D-15: Security

The website of Paul Clammer, kabulcaravan.com, is just great. The amount of information is huge. Maybe not direct or touristic informations on Afghanistan, but the number of links to other source of information on the culture of the country as well as the news and the safety informations is great.

Yesterday, I printed two reports on security and background on the net.

The first one is the generic security guide the by ECHO. It is a 150 pages long report on security for humanitarian organisations. Since it is mainly aimed to NGO's, their informations are not valuable for independant travelers: How to inform the security staff in case of 'near incident' or the standard documents for security report is not of high utility for a traveler. But the Annexes are much more interesting. They explain basics on how to reacts by checkpoints, is case of bribes or shootings. This part is highly recommended!!

The second report is the BAAG briefing pack. It is also aimed to NGO's, but its informations are generically valuable. It gives a very quick background information on the contemporary history, on the nowadays political situation, but also basics on Islam, traditions and dress code. Quite useful to be read once.

I found an another useful information on the kabulcaravan.com website: A very stupid object which could be useful: A small radio. Since I will stay away from the cities during a week or so before entering in Afghanistan, I do not have access to our God Internet and I can not stay updated on the situation in Afghanistan. One easy solution would be to have a small radio with me to hear news on BBC or RFI. Nowadays, very small and light radios are proposed on the market.

I have to find now the frequencies and schedule of the different international radios in Central Asia...