I spent my evening at a watering hole in Kabul known as “L’Atmo,” best pronounced with an elongated English oooooh, short for “l’atmosphère,” but by no stretch of the imagination, lacking in the latter; that is, if you think that atmosphere requires an entire tribe of posers to prove its existence. It’s an overpriced, pseudo-French restaurant/bar crawling with aid workers and journalists, which does not allow Afghan locals to enter, and requires one to have an inhumanly possible tolerance for talk, talk, talk. If ever you were wondering what the international “scene” in Kabul was like, look no further. There was one element, which, despite the irony of the whole picture, did not cease to entertain me, and that was the fact that the Belgian embassy’s attaché d’affaires was playing Doors tunes on a synthesizer for all the drunken, ego-bloated international press and aid starlets to enjoy. And I thought art school parties were unbearable….Ay!

It’s easy for me to understand why people strap TNT to their bodies and thrust themselves into a crowd of foreign nationals working in a country in the name of “freedom” or “goodwill” when you take a gander at the parasitic gathering at such places. It’s a wonder, actually, that Taliban forces haven’t sent one of their attaches into a place like this with a few dozen kilos of explosives. I myself was tempted. Who needs a bunch of western journalists stroking their egos, and all too keen to drink to their imminent fame? Is that the reason for which we risk our relative security to come here?

Scathing, yes, bitter….mmmm. How dare I poke such fun at my industry’s elders when I am still such a novice? Well, dare I do! This is a blog, after all. I eaves dropped on conversations wherein people openly flaunted their latest love affair details, whose embed was the most exciting, how much they got paid by this or that paper for whatever photo of some quote unquote Taliban getting shot, as if they even know who the “Taliban” are, as if any of this were going to change the ever so evident plight of the Afghan people. It’s no wonder we are “suddenly” targets. I recently read an article by Robert Fisk wherein he spoke of the lack of immunity journalists now suffer from. He attributed this to the fact that any conflict reporting is now pretty much limited to going to bed with the troops, but I might argue with him on this one and invite him down to l’Atmo to rethink his theory.