers

[svizzerams]

:-(

[nowonmai]

Authentic Lebanese dining experience, what more could those crusader puppets want?

[muskrat]

Fucking pricks. Good job you weren't there.

[cbychoice]

Glad you made it.
Three Canadians were killed.

[flipflop]

That fat unctuous prick John Simpson was here last week, stayed right in our hotel n all, sat across from me every meal time, shovelling baklawa down his ample neck. He was obviously here to give the Official John Simpson Pontification on The State of Things in Afghanistan pre- election and the big ISAF pullout.

Simpson told the nation, indeed the world, that the Taliban wouldn't be coming back, that they had a very reduced attack capability due to the heightened (LOL) security evident in Kabul. Great darts there John, where would we be without your uncanny reading of every conflict? He's such a national treasure is Simmo, right up there with Sir Jimmy Saville, the BBC sure can pick 'em.

Cheers

[nowonmai]

Well he did liberate it.

Truth is that the bullshit is piled so high over Afghanistan that you won't hear a sensible word about it. The West cant admit that Barry and Dave have sealed defeat by telling the Taliban when they're running away and the Taliban will pretend that a few attacks equals control.

Fact is that their destiny will be decided in the years after this failed experiment of occupation and nation building. The Taliban can be defeated but not by worthy people with white teeth and freshly laundered clothes.

[Vincent]

Glad to see you're alright, Flip flop. When I saw a Brit bodyguard was killed, I was concerned.

[flipflop]

Thanks mate, but I've been at home since the 16th on leave. Saying that, a mate who works for our company on a different contract knew the Brit lad who got killed

Cheers

[coldharvest]

When I saw a Brit bodyguard was killed, I was concerned.

It'll take more than death to kill flipflop

[nowonmai]

Say do you know a guy called Bill? He lives in London England too.

[seektravelinfo]

welp, this is what the NYT says:




Deadly Attack at Kabul Restaurant Hints at Changing Climate for Foreigners
By AZAM AHMED and MATTHEW ROSENBERGJAN. 18, 2014

KABUL, Afghanistan — As country director for the International Monetary Fund, Wabel Abdallah spent years navigating the shoals of scandal in Afghanistan’s financial sector. Vadim Nazarov, a top political officer at the United Nations, dedicated himself over the past nine years to looking for a peaceful solution to the Afghan war. Dhamender Singh Phangurha, a British candidate in the coming elections for the European Parliament, was here on a consulting contract.

All three happened to be dining Friday at a popular Lebanese restaurant in downtown Kabul, where they were among 21 people killed in an attack for which the Taliban has claimed responsibility. Among the foreigners here, now roughly a few thousand, the attack underscored a shifting reality as the war winds down: life for international workers may be becoming more dangerous and circumscribed.

For years, foreigners have enjoyed relatively unrestricted activity in the capital, including access to a handful of Western-style restaurants and weekly parties brimming with music and alcohol. Though attacks were common enough, they rarely targeted Western civilians, and the danger could be ignored as the presence of the Western military coalition persevered and even expanded.

Kabul during the Afghan war never grew as violent as Baghdad during the Iraq war. But as the coalition’s gradual withdrawal becomes more apparent with each passing month, it has grown harder to dismiss the obvious vulnerabilities of life here. While the insurgents have largely focused their anger on military installations and government institutions, the attack on the restaurant, Taverna du Liban, a mainstay of the Kabul social scene that catered mainly to foreigners but also to well-to-do Afghans, showed a frightening willingness by the insurgents to strike noncombatants and civilian targets.

The attack, which the Taliban said was in retaliation for a coalition airstrike on Wednesday in which a number of Afghan civilians had died in a village north of Kabul, took the lives of 13 foreigners from at least a half-dozen countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Russia and Lebanon. It constituted one of the largest losses of life for Western civilians since the war began more than a decade ago.

Western officials questioned the Taliban’s stated motive for the coordinated attack, which would have required extensive planning but occurred just two days after the airstrike. A suicide bomber cleared a path for two gunmen who stormed in and fired on diners, the police said.

Apparently, the only people who escaped were local employees of the restaurant, some of whom jumped to safety from the building’s roof. The rest were shot by the two gunmen, who made their way through the restaurant armed with AK-47s, firing on a crowd of patrons stunned by the initial explosion.

President Hamid Karzai, whose relationship with the Americans has been strained recently by negotiations over a long-term security contract, expressed sympathy for the victims of the attack but also seemed to use Wednesday’s airstrike to criticize his NATO allies over the issue of civilian casualties.

“The war on terror will bear fruit when victims and terrorists are distinguished from each other and the elements of terror are fought against,” said Mr. Karzai, who appointed a committee to investigate the civilian casualties from the airstrike. “If NATO, led by the United States, wants to be the Afghan people’s ally, they should target terrorism.”

An American military official said that the airstrike had been called in by Afghan and American forces who were under fire from Taliban fighters. “The operation was requested by the Afghans and approved by the Afghans,” the official said.


It is too early to tell whether life in Kabul will permanently change. Often after similar attacks, enough time passes that the worst is forgotten and a semblance of normality returns. But by Saturday morning, practically every international organization in Afghanistan, including the United Nations, was re-examining its safety policies.

Most have tightened security, clamping down on the number of restaurants and guesthouses their staff members can visit and limiting approved social activities. United Nations officials, meeting privately, said they would also review approved locations. Still, senior officials vowed not to adopt a bunker mentality in response to the attack, which claimed the lives of four of its personnel, including two women from the United Nations Children’s Fund.

“Not ducking under our covers is not the same as being out in the open and living in Afghanistan like we do everywhere else in the world,” said a European official, who asked not to be identified while discussing security precautions. “There are dinners I think people are probably going to skip. How much do you lose? Can we measure that? I don’t know.”

News organizations, too, are likely to endure temporary restrictions on social events, at least until it becomes clearer whether the attack was an isolated episode or the beginning of a new reality for foreigners living in Kabul. That, in some respects, is most worrisome to many involved in the worlds of diplomacy, aid and the media. The more such attacks occur, the less free they are to interact with the population they work with.

Restrictive measures have already been in place at a number of embassies in Kabul, including those of the United States and Britain. Their security requirements often keep diplomats from leaving their heavily fortified compounds, even to visit programs they are funding. The attack in some respects vindicates a policy that has been criticized for being too cautious.

In some ways, social life in Kabul has tracked the war itself.

In the early years, Western civilians were a small presence in Kabul. Even American soldiers were left relatively unharmed — troops based at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, for instance, used to drive to the city for a break from military life. As recently as 2010, top generals with the NATO-led coalition would sometimes swap their uniforms for khakis and button-down shirts and head to dinner at restaurants in Kabul, including Taverna.

But the mood in Afghanistan was already shifting by then. The American surge in 2009, which injected billions of dollars into the local economy, drew thousands of new foreign civilians to Kabul. Local attitudes began to change. For Afghans, the Westerners in Kabul went from being an occasional nuisance — some drove too aggressively, others drank too publicly — to being a daily reminder of a war and an occupation that they resented. The Taliban, meanwhile, were stepping up their campaign against coalition forces and the civilian officials tied to the mission.

But apart from an attack in early 2011 on a Kabul supermarket that catered to Westerners, there were few other obvious attempts to attack foreigners in the capital in recent history. Most assumed that as long as they stayed out of the vast rural areas controlled by the Taliban, the insurgents would leave them alone.

The uncertainty now clouding their efforts to remain safe but engaged is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the deaths of Mr. Abdallah and Mr. Nazarov, both of whom had dedicated years to the country. Their presence in a lightly fortified compound eating dinner is a testament to the wider feelings about security in the capital before Friday’s attack.

Vadim Nazarov came to Afghanistan in the 1980s as a diplomat for the Soviet Union, then returned in 2005 to join the political team at the United Nations. A fluent speaker of Dari, one of Afghanistan’s main languages, he became a crucial player in helping to coordinate a peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Having been a diplomat in Iran and Turkey, he also played a crucial role in negotiations with regional powers.

Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Nazarov as deeply knowledgeable about Afghan politics, with a gift for drawing people together with his warmth and professionalism.

“He was humble and kind, a real diplomat,” said Talatbek Masadykov, political director at the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

Mr. Masadykov, who first met Mr. Nazarov when both were in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said he fielded emails, text messages and phone calls all day from Western and Afghan officials.

The incongruity of a man committed to finding a peaceful solution to the war winding up dead at the hands of the Taliban was not lost on Mr. Masadykov .

“This was a person who was deeply and personally involved in those kinds of activities, and he became of a victim of an attack,” said Mr. Masadykov, adding that his friend planned to celebrate his 60th birthday in three weeks.

Wabel Abdallah held an unenviable job. Helping a poor government manage a minuscule economy is a role few would want at the I.M.F., where careers are made managing global economic crises.

But Mr. Abdallah, 60, embraced his work. He stayed far longer than his organization expected, becoming a crucial intermediary between Afghan finance officials and the Western countries that fund much of the country’s projects. Tasked with informing those governments of any problems that arose, Mr. Abdallah was a busy man.

Western diplomats say they appreciated his calm demeanor. Afghan officials often praised what they considered his evenhanded approach to their challenges.

Mr. Abdallah bounced from crisis to crisis, but his biggest project was to help the government weather the near collapse of the scandal-plagued Kabul Bank in 2010.

Foreigners new to Afghanistan also lost their lives on Friday, including a professor from the American University in Afghanistan, Dr. Alexandros Petersen, who had only recently joined its political science faculty. He was one of two Americans killed in the attack.

The attack touched Afghan lives as well. The assailants shot a young Afghan couple, married just five months ago. The couple, who honeymooned in Dubai, were buried Saturday morning.

Correction: January 18, 2014
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect first name for an official at the American University in Afghanistan. He is Timor, not Timothy, Saffary.

[flipflop]

All these restaurants require bodyguards to leave their pistols in a locker with the 'security' inside the front door. At the Taverna I always got around that by not looking like Johnny Commando, concealing my 9mm, and walking in with the clients as one of them. Once inside I'd get my own table most of the time as I usually wasn't invited/didn't want to eat with typical clients - superior middle class types who think you're as thick as mince. Anyway, many if them are clueless about Afghan culture and history, and their chat is boring anyway, but most importantly, I'm not doing my job properly if I'm sharing a hummus bowl with some clients at their table, they are not my friends, even if my job dictates I am always friendly and cheerful with them.

Not all security did this at the Taverna mind, if you look like you've just stepped down from one of Rommel's tanks in your 5:11 gear you got stopped and asked to give up your piece. Other places have airport type metal detectors or them wand things, meaning gun = no entry, and the clients can't eat, anyone in this business knows if you keep a client from his food and perving at all the expat wimmen, it's not long until you're out of a job. That's the nature of this once honourable and ancient craft.

Now, I'm not saying I could've defended myself in there if two cunts come blazing through the door with AKs, but where a switched on BG sits, ie watching the door from the table obliquely adjacent to the entrance, initially the attackers can't see you. I might've been able to get close enough to them as they've come through into the eating area, and put a few rounds into their nuts the second they've appeared.

But, I've seen heavily armed men in Baghdad freeze like statues, or worse, hide on the car floor, when it's gone BANG RAT A TAT TAT. So who knows? I might've just shit myself at the initial IED and got shot alongside all the other patrons. But I might've had a fighting chance. I bet the British bodyguard in there was unarmed. There's no way I'll be taking ppl to restaurants now without a pistol, in fact when I get back out I'll stop all social trips altogether, the guy covering for me (yes I'm running the fucking show nowadays, as I know Kabul better than the cheeks of my own arse) has locked down all 'jollies' - non work related social moves. But, after a week or so the clients start whinging about 'prisons' and 'normalisation' until it's back to normal like 21 dead people never happened. Because a nice plate of food is always worth risking your life for, isn't it?

Cheers

[nowonmai]

All these restaurants require bodyguards to leave their pistols in a locker with the 'security' inside the front door. At the Taverna I always got around that by not looking like Johnny Commando, concealing my 9mm, and walking in with the clients as one of them. Once inside I'd get my own table most of the time as I usually wasn't invited/didn't want to eat with typical clients - superior middle class types who think you're as thick as mince. Anyway, many if them are clueless about Afghan culture and history, and their chat is boring anyway, but most importantly, I'm not doing my job properly if I'm sharing a hummus bowl with some clients at their table, they are not my friends, even if my job dictates I am always friendly and cheerful with them.

Not all security did this at the Taverna mind, if you look like you've just stepped down from one of Rommel's tanks in your 5:11 gear you got stopped and asked to give up your piece. Other places have airport type metal detectors or them wand things, meaning gun = no entry, and the clients can't eat, anyone in this business knows if you keep a client from his food and perving at all the expat wimmen, it's not long until you're out of a job. That's the nature of this once honourable and ancient craft.

Now, I'm not saying I could've defended myself in there if two cunts come blazing through the door with AKs, but where a switched on BG sits, ie watching the door from the table obliquely adjacent to the entrance, initially the attackers can't see you. I might've been able to get close enough to them as they've come through into the eating area, and put a few rounds into their nuts the second they've appeared.

But, I've seen heavily armed men in Baghdad freeze like statues, or worse, hide on the car floor, when it's gone BANG RAT A TAT TAT. So who knows? I might've just shit myself at the initial IED and got shot alongside all the other patrons. But I might've had a fighting chance. I bet the British bodyguard in there was unarmed. There's no way I'll be taking ppl to restaurants now without a pistol, in fact when I get back out I'll stop all social trips altogether, the guy covering for me (yes I'm running the fucking show nowadays, as I know Kabul better than the cheeks of my own arse) has locked down all 'jollies' - non work related social moves. But, after a week or so the clients start whinging about 'prisons' and 'normalisation' until it's back to normal like 21 dead people never happened. Because a nice plate of food is always worth risking your life for, isn't it?

Cheers

I'm sorry, how does this thread relate in any way to American women's issues, socialism, child rearing, recipes or internet bullying? I'm completely confused.

[buffybot_in_beirut]

Afghans demonstrating in Kabul right now (Sun. afternoon Afghan time), in front of Taverna, against terrorism. Very sweet of them. Even brave. Demonstrating publicly in Afghanistan is a risky activity.

Some Al Jazeera hack called Ali Latifi published "The attack that burst the bubble". Charged terminology ("high-paid expatriate researchers", "rich Afghans with Western ties", "alcohol", "race and privilege"), outright lies (Afghan victims ignored and anonymized when in fact the heartbreaking story of the young Afghan couple was everywhere) and only half-disguised smearing of the Lebanese restaurant owner. Does not look too different from Taliban propaganda.
http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/asia/at ... rst-bubble

For far more intelligent (though not really uplifting) reading, an analysis of the situation by Kate Clark and her think tank:
http://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/ano ... foreigners