Welcome to Travel Iraq

Snippet Below:

We were young, we were poor, we then Travel led all around in Afghanistan that year and the next. We even drove up the Wakhan Corridor and up the Kunar valley to the Bashgul valley in Kafiristan. Our small car was like donkey. The reason we got all these Travel permits was simple: “You are from a small neutral country.” Britishers and Americans did not get them. Even if we Travel led in border areas where there was some tribal fighting we were always protected by the pushtun tribal tradition. Unarmed Travel lers are guests. Of course we were unarmed. If we had carried arms we would have been regarded as enemies. I know some who did. They disappeared. They had not shown respect. We Travel led all around the country, stayed in big cities like Kabul (where we had a small house) and Herat, in robats high up in the mountains as with black tent nomads. The Afghans were always friendly, my wife and I never met a harsh word. Everybody was helpful. We often had punctures (16 in one day – in 1959 when our tires were bad) the truck drivers then always stopped and asked if we needed help. It was a partly tribal, partly feudal society but if you were from a small neutral country, behaved in a polite way and showed respect people were friendly, helpful and polite to you. This is not the Afghanistan you meet in British Travel lers tales but it is the Afghanistan we met in the fifties and seventies when we were living there. I then also wrote two books on Afghanistan that are in their sixth edition now and sold through the Swedish association “Afghanistan Solidaritet”. I have wanted to say this as this war for me is not just any war but a war against people I know and who are close to me. These last two Afghan wars have been barbaric. My anger is so strong that I can feel the taste of blood in my mouth when I see TV pictures of US marines, Swedish mercenaries or NATO soldiers in Afghanistan and my deepest personal feeling then is that the only good foreign soldier on Afghan soil is a dead one. But that is a personal feeling that I have to repress in order to be useful in the solidarity work.