Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Brandished hand gun

When I was being driven home last night in Kabul I noticed a tall man in Afghan clothes (Peraan Tunban) being firmly taken from the Shaw-i-naw cinema property towards the street. At the street a tall man in a grey western business suit pulled out a hand-gun and pointed it at and about 15cm from the tall man's head. I didn't see what happened next because my driver zoomed us away from the scene. Police and other armed men were watching from a block away and one man had taken the machine gun off an armed pickup truck and was aiming it at the situation. My Personal Security Detail radioed the situation to our Operations Room and even three hours later that stretch of road was out of bounds.

I've been told the man in the suit was probably part of the local security force and I'm assuming nobody got shot and the tall man is now enjoying the comforts of an Afghan jail. I've seen Ethiopian jets bombing Asmara airport and I've heard Ethiopian police shooting a man in Addis and I once had a gun pointed loosely at me at the Djibouti-Ethiopia borders ... hm, this is the first time I've realized that those events all involved Ethiopia ... but this really disturbed me because I've never seen anybody point a gun at anybody else before. Despite being thrilled when I fired an AK-47 a few months ago guns make me nervous. But it's probably good to get an updated dose of reality.

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