On 8th October 2005, an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude devastated towns and villages in the north of Pakistan and Kashmir. In the latest figures, issued by the UN, 80,000 are said to have died as a direct result of the earthquake, 3.5 million were made homeless as their houses fell down, and some 100,000 were injured on that day. Even 4 people died in Afghanistan from the quake, including 3 children in Jalalabad. The most affected towns will no doubt never quite be the same; how can the people of Balakot, for example, where locals speak in hushed tones of the seemingly total devastation (this in a busy medium-sized market town), how can they 'return to their lives as before'?

Even now, some two million still live in tents below the snow line. There are about 250,000 in organised camps, and around 400,000 at higher altitudes, now facing the snow of the approaching winter. The winter, people tell me, has been relatively mild so far, but most agree that it is only beginning and that the main snow-falls are still to come. Indeed today and yesterday in Kashmir heavy snow fell in the mountains.

[As a little background: Pakistan was established in August 1947 as a state independent of British rule. It now has a population of 163m making it the sixth largest in the world. Urdu and English are the two official languages, but Pashtu is also very common (particularly in the west and north). Cricket is followed avidly on the television and in newspapers. 65% of the population live below the $2-per-day poverty line, the UN has estimated. There are around 4m drug abusers (heavily fuelled by produce from Afghanistan, of course). A large population of Afghan refugees live in Pakistan. In 2005, some 449,000 Afghans returned to their country with the assistance of UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees), the second highest annual influx of refugees to Afghanistan since 2002, when 1.6m returned following the fall of the Taliban movement. It's a land full of contrast. In the north and west, mountains dominate, with K2 and a bunch of some of the other highest mountains in the world. In the SE, desert may be found, and in the rest of the country large plains are cultivated. Cotton, wheat and rice are the country's main produce, and they also have reserves of oil, gas, coal and precious minerals. In the relatively short time I spent here, people often told me that Pakistan had all the potential to be a truly great nation, especially with its large workforce.]

The situation at the moment in the zone affected by the earthquake is better than I had imagined it. People are surviving. Nevertheless, NGOs here are still implementing their 'emergency' or 'disaster' operations (the first time I've been witness to this type of relief work - very much a case of trying to achieve the impossible): providing shelter, providing medical care, helping to administer the ubiquitous 'tent camps' which are everywhere you go in the area. And again, though, it's just the beginning. The winter - of the bitter Himalayan sort - is just gearing up, and there are many living in the mountains, or in tents who face an unimaginable 3 months of cold and wetness.

Indeed, all this time that I've been here [now writing from the relative comfort of my hotel room in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan] I've been trying to think how I could best convey a sense of the earthquake, and the destruction it wrought, or the conditions that people are forced to live in now as a result. And it is really difficult, even if you're actually standing there in front of buildings that have fallen down (see below for pictures from Muzafferabad) to imagine what it must have been like to be there. Aftershocks still happen, though. I myself felt two up in Mansehra on Monday night, and NGOs talk of some 1500 since the earthquake.

And there doesn't even have to be snow for people to feel cold. A fall of rain (and we're now beginning what people term "the rainy season") can cause a severe drop in temperature. To me it didn't feel as cold as Kabul, but then I didn't have to live in a tent with the other 8 members of my family. People here are very thankful for the international aid which came from all-over. However at the same time one observes that the media have become bored with the story. This happened with last year's tsunami as well - a friend working there says that local people often demonstrate outside the offices of NGOs in dissatisfaction with their work. People are still living in tents there. An ITV and BBC crew are both in the area making reports, but it is still a difficult story to cover.

In fact, I was in Muzafferabad with my friend Laila Khan (International Rescue Committee) as she was interviewed by Ben Brown of the BBC (see photo below). In his report, live on BBC World, he talked of the "bitter Himalayan winter" as well. Talking from inside a refugee camp, he made his report of some 2 minutes. Earlier in the day his crew had been making background shots. To this end, one woman had been asked to wash clothes (as a 'background' person) for some seven hours. Similarly, a child had been asked to repeatedly walk back and forth through snow barefoot (6 times) so that the BBC could get their shot. Of course, it is quite probable that the little boy would have been walking barefoot through the snow regardless of whether there had been an earthquake or not. In the refugee camp, people live in tents with what they were able to salvage from the ruins of their houses. This sometimes included televisions, which they duly connected to a power source and watched in their tents. The BBC had to ask several tent-owners to turn the volume on their sets down while they were making their report.

At any rate, this is very much a continuing story, and I'd like to have been able to stay longer in the area to learn more. Unfortunately, my term in Damascus has already started and I return tomorrow to continue with my degree, with at least some idea of the awful devastation that 8 seconds created here some 3 months ago.

Picture of Mohammed Saqib, my host for a day around the environs of Mansehra town. Then photo of dung-cakes being dried/prepared - a common source of fuel in rural areas (both in Afghanistan and Pakistan).

Hills and mountains around Mansehra town (Pakistan)

These pictures of Muzafferabad, where I went for a day. I'll write more about the town later in the full context of the earthquake. Suffice to say, though: lots of tents, some places massively damaged. Quite cold. Final picture of this set is Laila, my friend here who works for IRC, in live interview with Ben Brown of the BBC. I'll be writing more about that too.

Photos taken in Mansehra today. In the background of both portrait photos you can see the Himalayas. If you carry on going straight eventually you'll get to K2, and then Everest. The weather isn't particularly cold (despite what everyone keeps telling me) - especially when you come from Kabul. Longer text coming soon on the earthquake...

It's Christmas Day, and I'm on the road from Herat to Kandahar to discover more about the resistance in the south of Afghanistan, and how the situation might be expected to develop through the new year. On the ten-hour blur of dust, discomfort and unfinished roads, we pass through the dasht-e margo (the 'desert of death'), adding to the sense of foreboding that any travel in the south usually inspires; banditry and robberies are common.

My third time in the country, conversant in Dari and Pashto (the two national languages), and a long-term follower of events in Afghanistan, I immediately notice a difference. Informal check-points have sprung up. Formal check-points are manned occasionally by black-masked troops, fearful of reprisal attacks for working with the government. Several times we are asked to get out of the car for a search; they're looking for suicide bombers. A small bribe (around 10 $-cents or so) bypasses this, thus completely negating the logic of the checkpoints. Welcome to Kandahar.

The heart of the original Taliban movement, it is a city almost exclusively dominated by Pashtuns, the tribal peoples of southern Afghanistan and border-land Pakistan, and recently the site of a number of suicide bombings, attacks and political assassinations. The Pashtuns have traditionally ruled the country. In 1747 Afghanistan - meaning 'land of the Afghans', itself an alternative word for Pashtun - was first created with its capital as Kandahar. Only later in the century was it moved north to Kabul, on account of tribal riots.

Pashtuns are a very proud people, unwilling to give control to others without invitation. It's a characteristic that gives rise to their reputation for fierce resistance to invaders. Whole empires have been broken in the south: the British fought three unsuccessful wars against the Afghans around the end of the nineteenth century, finally resorting to air bombing of Kabul and Jalalabad in 1919 which ended the war on their own terms. They left soon after. Over half a century later, the Russians also met their match in a decade-long struggle that eventually resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, not to mention millions killed, injured and made refugees.

Nowadays, the south and east are enveloped in an intractable conflict: Al-Qaeda and neo-Taliban forces are fighting a guerrilla war against the government and coalition soldiers (a broad grouping of the US and its allies) stationed here. Suicide bombings, previously unknown in Afghanistan, are increasingly common as a tactic against convoys. Similarly, IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) fashioned from landmines are used to target government and coalition forces. Decapitations are becoming more common. Kidnapping of foreigners happens less only because so few work in the south.

All this points to a migration of tactics from Iraq. Training manuals and videos originating there have been found both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These detail how to make IEDs or the best way to decapitate prisoners. They're also used as recruitment tools, promising payments of some $2000 to the family of a suicide bomber, for instance, or $1250 to the killer of a coalition soldier. Over the summer, there was a flurry of reports - most notably a Newsweek interview - that Afghans had actually been taken to Iraq (to Ramadi, sometime capital of the insurgency there) for training. These allegations have resurfaced in a widely-syndicated Sunday Times article.

After further enquiry with Afghans, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and other security sources, I discovered that actually much of the south was 'no-go' territory for government/coalition troops, foreigners and non-locals. Much of this area is, in fact, under the control of Taliban forces. The main road linking Herat in the west to Kabul is relatively safe, barring banditry, suicide bombers and IEDs. Kandahar City itself is relatively stable, despite recent assassinations of moderate religious clerics and school teachers, as well as suicide bombings. Once you leave the city, it's a different story again. Move east into Zabul province or northwards to Uruzgan itself and once more you are confronted with huge swathes under effective Taliban control, where the Afghan National Army and coalition forces venture at their peril.

The security risk in much of the south is so dire that journalists cannot report on the situation there. This means the silent war being conducted in Uruzgan in part by US forces based in Kandahar Airport goes entirely unreported. One senior aid-worker briefed by the military told me on condition of anonymity that "they're having serious problems there. Why are they doing artillery drills at the [airport] base? Why is the flight traffic so busy there?" The wish to keep troop casualties to a minimum means that they must resort - as the British were forced in 1919, and as the US is now being forced in Iraq - to aerial bombing.

In the south, Afghans are afraid to travel and work. Most of my friends were worried about my plans to take the road from Herat to Kandahar, saying that even they wouldn't travel down it. Once you leave the main road, though, the risk increases exponentially. Ahmed Kandahari is the manager of a road reconstruction project in the north of Helmand province, where British troops are destined. He said that much of that area (particularly around the town of Bagran) is under the control of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. His own security advisors tell him that each time he goes there he risks his life. Indeed, one of his engineers was recently killed travelling back home. Even the larger towns of Lashkar Gah and Qereshk are unsafe to work in. Helmand province is the hub of the country's drug trade.

The single issue that unites all the problems in the south is the drug trade. 90% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan, and the profits derived form a massive $2.7bn annually according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). That makes up 52% of the country's entire GDP. A senior veteran of the Interior Ministry told Newsweek reporters that, "if we don't crack down on these guys soon, it won't be long until they're in control of everything".

One of the main problems is the involvement of government officials in the trade. In the second half of 2005 President Karzai faced a spate of resignations over the issue, and over claims of his reluctance to confront the issue. Indeed in a study for the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit - an independent research organisation headquartered in Afghanistan - the expert Andrew Wilder concluded that at least 17 newly elected MPs are drug traffickers themselves, 24 others are linked to criminal gangs, 40 are commanders of armed groups and 19 others face serious abuse and war-crimes allegations. The elections held last year seem to have merely legitimised the status quo, and are already being referred to as "a lost opportunity" in diplomatic and NGO circles.

Government policy has had mixed success. The UNODC reported a 21% reduction in the total area cultivated in 2005, but still good weather conditions meant that this only reduced the total crop yield by 2%. Prices have also risen this year, meaning more farmers are planting the poppy. I myself stood in a large field outside Kandahar City which had been seeded for precisely this reason.

The government tends to direct its efforts at the farmers, however, and not the traffickers and officials involved higher up the chain. Karzai's reluctance - he is admittedly in an extremely tricky situation - to tackle the problem of warlords and drug lords in positions of power and influence is the single most popular source of complaint for most Afghans I talked to all over the country.

The wealth earned from that same drug trade is clearly in evidence in Kabul city. New houses are rising in the more fancy districts of the capital. One building contractor claimed recently that 70% of the new buildings being built were financed by drug money.

An alternative for farmers delivering anywhere near similar profits is yet to be found. Karzai proposed melons and pomegranates over the summer as a solution. However, poverty and a distance from the effects of their product mean that many farmers will continue cultivating poppies despite government threats of fines and imprisonment. A sensible and well reasoned report by the Senlis Council recently suggested legalising the drug in order to produce medical drugs, as already happens to some extent in Turkey. Talk of legalisation was, needless to say, rejected outright by both US and Afghan governments.

Meanwhile, drug use is rising in Afghanistan - itself notable in a Muslim country. The UNODC estimates that there are currently 170,000 users - about 1.4% of the population - of which around 30,000 are women.

Drugs, therefore, is the issue that a proposed NATO troop expansion will ultimately be forced to deal with. The US signed a long-term security partnership with Afghanistan in May, but will nevertheless press forward with plans to reduce troops from 19,000 to 16,500. They will remain in the east of the country, but only until NATO is ready to take command there too.

Andrew Elmes, the British spokesman for the UK NATO contingent said that their role will be "primarily peacekeeping", unlike the US forces who have been initiating battles with the insurgents. Other British representatives have expressed their "total commitment" to ending the drug trade in Helmand province. This confusion of presentation reflects a general discomfort among NATO allies about the coming deployment.

Ali Jalali, who had resigned from the Cabinet allegedly over the issue of drugs, commented that, "the threat in the south is terrorism, drug trafficking and organised crime; if they don't get involved in fighting these things, what will they be providing for the security of the country?" Numerous comments over the past few days suggest the British and Dutch governments will do almost anything to limit the risk to their troops, even if this means the real issues aren't confronted.

Afghans I talked to in the south seemed tentatively supportive of the NATO expansion. Most experienced on a daily basis the effects of the security situation: ranging from an inability to travel safely after sundown, to the massive inequality in education as mentioned above. Many look back nostalgically to the Taliban as providers of security. This year, everyone acknowledges, the problem is particularly acute.

Normally the winter heralds a lull in fighting, as fighters lose their mobility on account of snow and so they lie low till spring. From all sides, though, I heard that the fighters remained in their positions this winter. A cursory glance at the list of violent incidents in December confirms this.

Suicide bombers moved north and east to Mazar-e Sharif and Herat, where they have previously never been found, another consequence of allowing the conflict in the south and east to spread throughout the country. Kandahar remained subject to increasingly regular suicide bombings, thus also curtailing movement of NGOs in the south. In a message purportedly from Mullah Omar, the former Taliban leader, “stronger” tactics were promised for the new year.

Spring normally brings a new offensive, and everyone in a position to know says that this spring is likely to be even fiercer than in previous years, what with new techniques and hardware, as well as battle-hardened fighters of Pakistani and Chechen nationality crossing over from Pakistan. One source I met in Kandahar City offered me a list of madrassas (Muslim religious seminaries) in Pakistan and Afghanistan where I could find Chechen and Arab fighters waiting out the winter.

So the cost is likely to be high, regardless of whoever in the end draws the short-straw of a mission in south Afghanistan. This was the year, after all, that almost 1600 were killed including 92 US soldiers: the worst year since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

Consequences of a failure to deploy on the part of the Britain are similarly dire, though. The drugs trade will envelop what's left of the country to envelop, with a consequent rise in insecurity and terrorism. There have been reports that Al Qaeda is looking for a new base for its fighters outside Iraq. Welcome to Afghanistan. NGOs are unable to work in a region where aid-workers are specifically targeted for their alleged association with the government.

In October 2001 Tony Blair boldly proclaimed to Afghans that "this time we will not walk away from you", as the Taliban were overthrown; this statement clearly in reference to the departure of US support and aid in the early 1990s following Soviet troop withdrawal from the country. I would so like to be able to imagine a positive end to this tale of hesitancy and half-heartedness. The Afghans - a brave, generous and culturally rich people -, whose traditions expect a verbal promise be honoured, deserve our support, but I fear their hopes for peace and security will remain just that. Hopes.

1. Leaving Jalalabad: taking a rickshaw from the hotel to the taxi stop
2. other photos are taken on Pakistani side of border, Khyber pass etc. All taken from the taxi. Armed guard provided 'for [my] security' in tribal areas.

I spent an afternoon in Jalalabad, sitting in the tranquil garden of the Spinghar Hotel - truly an oasis of sorts when coming from the noise and grime of the capital. I reflected on the last month in Afghanistan and was overcome by a particularly intense bout of 'soulfulness' on the situation, possibly prompted by feelings of sadness upon leaving the country.

I imagined a different country. Not utopian, to be sure, but still far away. A country where the news of a family forced to watch the beheading of their father - he was a headmaster of a school in the south - isn't considered a small story. A country where children don't consider education a luxury. A country where power runs more often than just every third day. A country where you can travel safely after dark. A country where the presence of mines don't dictate where you can walk. A country where international support and money doesn't decrease as interest wanes. A country where decisions are made on the basis of needs, and not wants.

I spent most of the evening reading in Anne Applebaum's comprehensive Gulag: a history. This helped, too, to put things in perspective. My meal of rice and cauliflower seemed positively luxurious when set against the regimentalised rations of the Soviet camps in the east. To all who have the time and the interest, I'd recommend this book, not the 'duty'-read that its name might suggest.

Tomorrow I'll cross the border into Pakistan, crossing via the Khyber Pass, into a new country and a new issue - the 8th October earthquake that killed some 73,000 and devastated parts of the country. Even in Afghanistan, here in Jalalabad, three children were killed as houses collapsed in the after-shocks.

I'll be visiting Peshawar, Mansehra, Islamabad, Balakot and perhaps Muzafferabad.

Kabul, at an altitude of 1777m, is the highest of Afghanistan's main cities. You're only likely to get higher when taking a bus to Mazar-e Sharif, and then the Salang Pass takes you to 3363m. Kabul wasn't always the capital city. Originally power was located down south with the Pashtuns in Kandahar, and when the nation of Afghanistan was first created in the mid-eighteenth century that's where its capital was. Surrounded by the peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul has drama that other cities lack. It is well known for its precise seasonality, where overnight autumn can become winter - as it did this year when the snow arrived while I was in Khost.

Several things distinguish winter Kabul from summer Kabul. The initial dirt after the first snowfalls (barf-e avval) and the huge puddles that make walking on the street a wet experience. The smell of the city becomes more smoky as people light their gas or wood bukharis, and as the kebab houses fill up with customers. Several days after the first snow, pathways and pavements are filled with compacted ice, treacherously slippy for the wrong sort of shoes.

Traffic is still a serious problem for the city authorities. Huge traffic jams mean that during most of the working day (between 9.30 and 5) you're likely to spend most of your time at a standstill. Indeed almost always it is quicker to walk. And taxi fares have increased on account on the higher petrol prices (since about two months ago). The traffic problems are partly caused by the big barrels and drums that NGOs position outside their offices to deter suicide bombers in cars. This slows traffic down, and President Karzai has resorted to issuing a decree that requires all roads in Kabul to be free of such obstacles by this Sunday. From Monday onwards they'll be removed, the order states. Some NGOs have expressed resistance to this. See BBC News website for a story on this.

It is less and less common to see omen walking in full-blue burqa, the total-body cover ubiquitous during Taliban times, in the streets of downtown Kabul. Mostly, though, veils are still worn, even if liberties are taken as to exactly how much hair is covered on the top of the head. Dress is also more western, with jeans tending to be the norm, especially amongst the young. Women have long been present on television as presenters and music-video DJs.

The dialect of Dari spoken here is quite easy for me to understand. Being a capital city, though, people seem very busy and tend to have less time for tea and chit-chat, particularly amongst shopowners and government offices.

In my hotel, the Mustafa, there are few people. I've met one or two tourists - a man from the UK, as well as a Korean boy who checked in last night - but mostly it's contractors who're still here over the winter period. Power-cuts are frequent and unwelcome. More about this later. The staff of the hotel remain helpful and always good fun, from Wais Abdullah the manager, down to Najiib who took a job here in order to improve his English. Each morning I give thanks for the absolute luxury of a warm shower (absent from my travels elsewhere in the country) and the chance to wash my hair. Small pleasures...

Foreigners may be found all over town. Mostly living in Wazir Akbar Khan area, their large 4x4 vehicles are a common sight. It's quite uncommon for me to see foreigners walking on the streets, largely due to the security restrictions that management imposes upon them. This means that often NGOs are merely confined to living behind huge barbed-wire fences and bomb-resistant walls full of sandbags. The restaurants in Wazir Akbar Khan remain popular in the evenings, from the Lai Thai restaurant and its charming owner Lalita to The Elbow Room, one of the most popular bars in town.

Electricity problems dog the city, though. Four years after the ousting of the Taliban, most residents are without power, except for five hours every second or third night. Although hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid have been spent to fix the problem, conditions have worsened in the past year as improvements have lagged and the population surges. Government officials say things will not noticeably improve until at least 2008, when new power lines are to be completed.

The gulf between the wealthy few and the literally powerless majority is especially striking now, as pockets of opulence sprout across the impoverished capital of 4 million.

Across the city, in a dilapidated district called Dai Mazang, live those on the dark side of Afghanistan's economic fortunes. Although the country's gross domestic product has doubled since 2001, roughly 30 percent of the population is unemployed, and 37 percent need donated food to survive, according to statistics compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington. In Dai Mazang, 65 families have taken up makeshift residence in the carcasses of former government office buildings that were destroyed by rocket attacks in the civil war of the 1990s. Most were refugees in Pakistan and Iran who returned home after 2001, lured by promises of jobs and land that never materialised.

Energy experts here said the situation would not improve until October 2008, when power lines from Uzbekistan, now being laid across the snow-capped Hindu Kush, are expected to be completed.

People stand outside the embassies of Pakistan and Iran overnight in the sub-zero temperatures, in the hope that they'll be able to travel to their families for Eid celebrations which are due to begin in the next week or so.

Kabul, too, then is all-a-bustle as people prepare to travel back home to north and south. Aside from some new buildings here and there, not a great deal has changed in town since summer.

It's New Year's Day 2006 in Showay, a little east of Khost and near the Pakistan border. The sun dictates when we sleep and wake, so I missed the turn of the new year. We wake at seven, and by nine I'm talking with the teachers of Nomaan madrassa (or religious seminary).

Gul Rahman, Hashem and Abdulrahman teach religious subjects, history and Pashto language to the 250-odd students that attend. The madrassa is one of only two in the area (around 31,000 families live in this area); each of the two main tribes has a school. Classes are between 8 and 11.30. It isn't unusual for a student to walk at least an hour from home to reach the school. Even once there, as the teachers told me, problems abound. Teachers are unpaid, and the school was constructed by the families themselves. UNICEF books and materials were distributed all over the country, but never reached this area. The classrooms are bitterly cold, and there are no carpets for the students to sit on. When I was there, the classes were being conducted outside, in the bitter morning cold. This apparent lack of interest shown by NGOs and donors (on account of security concerns, I'm assuming) was to be seen wherever I went in the area.

Kuchi are the nomadic tribes of Afghanistan. In Dari (one of the two national languages of Afghanistan, closely related to Farsi/Persian) the word kuchi means nomad, or person-who-moves. Estimates of their numbers are at best estimates, and fiercely disputed. The electoral board - who surveyed the country for the purposes of the elections last year - reckon some 2.5 million are Kuchi, while the tribal leaders themselves claim 6 million in total. The nature of Kuchis makes it difficult to pin down. At any rate, they're all over the country, and mainly of Pashtun descent. In Khost province, most people don't even speak Dari, just a dialect of Pashtu that I could barely understand; quite different from that of Kandahar.

They form a unique group, reflected in the special procedures allocated to them for the elections. Nomadism, though, is on the way out, relatively speaking. Increasingly, kuchi people are settling, usually on the outskirts of cities (as observed in Kabul and Kandahar). Their cattle flocks have been decimated by drought and landmines. Also a desire to educate their families now is a frequent comment: Kuchis wish to remedy their lack of representation in parliament as well as to turn around a tendency towards illiteracy. Thus Kuchis are buying houses near and in the city, in the hope that this will allow their children to attend school.

Kuchis are also famous for their dogs, large fearless cross-breeds for the most part. Other small customs distinguish them. Take tea, for instance. Afghans generally drink green or black tea, depending on which area of the country you're from. In the south it's green tea, in the north black tea. But in the eastern kuchi tribes they even have black tea with milk too. For breakfast, it's normal to drink one cup of milk tea, followed by several cups of black tea. In the evening after dinner, a kuchi might drink green, black and milk tea.

The two schools that I saw serve for around 31,000 families. The second school was better organised than the first, with a printed timetable, as well as longer hours. Still, though, Islamia School - 300 students and 6 teachers - was built with funds collected from the families themselves. Classes are mostly religious, but teaching Farsi and Sa'adi's Golestan for example. When I visited, one class was sitting outside the classroom in the freezing cold (it soon after began to snow) as the floor of their classroom wasn't ready yet.

I heard several complaints wherever I visited: that there weren't health clinics (if someone becomes sick, they must travel 2 hours on a bumpy dirt-track to Khost itself, passing through tribal areas hostile to them); that there was no provision for education outside the non-religious (certainly nothing for girls); that the microfinance investment schemes found in other provinces hadn't arrived in this area; that there was little water (and when there are wells they are far from the people, necessitating long journeys for the women, who traditionally get the water); that NGOs weren't helping or coming to visit the area; that there's no power/electricity (some families have invested in solar power, but of course this is dependent on the weather); that there is high unemployment - people are forced to selling the stones and wood of the hillside to make money; that the teachers at the schools have little experience and that the education children receive is of poor quality; that the promises of help from Khost's governor haven't come to pass; that aid meant for the Kuchi people is often 'retained' in Khost by tribes hostile to them.

I also met with several families (although I heard of many more) who had previously been living in Pakistan but who had all been forced back into Afghanistan; their houses were bulldozed and they were evicted across the border. Is this how Pakistan solves its refugee issues?

Security in the east of Afghanistan is a major problem, though, preventing the intervention of NGOs. Despite promises of security that Kuchi tribes could offer to NGOs working in the area, it is difficult to see how this would work in practice. Generally speaking, international organisations are loath to target specific ethnic groups with aid. Every single person and NGO I talked to before my departure told me not to go, that security was among the worst in the country there, and that it was unwise to travel there, certainly by car, as I planned. At any rate, thankfully nothing happened to me, and I returned in one piece (despite some 'problems' along the way); I felt very exposed and unsafe throughout my travels in the east, however, a feeling that I never had in Kandahar or while travelling down the main roads between Herat and Kabul. Nobody can hear you scream in space, as the slogan for the film Alien goes; by the same token, no one will hear you scream in eastern Afghanistan.

As far as a vision of this Kuchi area in the future goes, I'd like to be positive, but fear that conditions will stay largely the same: the people will continue their desperate struggle to better their situation; international NGOs will largely stay away from the area out of fear; perhaps a few more schools will be built, as well as hopefully a few more wells and water pumps. In Showay hopes looks set to remain just that. Hopes.

Sorry the order of these photos is a bit out of sync, nothing I can do to change that. Working against the elements here with a super-slow internet connection. Back in Kabul now. Will post more soon, regarding Kuchis, eastern Afghanistan etc.

1. One Kuchi tribal elder I visited had a horse (originally a Kuchi tradition; now he's the only one left who has a horse) which he was very proud of. Everyone said he was an excellent rider. Here he poses with his horse for the camera.
2. The second set of mountains is Pakistan. I'm standing in Afghanistan taking the photo. Couldn't get any closer because ISI/Pakistani secret service operate on the border region and also discreet digital imaging takes place so I might have had problems crossing the border next week. Nevertheless, shows how close the border was, and how 'foreigners' might enter the country.
3. 'The gang' - various Kuchi friends who took me round to see the tribes in the east. Second from right is Toor Gul, my host. Second from left is Mohammed Amin, our driver (really nice guy).
4. Nomaan School, in Char Ghotay: all the pupils of this religious madrassa (recall the film Osama) watch as I interview the teachers. More on this in my longer piece.
5. Just open land near sunset
6. River-bed which serves as a tribal boundary
7. same
8. Kabul, view from the hotel this morning. Snow came last night (1st Jan).
9. Khost itself, view from hotel 'bathroom' window.
10. 3 Kuchi tribal elders on sunday morning after we'd compiled a list of the tribes and their leaders (more soon)