The extremes of an Afghan winter

Arriving in Kabul’s homely – if beaten-up – airport after Dubai is always something of a contrast. Never more so in my experience than this morning. The Hindu Kush mountains brilliant in deep mid-winter snows. But not just the Kush. The Afghan capital gleams under a foot or so and this morning’s temperature dipped to minus 12.

For Afghans of course this is all a very mixed blessing. Many say it is good news in the longer-term in a country so badly affected by drought in recent years. But this is Afghanistan – there will always be extremes and people affected in extreme and differing ways.

President Karzai is sending urgent food aid to Badakhshan province in the north-east of the country where at least 46 people have died in avalances in recent days. It’s a threat ever-present in the vast mountains ranges of the Kush and one often nearer the capital than the remote northeast. Only last year 191 people were killed by avalanches in Salang, only about an hour’s drive from the capital, where the famous tunnel cuts through the mountains connecting the capital to the north.

The weather’s brought obvious hardships for peole just in terms of keeping warm. Already fuel has more than doubled over the past couple of months because of shortages in transporting it across this mountainous land in the blizzards.