Gideon Rachman was with the dynamic duo as they touched down in Kabul. He reports that the security was so tight that it would have been impossible for the pair to form any impression of their own of what was actually happening:
The “security situation” here is so dicey that the arrival of the American secretary of state and Britain’s foreign secretary could not be advertised in advance. In fact my Foreign Office companions became highly agitated when I mentioned on an “open line” (ie a mobile phone call home) that I was sitting in a motorcade at Kabul airport, with Rice and Miliband in the car ahead, waiting to be swept along to the president’s palace.
The security is so tight that it must be virtually impossible for visiting western dignitaries to form any spontaneous impression of Afghanistan. Rice and Miliband arrived early this morning on an unadvertised flight from London. They were immediately put on a military plane to Kandahar – but did not leave the military base there. Then it was back to Kabul, and a short drive to see President Karzai on a road that had been cleared of all traffic. Then it was time to visit some more troops in a gym at Nato HQ. And that’s it. Condi is off tonight. Miliband is staying for a formal dinner. I’m sure they will have had “frank discussions” with President Karzai. But they must be completely reliant on their diplomats for any impression of how things are going.
And, he adds, he’s been hearing some worrying comparisons:
I’m slightly disturbed by occasional echoes of the Russians’ unhappy period here. When there was some discussion about whether our plane would be able to land on a snowy Kabul airport, an Afghan remarked – “The Russians always landed in the snow.” And when there was talk of sending girls to school in Afghanistan, I was told that the Russians had been keen on that too.
