Glimpses of how it could have been
When moving around Kandahar either in our armoured vehicles or on foot, it is hard to travel more than a street without passing flowering oleanders, either long swathes or solitary plants.
The majority are of the cerise variety which happily lines the byways of Tuscany and Umbria.
It is a striking concurrence of the natural beauty of these handsome flowers and the urban degradation and bullet holes, that allows you to glimpse briefly into a world that might have been, had the region endured prosperity rather than war-hosted with a fierce and depressing frequency.
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