Zabul, not Kabul

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00:04
George Gavrilis
Our listeners know how much Laura and I love Afghanistan. But we aren’t going to lie or exaggerate. The country has its share of miserable places, like any other. Topping our list is Zabul, a province on the highway that connects Kabul and Kandahar.

00:20
George Gavrilis
Poverty and illiteracy are stunningly high in Zabul. The main city Qalat feels as if its only purpose is to be a stopping point on the highway, much as it was centuries ago when it served as a fortified rest stop on the road linking Lashkar Gah and Ghazni, the winter and summer capitals of the Ghaznavid Empire.

00:40
George Gavrilis
In 2011, Laurie travelled across Zabul, from one end to the other, searching for sites to preserve and restore. But sometimes the search disappoints and ruins can be too ruined to preserve.

00:54

George Gavrilis
This is Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. Today, we are continuing on Laura's journey into Afghanistan. If you are new to this podcast, we recommend going back to start with Episode 1. For everyone else, welcome back. Let's jump in.

01:11

Laura Tedesco
In my experience of working with Afghans, and I can't refer to Afghans as monolithic because they're surely not a monolithic population.

01:21

Laura Tedesco
I always appreciated the way Afghans that I interacted with— both local village elders, when I had the opportunity to meet with them and talk a little bit through an interpreter, or government officials and everyone in between— that there was a very long time horizon in how they would reference Afghan history. And that really was something that stood out to me only because of the focus of what I was there to do. It gave me a really, I think, useful insight.

01:55
Laura Tedesco
It sort of is a nice segue into what we were going to talk about today: Zabul.

01:59
George Gavrilis
But Laurie, wait.

02:00

Laura Tedesco
Yeah.

02:02

George Gavrilis
A listener who doesn't know Afghanistan very well will say, she just mispronounced Kabul—

02:05

Laura Tedesco
Right? Okay. So there's a province called Zabul, not Kabul, Zabul with a Z. And it's to the west and south of the capital province Kabul. And it's situated on this Ring Road that we've talked about before, this major historic and contemporary highway that links Kabul to cities in the West and it's like a big circular road around Afghanistan. And Zabul sits between Ghazni and Kandahar. Strategically, geographically, its location is key.

02:38

Laura Tedesco

I was invited to go out to Zabul at some point in 2011, to look at a very large building that everyone was calling the Castle of Alexander the Great. And I was like, come on, man. His castles— they're not around anymore. The word on the street that everybody accepted was this building was still Alexander the Great's, so they were attributing 2,300 year history to this structure that was standing in the middle of a mound of the capital city of Zabul, which is Qalat. That's the name of the city. But I was most curious and really appreciated the invitation to go. So I made the trip.

03:26

Laura Tedesco
Did you ever go to Zabul, George, by chance?

03:29

George Gavrilis

[coughs loudly] Sorry. Put a pin in that.

03:36

Laura Tedesco
You really need to stop smoking, George.

03:40

George Gavrilis
Be right there! Don't stop recording! [groans and coughs] Elizabeth, I'm coming to join you, honey!

03:48

Laura Tedesco
[laughing]

03:51

George Gavrilis
Did anybody get that reference?

03:53

Laura Tedesco
I got it. I got it.

03:54

George Gavrilis
I'm wearing shorts. You got my Sanford and Son reference?

03:58

Laura Tedesco
Yes, I did. Just light up another cigarette. We'll be good to go.

04:02

George Gavrilis
Yeah. Okay, Laurie, do you want to re-ask the question?

04:04

Laura Tedesco
George, I didn't know if you maybe had the pleasure of visiting Zabul yourself one day?

04:09

George Gavrilis
Hell, no!

04:10

Laura Tedesco
[laughing]

04:11

George Gavrilis

I mean, you think that given the choice that that's where I would visit? There's Herat, there's Mazar-i-Sharif. I love Mazar-i-Sharif. And you know, I love Kabul more than anything, but I would not be caught dead in Zabul. And that's not just for security reasons. Of all the places to see in Afghanistan, that is not on my bucket list.

04:29

Laura Tedesco
[laughing]

04:30

George Gavrilis
And it's not because somebody misspelled Kabul.

04:33

Laura Tedesco

You don't know what you're missing.

04:38

George Gavrilis

I'm sure it's amazing, but for some context, it is poor as poor can be.

04:43

Laura Tedesco

Yeah, it is staggeringly poor. Even by Afghan standards, it's a very poor place.

04:48

George Gavrilis

I looked up a couple things, because admittedly, that's one province that I know very little about. And I was surprised, because it's a relatively large province. And yet, it only has 400,000 people. And Qalat, the provincial capital that you mentioned, only has a population of around 50,000, at least on a permanent basis. We don't know what the refugee situation is like now as the Taliban has taken over so many areas around it.

05:15
Laura Tedesco
Right, right. I didn't realize the population was that small. But when I was there, it seemed very sparsely populated.

05:21

George Gavrilis
Right. And I also looked up some UN reports. It's one of the poorest places in Afghanistan. And in a country that otherwise made so many strides in girls' education, that too, is a laggard province, where only 28% of the girls, last time I checked a report, were in school.

05:43
Laura Tedesco
Yeah. When I was there, I remember hearing that literacy rates for women were less than 1%.

05:53

George Gavrilis
It's probably right.

05:54
Laura Tedesco

And I remember being really struck, really really struck by that less than 1%.

06:05

George Gavrilis 

Besides Alexander's alleged castle, what did you see?

06:10

Laura Tedesco
A lot for the four or so days that I spent there. I was invited out by the commanding officer of the PRT / FOB, who was this Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, a really great guy who I had gotten to know through various meetings in Kabul.

06:28
Laura Tedesco
Over the course of months and sort of talking and meeting with him or exchanging emails, he had said, why don't you come out to Zabul and check out this Castle of Alexander the Great? And I was a little bit skeptical that in fact it was Alexander's castle. The remnants of Alexander may have been buried under the ground, but highly doubtful that anything Alexander or his armies built would still be visible above ground. There's just too much time that's passed.

07:00

Laura Tedesco

But I said, you know, if I come out, do you think we could drive across Zabul? Because I'm really interested to see these alleged or reported towers that are supposed to be along the Ring Road. I've seen some old grainy photographs from decades ago, but could we go look for those because I think those might be really interesting.

07:24

Laura Tedesco
So he did allow that to happen. I remember one day, spending about 10 or 11 hours, stuffed in the back of a small MRAP, driving from one end of Zabul to the other, almost to the border of Kandahar, and then back.

07:43
George Gavrilis
Entirely on the Ring Road?

07:45
Laura Tedesco

Yeah. I was stuffed in this MRAP with two or three other American soldiers in the back and they're like, okay, we're gonna do this, but we gotta make some stops along the way to monitor projects that they, the U.S. military, were somehow involved in. So we stopped along this road. And I was craning my neck and peering out this little tiny 6-inch by 9-inch foggy window on the side of an MRAP, looking for towers along the archaeological sites.

08:11

Laura Tedesco

And in fact, we did find one and we did stop. And it was a very exciting day to see these half broken, shot up towers that had been chopped in half, and half the side had been blown off or shot to bits.

08:29
Laura Tedesco
We stopped at a Romanian FOB, you know, a forward operating base where the Romanian soldiers were placed. I didn't know there were Romanian soldiers in Afghanistan and they were having a change of command that day, where one commander was leaving and a new one was coming in. So there's a whole ceremony to mark that. And I got to sit through this ceremony, which was really interesting. And I ate some lunch with the Romanians.

08:55

Laura Tedesco
So you asked, what did I see in Zabul? I was really there to do an assessment— could we start a preservation project, bring attention to a monument in Zabul, this very poor— again, dusty, beige place? Not quite on, you know, the top 10 list of destinations in Afghanistan. Evidently not on your bucket list, George. 

09:18
Laura Tedesco

This was one of the realizations I had while making this epic road trip across Zabul. Every few miles, I noticed that the road, which was paved, had enormous potholes. And it took me a while to figure out what those were. And I asked the soldiers I was riding with— Those are the results of explosions, aren't they? And they were like, yeah, that's why the road's messed up.

09:45

Laura Tedesco

And this was in spring of 2011, when Zabul was considered a pretty stable province. And it was a realization of, this is gonna be tough to try to embark on a hands-on restoration project of a monument in Zabul. And particularly one of these towers, I think they might have been kind of markers along a road.

10:14

Laura Tedesco

And I really was only able to stop and get up close and personal with one of them. What was left was only about 12, 14 feet tall, and half of it on the side. So if you were to take a cheese slicer and slice down half of it, that was all exposed with jagged brickwork— it looked like a rocket launcher had blasted half of it off.

10:41

Laura Tedesco

The destruction on it did not look just the result of sort of natural neglect and erosion. It didn't appear that way at all. It appeared more kind of that that structure experienced something dramatic.

10:56

Laura Tedesco

And it was thrilling to see, I will say, even in its state of disrepair and degradation, it was thrilling to see and we genuinely really thought through— what can we do here, can the US military help provide protection if we were to send out a team, or, who would work here? We'll figure out where to get the bricks later. But first, let's just try to think about some big picture solutions. And the conclusion was, I don't think we can do this.

11:24

George Gavrilis

When you're there, and you're looking at it. And you're doing something that's ultimately on-the-spot forensic analysis. What are archaeological practices like? What do archaeological regulations or mores tell you? Are you able to remove a couple pieces? And take them back to the museum for analysis? What are you able to do? And what are you not able to do with artifacts that you find on the ground in an unsecure location?

11:49

Laura Tedesco

There are international standards and charters, like a body of rules in the international heritage preservation world, that in principle, practitioners are to follow, are to adhere to. In this case, we're not talking about artifacts on the ground, I wasn't doing an archeological survey where I was walking around looking for artifacts that might have surfaced over the course of rain seasons or whatever.

12:16

Laura Tedesco

I was looking at standing monuments in general, and this particular standing monument in Zabul. And when we made the stop on the side of the road, like three MRAPs, pullover, it's like a rest stop. You get out, you don't have a lot of time to be milling around. We weren't setting up for a picnic, we had a job to do. So I go over to this tower, I'm going to call it a tower.

12:43

Laura Tedesco

And I'm like, alright, I got to quickly make a visual assessment here. Take pictures, make some notes. What does the brickwork look like? What's its condition? I was with the soldiers who— I remember one was genuinely curious about it, but I couldn't really consult with him on, what do you think? Does this look like Ghaznavid bricks? What are their dimensions? Are they square? Or are they rectangular? I didn't have the luxury of being able to be there to really talk through my questions that were in my mind.

13:11

Laura Tedesco

So, could I have collected things and brought them back to the museum for analysis? No, I could not. There was no analysis to do at the museum. There's not an analysis laboratory there. It just wouldn't have been the proper practice. So I didn't touch anything. I just observed, took notes, and took pictures and tried to use that information to inform a bigger decision.

13:40
Laura Tedesco
I'm one gal, and I could only take on so many projects.

13:46

George Gavrilis

Well, say a little bit about that, because you must have been asked so many times to take on a project in this place and that place, this province, that district. How often would you find yourself saying no?

13:58

Laura Tedesco

About 40% of the time. I wasn't saying no, because I wanted to say no. It was, I was overwhelmed with the quantity of work. And, the population of American diplomats in the provinces— as it became known that there was this archaeology gal at the U.S. Embassy who was working on cultural preservation, the PRTs in the provinces were like, oh, man, you should come out and check out our sites in Paktika or Ghor or Kandahar— can you get out to Kandahar?— there's some great mausoleums.

14:37

Laura Tedesco

And I simply couldn't do it all. I was already overwhelmed with the number of projects that were in the pipeline and active in places like Herat, and in the north, and in Ghazni. And then there was Mes Aynak in nearby Logar province, which was quite time-consuming as well.

14:57
Laura Tedesco
So as a one woman gal, I had great support at the U.S. Embassy, but I didn't have a team of people who were working with me and helping me with the paperwork and all the other details. So I had to be mindful of just not taking on more than I could handle.

15:16

George Gavrilis

Well, take me to the provincial capital Qalat. We're talking about Alexander the Great's castle. It was more like a garrison.

15:24
Laura Tedesco

It was a Bala Hissar, for all intents and purposes. Most capital cities have one from some point in antiquity. And that's what this was in Qalat. It was a big mound in the center of what was otherwise a pretty flat, dusty place.

15:45
Laura Tedesco
We drove all of a couple of kilometers from the PRT where I was staying to Alexander's castle, and walk up the side of it, and I see some standing architecture. And I'm like, this isn't really a castle. This looks more like a barracks of antiquity. And I don't think this is Alexander's. Everyone was like, No, no, he was here. And I'm like, he might have been there. But his architecture is not still visible.

16:16
Laura Tedesco
What we really need to do is to do some archaeology, like we need to dig in here, spend some time, bring a team of archaeologists out, and look at what's under the ground. And then we can tell the real story of Alexander's alleged presence and residence here.

16:36

George Gavrilis

Well, as far as we can tell, he went from Iran, down into Kandahar, and up towards what is today Kabul through this area. So it makes sense that in 331 or so BC, he was marching through this area.

16:54
Laura Tedesco

Yes. Yeah. To my knowledge, no one's ever conducted an archaeological investigation to verify exactly where was Alexander and his armies building their garrison. And that's almost irrelevant, George. The best nugget in this whole story, is that not just the people of Zabul and the commanding officer who had very kindly invited me out to look at this, everyone attributed it to Alexander the Great.

17:28

Laura Tedesco

So they were by association, giving this grandeur and importance to Zabul, that once upon a time, it was awesome, so awesome that Alexander hung around long enough to build a massive garrison. And that adherence to the lore, I encountered that in Afghanistan so much, and I loved it because it gave me an insight: Afghans love their history.

18:02

George Gavrilis

They sure do, and that's the irony, right, that the world thinks that Afghans are so faithful and so deeply religious, that they would dislike anything that is not immediately Islamic. And that is just not the case.

18:16
Laura Tedesco

Absolutely.

18:18
George Gavrilis

Even though we know as we said, that shit ain't Alexander the Great's.

18:21
Laura Tedesco

It is not.

18:27

George Gavrilis

Did you go to the top of the castle and visit the glass tea house?

18:31

Laura Tedesco

I did. I did. The windows were cracked and broken, and no one was serving tea at that time. I would have liked to sit and have a cup of tea. It was not possible.

18:41

George Gavrilis

Describe the landscape, when you're up there, what does the town of Qalat and the surrounding countryside look like?

18:46
Laura Tedesco

Alright, it's very flat, it's very beige. All of the buildings are low mud brick buildings from a high place, and you just kind of look across, you can see on the roofs of some of the buildings, people might be drying fruits, or carpets. It didn't go as far as the eye could see, George, and when you squint it did not look like Los Angeles, I'll tell you that. Pretty small, and pretty desolate.

19:15

George Gavrilis

It's on one of these trips you stayed for four days, which meant you would be spending the night there. Where were you spending the night? What were dinners like?

19:23
Laura Tedesco

So I was assigned a room. I had my own room. There was a bed. That's all I needed. I'm sure there was a shower. It was fine. It met my needs perfectly. I remember I ate most of my—

19:34
George Gavrilis

Was this at the PRT or at The Four Seasons Qalat?

19:37
Laura Tedesco

Yeah, no, The Four Seasons was being renovated. And so I was staying at the PRT that visit. I remember I ate most of my meals alone, which was also fine. I would just go to the little cafeteria, and get a tray of whatever was being served, which also did the trick.

19:58
Laura Tedesco
I remember one night I was there, and I was chatting with the American diplomats who were at the PRT. And they offered a Coke or something to me. They're like, yeah, they're right over there in the fridge. So I went over to the fridge, and I saw there was a non-alcoholic beer. And I was like, oh, man, I'd really like that non-alcoholic beer. And so I asked them, Guys, could I have this? And they're like, yeah, sure, take it.

20:24
Laura Tedesco
And like seven years later, I ran into one of those diplomats. And he was very nice to me, even seven years later, and he's like, I remember you drank that non-alcoholic beer. And I was like, I spent four days with you, and your only memory was that I drank non-alcoholic beer? Jesus.

20:45
George Gavrilis

Yeah, Laurie and her near beer.

20:47

Laura Tedesco

Right, right.

20:51
George Gavrilis

You had some pretty illustrious company for one or two of the dinners. Right? The governor was around?

20:56
Laura Tedesco

Oh, yeah.

20:57
George Gavrilis

Governor of Zabul.

20:58
Laura Tedesco
He was. And I believe his name was Naseri, if I'm not mistaken, the governor at that time. And I was invited to a dinner at his residence with the commanding officer, the American Air Force Lieutenant Colonel that I mentioned. Most of the dinner was the governor and the American officer talking their business. We spent a few minutes talking about Zabul's heritage, of which at that time, I knew very little, I was still wrapping my head around it.

21:27

Laura Tedesco

And I remember while we were at that dinner, the colonel received a call. Because he was not present at the FOB, he had to carry a radio with him at all times. And he received a call that there was a car at the gate of the PRT / FOB.

21:45

Laura Tedesco

And the car had children in it who were seriously wounded. Maybe they encountered a landmine, an unexploded landmine, and the kids played with it, you know, inadvertently and then were gravely injured. And this family had put the kids in the car and brought them to the PRT for medical attention. Evidently, that was the place to get the best medical care.

22:09

George Gavrilis

Of course, yeah.

22:11

Laura Tedesco

And I watched the commander have to make a very difficult decision, whether to let the car in for medical treatment for the kids, or to turn the car away. And why he was faced with this life-and-death decision is because some months earlier, a car had come to a FOB claiming to have injured children in it, and the car was allowed to enter and there were no injured children in the car. It was laden with explosives.

22:46

Laura Tedesco

And so this commander, this Colonel, had to very quickly make a very difficult decision whether to take the risk. And we knew what decision he was facing because we were all sitting together in this small room and he was speaking quietly and you know, without drama. But it was evident the gravity of what he was facing. And he decided to let the car come in and the kids were treated ultimately.

23:13

George Gavrilis

I wonder if we should catch up with him—

23:15
Laura Tedesco

I'd like to.

23:16

George Gavrilis
—and find out what he's doing today.

23:17

Laura Tedesco
I'd like to. I've lost touch with him, but I could maybe find him.

23:20

George Gavrilis
What's his name?

23:21

Laura Tedesco

Colonel Veres. Andy Veres. Very fine person.

23:29

George Gavrilis

At the time that you would have been there, I remember that there were high hopes for Zabul Province that it could become a showcase for how the Afghan government, but especially the Afghan army, could establish good bonds with local communities, protect local communities, even resolve local disputes in some cases.

23:53

George Gavrilis
And I remember that, at the time, the ANSF, the Afghan National Security Forces, were relatively trusted, at a time when the government wasn't, when the police forces certainly weren't in this particular district, at least on the villages, right off the Ring Road, the main population centers in Zabul. And there would have been a lot of reporters looking into this.

24:14

Laura Tedesco

Yeah. I made ultimately several trips to Zabul. But this first one that lasted four days, I happened to be there at the same time as a New York Times reporter who was doing a story on Zabul. She was a really well-known reporter. She had really a great reputation for doing excellent reporting. And she had a deep knowledge of Afghanistan.

24:38

Laura Tedesco

So I was pretty intimidated. She wasn't there to have anything to do with why I was there. It was a coincidence that we happened to be there at the same time. And I remember sitting around that first evening with her and with the commanding officer. And they were talking and I was present to get some time with Colonel Veres also. And he made a reference to our trip. I think it was the next day when we were going to go see Alexander's castle.

25:11

Laura Tedesco

And I made the remark out loud that she heard where I said, I don't think that's gonna be Alexander's. I don't think his architecture is still well-preserved above the ground. But let's go have a look. I'm really interested and you know, quite excited to go see this. And I remember her response to me was like, What the hell do you know? I remember feeling quite put in my place quickly by this journalist.

25:44

George Gavrilis

Laurie, isn't it nice, when women in a male-dominated space support each other?

25:50

Laura Tedesco

It feels so good.

25:51

George Gavrilis

Isn't it lovely?

25:53

Laura Tedesco

I do love that. Anyway, I remember feeling kind of like, oh, wow, ouch, ouchy— I, I'm not gonna really say anything else anymore to her. And it so happened that at the end of this particular trip, she and I were put on the same helicopter to leave Zabul. And we were the only two people on the helicopter. And that we sat on the two seats furthest from each other. She wanted nothing to do with me. And I was not particularly interested in becoming Facebook friends with her.

26:30

Laura Tedesco
And we leave Zabul with our final destination being Kabul, the capital. And we had to make a stop in Ghazni, which was on the way. So we go all of like 15 minutes in the air up from Zabul, plop down in the PRT in Ghazni, and a bunch of other passengers get on.

26:51

Laura Tedesco

And I happen to know one of the passengers getting on who happened to know I was going to be on that helicopter. And I was gifted an iced cappuccino by this other passenger. And I was like, Oh man, this is gonna be the best iced cappuccino ever. I've not had one of these in a long time. And I'm sucking down this iced cappuccino and I remember the journalist kind of looking at me like you bitch, like how'd you get that?

27:19

George Gavrilis

[laughing]

27:20

Laura Tedesco

You bougie, you bougie diplomat. You know, kind of like that. I might be reading into it. She might not have been thinking that, but it felt— it didn't help my standing with her that I was drinking an iced cappuccino on a helicopter ride from Ghazni.

27:40

Laura Tedesco

She wrote a very nice piece in The New York Times at that time about Zabul and Colonel Veres. And that came out shortly after that time we were together.

27:54

George Gavrilis
P.S. there's no Four Seasons in Qalat.

27:58

Laura Tedesco

[laughing]

28:01

George Gavrilis

I just wanted to make that clear to the listeners in case they didn't catch your awesome, awesome irony.

28:11

George Gavrilis
You've been listening to Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. To stay in touch, also follow us on Instagram at the_monuments_woman. Join us next week when we dive deeper.

28:27

George Gavrilis
This show is produced by Christian D. Bruun and May Eleven Projects. It is recorded by Audivita Studios, and edited by Shaun Hettinger and Greg Williams. The theme song is This Love by Ariana Delawari, featuring Salar Nader.

Ep 19: Zabul, not Kabul — Zabul

Topics Covered in this Episode
Afghans and their long time horizon
Zabul with a "Z"
George and Zabul
Zabul in context
Four days in Zabul
On the Ring Road looking for towers
Romanian FOB
Assessing what is restorable in Zabul
The tower on the Ring Road
A one-gal operation
Qalat, Alexander the Great's castle
The castle's glass tea house and Qalat landscape
Lodging and meals on Qalat trip
Laura and the non-alcoholic beer
Governor of Zabul, U.S. colonel Andy Veres, children and landmines
New York Times reporter

Recorded on August 5, 2021