A Storm in Kapisa Province

In monsoon season warm air flows north from the Arabian Sea until it collides with the Hindu Kush in western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan.  

In Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, valleys running north and south confine the monsoon winds into relatively narrow channels, and produce spectacular storms at high elevations.

The Tagab District of Kapisa Province is almost exclusively ethnic Pashtun, and since the Taliban is essentially a Pashtun insurgency, and in general Pashtuns are even more resistant to any kind of foreign occupation than most of the rest of Afghanistan (and that’s saying a lot), Tagab has been bombed and bombed and bombed by Russians and warlords and the Taliban and now Americans almost non-stop for the last 25 years.  

So what’s left of Tagab, after so much bombing?

In old surveys from the Sixties you may read that “In Tagab district and centre of the province have high quality pomegranates and grapes which are growing

for commercial purposes and the possibilities of expansion to other districts are also available,” but by the time warlords had driven out the Russians and the Taliban had driven out the warlords…

During the war most of the orchards and vineyards were destroyed.

And of course the Americans have added their fair share of destruction.

A survivor of the airstrike, Mujib, age 7, told a journalist, “I saw my mom, my sisters, and my brother and my grandfather were dead. And our house was destroyed.”