Day before the Parl. Elections here in Afghanistan, all seems to be well in Jalalabad...
There's small level demonstrations, and one candidate was snagged (kidnapped) last nite.. still trying to figure out WHO it was... Will update this post when I know.
The Taj is booked full, which is a nice change after struggling for the past 2 months to recover from a non existent threat - threat report written by some joker from a local Security firm that had no ground truth in Jalalabad.
We have several election monitoring groups here, IRI, NDI and ... DI - the big cheese - that are out as I type doing polling station reviews, and interviewing candidates in Nangarhar.
It really is pretty amazing that the youth seem to be very motivated and invigorated by the election process, but most older folks say it doesn't make a difference.
This young democracy will do fine, but its going to take a generation in my opinion.
On the Tech front, did a tweak n peak of the sat dish, got pretty phat pipe right now, avg. nearly 3 megs down, 300k up.. with good latency.
Also troubleshooting 2 separate polycom units, and trying to configure with a static NAT ip..and the Omni camera is not functional yet. it worked fine when I left in August, but now is DIW.
House business is in order, a bunch of great folks out here, taking great personal risk to assist and monitor the poll !
Everyone is on lockdown till at least Sunday, so the Taj Thursday night social was small, but great quality regardless of quantity of human energy.
On my third day with little, almost. no.. sleep. Riding it out, to see what happens Saturday, and today as we ramp up to the Elections.
Will put up a post Election report after things settle down...
Jalalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabaaaaaaaaaaaaaad !
Reachback to Jalalabad, Afghanistan 2012
http://www.reachback.org/article.php/20100917040100445