Travelers, even the type that heads for a cosseted resort in a first world country, know to be careful about the local water. But what do you do when you are in a country where there is no safe water?
Buy bottled water you’d say.
Most of the time that would be a good idea, but not always.
Shortly after the rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan I arrived to work as a communications adviser to the NATO force stationed in Kabul. For the military, clean water is of prime importance because sick soldiers don’t fight well.
The NATO force in Afghanistan went by the acronym ISAF, (International Security Assistance Force).
During my entire time in Afghanistan spanning several assignments, ISAF flew in every ounce of water for its 5,000 troops. You can just imagine the cost of flying water from Germany and Dubai.
The rest of bottled water made its way to Kabul by truck from Pakistan, ostensibly made by Naya of Canada and bottled in the subcontinent. 
The caps of plastic water bottles are sealed with shrink wrapped plastic; the idea being that any attempt to tamper would result in broken plastic.
That’s fine but central Asia is home to entire villages that copy weapons right down to the serial numbers, factories that turn out pirated software which comes with its own pirate toll free support numbers, and ersatz scotch manufacturers who speak Gaelic with Pakistani accents.
And so it is with bottled water. You have to be very wary about buying water from a roadside stall in Kabul.
The Bulgarian Embassy found that out shortly after they opened their new offices. Located as it is in what passes for the upscale diplomatic centre of Kabul, where roadside stalls charge the foreigners far more than their countrymen elsewhere in the city get charged,a certain misplaced sense of trust in the local merchants can be deceiving.
When the embassy buyer, a Bulgarian therefore open to swindle, bought a box of 12 one and a half litre bottles of water, he checked to make sure that all the plastic shrink wraps were intact. They were too, all the way back to the embassy where the first was opened and poured into glasses for the meal. The reek of sewage killed all appetites.
Some enterprising bottler had found to make sweet money out off rank sewage.
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