First Impression

Last week, I was invited with two of my friends to speak at a high school, here in Illinois. I was asked to talk about the rise of the Taliban; they shared their experience as counterinsurgents. The idea really was to try to convey to high school seniors what Afghanistan is really like, or at least to give them a taste of what it’s like. Then, the very next day, my students and I ended up talking about how hard it is for them (and people in general) to fathom what spending time in a war zone really entails, and how hard it is for those who go to Iraq or Afghanistan to describe. Those two discussions reminded me of a short article I wrote (in French) right after I came back from my first trip to Afghanistan, in which I actually try to do just that: share my first experience in a conflict-ridden country. I thought I would post it, for those who can read, or at least decipher French:
A Kaboul, une violence incomprehensible vue d’Occident