Welcome to Hotel Serena
Updated on 25 January 2008
Alex Thomson blogs on suicide bombs and snow from Afghanistan's first 5-star hotel.
The good news is that the Serena Hotel is now open. Well, a bit of it is.
The burned out hulk of a Land Cruiser stands covered in tarpaulin in the forecourt. And it's now about the only vehicle there. You have to stop during the day outside this place's massive blast walls since the Taliban's gun and suicide bomb attack on the place.
View of entrance of Kabul Serena Hotel in Afghanistan when it opened in 2005. Credit: Reuters
You could say it's a really symbol of the new Afghanistan - and since the new Afghanistan is bristling with aid/military media types from the west - it's a huge target. Amazing, not that the Talibs had a go recently - but that they'd not done it sooner.
Much of one wing remains boarded up and the large retinue of security goons are having a hard time of it. At night they block off the entire passing road outside, taking no chances at all.
Even so, everyone coming and going gets a complete going over as the airport-style baggage x-ray machine was wrecked by one of the suicide bomb-blasts.
Wary Afghanistan guards outside the hotel, after recent bomb attacks. Credit: Reuters
Tough work being outside right now in Kabul. Last night it got down to minus 22 degrees and rarely gets much warmer than around 5 below at any point during daylight hours.
It's a dry, powdery dusty snow on the dry dusty Afghan landscape. Clear blue skies just now -- but only a matter of time before another weather system blows in and dumps yet more snow on the country.
This morning the local paper in Kabul said 150 people had already been killed by the cold. Afghans tend to shrug at that and say it's generally good news, after all the long years of drought.
