{"id":2567,"date":"2014-01-28T18:06:32","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T17:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?p=2567"},"modified":"2025-10-16T18:37:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T17:37:31","slug":"the-best-chowkidar-in-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?p=2567","title":{"rendered":"The Best Chowkidar in the Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Way back in 2007, on one of my earliest tours in Afghanistan, I was responsible for writing these weekly situation reports, and I recall there was an open source report being published in the UK that I would regularly rely on as a source, because the author was able to get more detailed information on certain aspects of security than I could find in ISAF,\u00a0despite not even being in country. \u00a0<\/em>I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks later when the author of those reports had submitted an application to work for our organization in Afghanistan, and I shamelessly poached him from his previous employer.<\/p>\n

James was one of the smartest, hardest working and hopelessly optimistic people I’ve ever worked with, he would end up outlasting me in Afghanistan, staying there a full six years, working for our organization and then switching over to the UN. \u00a0You have to be optimistic to work on the projects he worked on in Afghanistan – most people would typically burn out after a year or two.<\/p>\n

James is now leaving Afghanistan with a heavy heart. \u00a0But on his way out, he is doing something wonderful for a man who was critical in making it all somewhat bearable. \u00a0I’m talking about his chowkidar. \u00a0What’s a chowkidar? \u00a0Technically, it means “house watcher” – but a good chowkidar can do so much more, and apparently this one did.<\/p>\n

I could go on, but I hope you won’t mind taking a moment to read for yourself what James wrote and how he can use your help. \u00a0Check out the website to read about the best chowkidar in the universe<\/a>\u00a0 And then check out thefacebook page.<\/a> \u00a0And share it with the people you know – it’s a good story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back in 2007, on one of my earliest tours in Afghanistan, I was responsible for writing these weekly situation reports, and I recall there was an open source report being published in the UK that I would regularly rely on as a source, because the author was able to get more detailed information on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,253],"tags":[1790,1200,1201,1202],"class_list":["post-2567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-causes","tag-afghanistan","tag-chowkidar","tag-fix-ibrahim","tag-fixibrahim"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2567"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2572,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions\/2572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}