2011 Peace Trip to Afghanistan

Brad with two Japanese girls in an Emirates A380 airliner on the way from Heathrow Airport, London, to Dubai. The girls were on their way back home after a vacation in England. They were strongly sympathetic with the peace movement. The closest girl, Mari Iwagami, took the picture.

The Hindu Kush mountains

Hakim, a medical doctor, Singapore citizen, Bamiyan high school teacher, and main local organizer for our project, with Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. The banner was carried in the March 17 parade in Kabul.

Kabul school children

Kabul school playground

Nevada Desert Experience activists Jim Haber and Mary Lou Anderson with an Afghan school girl

Street bread stall, Kabul

Street market in Kabul

Abandoned Soviet tanks in the Panjshir Valley

Abdul Shah Massoud's tomb in the Panjshir Valley

Panjshir Valley floor below Abdul Shah Massoud's tomb. Massoud was the main Mujahadeen leader who drove out the Soviets. Educated as an engineer, he sought a democratic Afghanistan, and was assassinated Sept 9, 2001, probably on the orders of Osama Bin Laden. Several Afghans told me that he was the only leader who placed the interests of the Afghan people first. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Project members crossing the Panjshir River on a makeshift bridge.

Afghan New Year's Day (3/21) crowd in a cemetery/square in Kabul.

Mosque on the east side of a cemetery/square in Kabul where thousands gathered for the Afghan New Year's (March 21) celebration

Project members and Afghan supporters at the New Year's Day gathering, Kabul

Folk singer with a two-stringed danbora, an ancient instrument, at a dinner in Kabul given in our honor by a local highway engineer

TV censorship (the blurred bosom) of a soap opera actress, Kabul

U.S. Army armored car in Kabul