We landed at Kandahar under bright blue skies and warm sunshine, then another hour over featureless desert and some snowy mountains brought us to Herat airport. Flying over Afghanistan there is no sign at all of any habitation, and with the rain failures it all looks the same shade of brown everywhere. It was bright and cold in Herat. The sun is warm, but it is the wind that makes it feel bitterly cold if you are not in a sheltered place. The air always feels very fresh and unpolluted as though on top of a mountain at the airport, but in the city it is dusty as lorries and cars stir up the dirt tracks.
Rumours seem to suggest that it was aimed at a senior government man.
Otherwise Herat looks very dry and dusty, but much as it did when I was last here in December. I immediately had a meeting with Mr. Ajmal Shirzai, Ockenden's country director, for Afghanistan and was told that there is a hurry for some ideas to be put on paper for a meeting with some potential new donors on Tuesday. Ockenden International have been building latrines in Mazlagh camp, but most of the IDPs living in the camps are not used to using latrines and the standards of hygiene are poor. We also discussed some of the future plans for the development team and I plan to try to visit the clinic built by Ockenden, and look at some of the health messages being disseminated along with the skills training programme.