As seen on Army Knowledge Online
Soldiers of 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, intercept illegal timber as it is smuggled through the Narang Valley in Afghanistan's Konar province. Donkeys are the primary way that timber smugglers are able to export the timber without detection over the rough terrain of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. (Photo by Courtesy photo ).When I saw this, all I could think was "those poor donkeys..."
Reminded me of one I saw in Charikar in late 2004:
posted by LTC John at 6:00 PM
6 Comments:
Poor donkeys is right!!
The timeber is "illegal" bec. they're getting out of paying some kind of import fee or something???
Afghan government position is that they own all natural resources. Of course they can't exactly show up to the Panjshir valley and tell people to stop mining gemstones.
More on timber here: http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/06/17/intercepting-wood-in-kunar/
Christian - darn right. Nobody messes with the Panjshiri. They either get their cut, if you are smuggling, or you stay the heck out...
LTC John,
I posted something at the Protein Wisdom Pub.
I took the liberty of giving you a small role in it.
Please check it out and give me some feedback.
Regards,
Danger
My dad talked about working small mines when he was a kid in depression era Appalachia, basically they would go in behind the big operations and pick up the crumbs. Many of these were small, vertical shaft mines where everything had to come up or down in an elevator. The coal was moved in the mines by carts pulled by donkeys, and it was easier to just build stables in the mines and leave the donkeys down there, just moving the food and excrement by elevator. He would grow sad decades later recalling how many of those little burros were born, lived there whole life and died in a coal mine, never seeing the light of day until their corpse was hauled up that elevator.
Donkeys don't deserve the PR rap they have gotten, not at all.
Forgot to sign that post,
that was B Moe.
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