People who have not traveled in the Southern republics and discovered for themselves how positively feudal they remain in their isolated areas cannot comprehend them. If my descriptions of Afghanistan seemed alien to you, they were like the street outside your house, compared to these areas.
This is a world where the only telephone in a town of 15'000 is likely to be in the police station. And it probably doesn't work. In those wastelands, technology doesn't avail much, and when it breaks, there is nobody to repair it. A world where the word of the mayor is more powerful than any central authority - and where the mayor is more likely to owe his allegiance to a criminal group than to anyone else. A world where every stranger entering a village is likely to be an enemy - or possibly a hostage to demand ransom for. A world where more people live in tightly knit family groups, that migrate on a weekly basis, follow no roads, owe no allegiance to any one but their seniors, and recognize no borders, than do in the villages. A world where disagreements are settled by a knife in the night, and family feuds can run for countless generations. A world where an AK47, or an ounce of gold counts more than a uniform, an authorization or a court. A world where, at the height of Soviet power, a government owned
truck might pass by the villages once a week. Today, that might be every few months. Or never. A world where there are no checkpoints, no credit cards, no banks, no bottled water, no roads, no paper trails. A world where you can travel 300 km in any direction - without seeing a soul, crossing a road, or coming across a village. Yet know that your every step has been watched. For this is a world where not even a mouse can move without a somebody seeing it, and passing the word, for prestige, for honor, for gold, for his life. A world that the men of the wastes and the mountains comprehend, but where not even the KGB ventures except in large numbers - never mind the "We don't do diarrhea - or intelligence" CIA or the "We don't do mountains" Mountain Rangers. A world far beyond any law you would recognize - and likely alien far beyond your imagination.
Hermit
---- This message was posted by Hermit to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25957>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Sep 22 2002 - 05:06:18 MDT