anistan: On the Brink

Ahmed Rashid
Afghanistan's Uncerlain Transilion from Turmoil l o Normalcy e report by Barnett R. Rubin.
Council on Foreign Relations, March 2006, 43 pp.. $10.00 net and the MPs did just that. They politely demanded that each o l Karzai's twenty-live cabinet ministers present their credentials. say what they had ;~chievedand hoped to achieve. and then answer tough. rapid-lire questions from the MPs. Even more remarkable was that the proceedings' were, for the lirst lime.
.

Kabul in Winler: Life wilhout Peace in Afghanislan

hy Ann Jones. Metropolitan. 321 pp.. $24.00

and set u p councils i n all thirty-four provinces to run their own allairs. By now over 60,000 militiamen have been disarmed, five million children have been sent back to school, and somc health care is being provided beyond Kabul. The growth o f Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP)-excluding its booming production o f

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission lo Fighl Terrorirn~and Build Nations.. One School a1 a Time
bv Circg M(1rtenson and David Oliver Rclin. Viking. 336 pp.. $25.05

I n December 2005 1 spent several hours a day i n the lobhy o l the Intercontinental Hotel i n Kahul intcrviewinp somc o f the people who pilssed by. The hotel, perched on ; I hill at the edge o f the city and long ago written o l l by the 1ntercontinent;ll chain S I ; a loss. has been through some rough times i n Afghanistan's twenty-three years o f war. I n 1992 1 spent morc than a month using the hotel as a bunker to avoid getting hit, first as tlic Cornmunist regime crumbled and then as the civil war unfolded across the cit) below me. For much o f the following decade the hotel was without regular electricity o r running water and ytiu never saw an Afghan woman thcre. I n 2005. sitting on a sofa i n the hotel's lobby. I found on my lclt a lormer Taliban commander w i l h ; I beard down to his waist, and on my right a .young and beautiful Alghan woman from Herat, whosc onlv concession to "covering up" was a very loose and flimsy head scarl. They wcre both members o l the new Alghan parliament that had hcen electcd on Septcmher 18: for the past week they had been receiving instruction from U N experts on w h i ~ t a parliament was and how to behave i n one. The two-hour lunch hrcaks allowed the members o l parliament (MPs) to meet cach othcr inlormally. As he argued with the woman. I could see that the lormer Taliban (11'licer was still i n a slate o l shock th;it shc was there at all. A n even bigger shock must havc been the senling arrangements on December 19, 2005. when the parliament was ~nauguratedby Presldcnt Hamid Karzai i n the presence of US Vice President Dick Cheney. who arrived twenty minutes latc. M e n and \bornen MPs were seatcd nest to each other i n alphabetical order-and there were no complaints. That does not happsn In I r a n Or i n the Arab world: the largely rigged parliaments i n most Muclim counlrlcs enlorce strict segregation. The p;lrliament has proved that i t I tightly controlled vehicle l o r is not ; Karzai o r ihc Arnerlcans. I t set about its first task i n March 2006 with the kind o f earnestness and prolessionalism one might expect from much older bodies.,. I n Alghanistan's presidential system o l government. the country's new constitution gives parliamcnt the power l o approve the presidcnl's cabi24

hroadca\t live on TV and on radio. A large part o f the population watched them. For a month work came to a st;~ndstill \*,bile mesmerized Afghans heard tribal and warlord ministers fumble l o r words as they sought to cxplain themselves. Eventually on A p r i l 20 pa~liamentapproved only twenty minister\. forcing Karzai to fire five o f his nominees. b t is hard to overstate the Importance o f such a Ireexheeling parliament and the first general elections expcrlcnccd by Alghans since 1973. Some 6.6 m i l lion Afghans had cast their vote and 41 perccnt o l lhem were s.omen. Women hold sixty-clght seats or 27 perc2nt o f the 249 seals i n the WOlcsi Jirga. o r iowcr "House o l the People." and one sixth (11 the seats i n the Mc.;hrano Jirpa-thc upper house or Senate called the .'House o f the Elders." That IS by far a grs;ltcr number o l women i n parliamcnt than i n any othcr Muslim country. or. l o r that matter. i n many Western countries. Yet an estimi~ted one third o f the male MFs consists o f warlllrd\. gross violators o f human rights. or men involved i n drug smuggling. I t is what you get after morc than I\*,o decades of war. The voter turnout last September was only 53 percent. compared to 70 percent l o r the pres~dcntialelections in 2004. The reasons for the lo\\, turnout have evcrutkineTo o u l t h ths perilous stale o?Afgiani$;ln'~oday. the lack of security. and the disillusionment o l voters. 'I'he elections bruught to a conclusion the UN-sponsored process that began i n late Novcrnher 2001. when the U N officials L ~ i k h d a r Brahimi and Francesc Vendrell persuaded the Afghan Pactions l o meet i n Bonn to I "road map" l o r the luture. outline ; Since then the Alghans havc dchated and voted on a new constitution, freely elected a president and a parliamcnt.

opium-has averaged around 17 percent cach year since 2002. This year GDP growth is expected to amount to 14 percent, and the government w i l l linancc 60 percent o f its ;Innual budgct with its own revenue rather than from Western and other donors-even though the funds for thc entlrc development and reconstruction budget sfill come lrom donor countries. Yet government rcvenuc will t ~ ) l aonly l 5.4 percent o f non-drug (;Dl' i n 2006. "less than any country g the latest with dala," ~ ~ c c o r d i nto C(1uncil o f Foreign Relations report on Alghanistan hy Barnett Rubin. Ominously he also points out that the postwar economic boom is now coming to ;In end. Rubin. the hcst o f a h i ~ n d f u lof American scholars on Alghanislan belore September II.still knows Afghanistan better than anyone else. His rcport l o r the Council on Foreign Relations makes depressing rc;lding. whether i n showing what was not done at the right lime o r what st111 needs to hc done.

2.
Attempts Lo resurrect the Afghan slate during the I;ISI flvc years have hcen dependent on four scts o f players. O n the Alghan side thcrc ale Karzai and h ~ ministers. s the warlords. and struggling human rights workers. The international community has hccn led by the U N secretary general's special reprcsentati!,c to Afghanistan. The first three spccial representatives ---Brahimi. followed by the Frenchman Jean Arnault and the Gcrman 'Tom Koenigs-have helped adminirter the elections. the parliament, and the government, and they havc coordinated their activities with the U N development agencies and somc eight hundred Western and Afghan nongovernmental organizations (N(i.0~) as well.

The most influential international officials have been the Americans, led by the US ambassador and the successive American generals who have led the coalifion forces. which now number 23.000 troops. (Most o f them are Americans who are hunting down members o l al-Qaeda.) The most dccisive and intrusive loreign olficial i n Alghanistan was Zalmay Khalilzad. who served as US ambassador from 2003 to 2005 and is now the US ambassador i n Iraq. Initially. the US government refused help with peacekeeping in Alghanistan. A more recent parlicipant i n this activity i n Afghanistan is NATO. which. since August 2003. has led the eight-thousand-strong Intrrnational Security Assistance Force, o r ISAF, i n Kabul. This year NA-rO will deploy 11,000 more troops as i t sets up provincial reconstruction teams i n twcnty-three o f the country's thirtylour provinces. Next year US forces w i l l merge under NATO to create a single command. I t is now five years since George W. Bush declared victory i n Afghanistan and said that the terrorists were smashed. Since the Bonn meeting, i n late 2001. a smorgasbord of international military and d e v e l o ~ m e nforces t has been inc;easing i n siie. H o w ii it. then, that Alghanirtan is near collapse once again'? T o put i t briefly. what has gone wrong has been the invasion of Iraq: Washington's relusal to rake slate-building i n Afghanistan seriously and instead waging a lruitlcss war i n Iraq. For Afghanistan the results have been too lew Western troops, too l ~ t t l e nloncy. and a lack ofcoherent srratcgy and sustained policy initiatives on the part o l Western and Afghan leaders. The Bonn conference created the scafiolding to build the new Afghan structure. but what was consistently missing wcre the bricks and running water. Inside the scallolding there is still only the barest shell. One consequence has been a re\,ived Taliban movement that has made a third o f the country ungovernilhle. Together with al-Qaeda, Taliban le;lders arc trying to carve OUI new bases on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. They arc aided by Alglianistan's resurgent opium industry. which has contributed to widespread corruption and lawlcrsncss, particularly in the south. The country's huge crop o l poppies is processed into ()plum ;lnd refined into herom for cxport, now ;~ccounling l o r close I(,00 percent of the global market. This spring's crop is expected to be larger than ever. and rcports suggest that drug smugglers are ~ncreasinglylorming alliances with Taliban fighters. Acct~rding to the I ~ l d e p e ~ ~ ditn ~London. rrr Islamic lighters agreed to temporarily suspend their campaign o l violence during the poppy harvest this year, to ensure maximum profits. The Alghan government has shown a latal incapacity to deliver services to its people and the West has f a ~ l c d to deal with interfering neighbors. such a Pakistan and Iran. The situation was becoming so critical thal manv concerned donors, but especially the United Nations, de-

Tlw N n v Yurk Review

Frontier Province. But the Taliban is now well entrenched in southern Afghanistan too. Al-Qacda has also put Taliban members in touch with insursenis in Iraq: the result is t h i ~ tthe Tilliban members a r e learning how l o plan ir~rdcarry out suicide bombings. make a n d plant mines. a n d dclonatc improvised esplosivc devices (I,EDs). They thus havc becn able lo prepare incrcirsingly dcadly ;rrnbushes for Afghan and Western troops.

quickly won over by bribes from memhers o f the drug trade: they sought out business a n d property deals lor themselves. But Ihe major halions wcre squabbling over lraq a n d paying little attention. Ruhin observes that poverty. hunger. ill health, and gender inequality a r c s o bad in Afghanistan that the country remains at the bottom of every global ranking. I n Afghanistan, the drug lrade has undermined everything from security to dcvclopment. while increasing public frustration with the government. Afghanistan produces 8 7 percent o l the world's heroin according t o the UN Office o n Drugs and Crimc (IINODC), based in Vienna. U N O D r estimates that the value o l all opiates produced in Afghanislan last year was $2.8 billion-out of which only $600 million reached the farmers. That is much less than Ihe average estimated $2.5 billion per ycar that Western dpnors havc provided Afghanistan since 2001. T h e aid programs supposed to provide alternative livelihoods to farmers produciltg poppies o r help thcm grow other lucrative cash crops arc derisory when compared t o what the diug smugglers offer. The best-lunctloninp programs t o hclp fiirmcrs a r e run hv opium traffickers who providc improvcd variclics of puppy seeds. lcrtilirer. and bettcr methods of cultivation lo increase opium yields a n d even large-scale e m ployment during the poppy harvest. When we compare Afghanistan's situation today u i t h that of 2001. we sce the country now n e e d to develop an entire allcrnativc economv to replilcc Ihe drug economy. That international donors refuse lo invest i n t h e agricultural regions where 70 percent of the population live has been a critical failure. A n other has bccn the failure t o fund infrastructurc projects. In the five years since thc'US-led invasion not a single new dam. power station. or major water system has bccn built. Only o n e major intercity highway has bcen completed. Only o n e in three Kabul residents has electricity, which works only one out of every three nights. Rubin points out that until 2003 funding f o r Alghi~nistan's reeonslruction was hclow that of East Timor and H ..I.I ~' I . Mcanwhile. Ihe U S and NATO a r e spending h e t u c c n $15 hillion and $18 billion a ycar o n thcir military o p cratlons. Most tragic o f all, Western population5 a r c hardly aware of the crisis because there has becn chronic failure t o reporl on Afghanislan, espccially in the US.

3.
North of Balucliistan, in the Pakistani Pashtun tribal areas o l N o r l h and South Waziristan and adjacent provinces in Afghanistan, a more international kind o l insurgent movement has taken root. 11is led by al-Qacda and Pakistani Taliban, and includes members of the Afghan Ti~liban,Central Asiansloyal to the Islirmic Movement of Uzbekistan. Chechens. Uighur and Chinese Muslims. and olhcr Afghan groups led by Gulhuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani. They are fighting largely in t h c east and northeast o f A f ghanisliln. but have also demonstrated a n improved capacity l o set o f l car bomhs a n d mount s u i c ~ d eattacks in Kabul and other major cities. Thcv have been able t o hold olf Pakistani troops who wcre sent to Pakistan'\ border arcas hy Musharri~f under considcrithle US pressure in the spring o f 2004. However. Pakistan is not the only problem. Barnctt Ruhin writes that all. of Afghirnistan's neighbors-Iran, India. Russia. and the Central Asian Republics-oppose a long-term U S presence and have funds for .their own Afghan proxies just as they did during the civil war in thc I'iOOs. They arc wailing for the American5 l o leave. T h e lack o f securily I S a dirccl conscquence o l the small numbers o l Western forces o n Ihe ground. Quite apart from ~ h counlryside, c thcy havc Failed to secure evcn the major citiea and highways so that aid agencies can work. For five ycars the US Pentagon has single-mindcdly pursucd ai-Qacda while failing (jusl as i t has done in Iraq) to acknowledge Ihc need lor a coherent plan to restore civil society in Alghanistan. as wcll as the importance o f hunting down the Talihan. which it has lreated as a local. Afghan problem that US troops should- not hc copcerncd with. T h e result has hcen the absence o f a clear US strategy for dealing with Pakistan. This has dceply frustraled the Afghan leadership, while creating periodic shouting matches between Karzai and Musharraf'on CNN. T h e effectiveness o f the American campaign against alQaeda. meanwhile, is itself questionc two top leaders, able, since ~ h group's Osama bin Laden a n d Ayman alZawahiri. rcmain a1 large. T h e Amcricans claim t o have caught numcrous leaders lhey describe as Number T h r e e in the al-Qaeda hierarchy. although cvery lime a Number T h r e e is caught another seems t o lakc his place. Second o n Rubin's list of Alghanistan's most serious prohlems is "corrupt and ineffective administration without resources." O n c e the war in lraq began. the government rcceived loo little money and support t o makc its ministries capablc o l delivering services t o Ihe people. In this vacuum. warlords and cabinet minislers were

stead he answered, "You can add other major capitals, such as Bangkok, Jakarta, and Tehran, lhat a r e also going uncovered." H e told m e that the problemin these Muslim capitals is not o n e o f cost, but thal very few senior staff members are volunteering to be slalioncd there. Nor a r e young American men a n d womcn. who a few years ago would be volunteering i o report from Asia and the Middle East. coming forward. In contrast, in Britain. dozens o f young jburnalists have been applying t o report from both regions, whenever jobs come open. "Americans, especially young Americans. d o not want t o travcl to Asia o r the Islamic world,

six months. S h e too had becn married off. but only e few months after t h e wedding, her husband's brolher c a m e t o her house a n d ordered her t o leave il because her husband had divorced her. T h e brother showed her a n officiallooklng paper, but being illiterate. s h e couldn't read it. She asked l o talk with her husband, but the brother said she could not. Instead he delivered her t o the house o f her aunt. T h e r e , after some lime, the aunt inlroduced her t o a man from Bamiyan a n d said that she must marry him. S h e did as she was told. but the marriage was a lake. a n d Ihe next day the new "husband" disappeared. T h e brother o f the original husband. having come into a little money. also disappeared. (Zulal [Jones's translator] turned to me: "Is this not also in English 'prostitution"?") Then. to Dustana's surprise, hcr husband showed up. H e broughl the police and insisted they arrest Dustana o n charges of adultery and bigamy. After investigators reported their findings to lhe prosecutor. she was brought to court. convicted o f "illegal marriage." and sentenced to live ycars in prison. T h e r e are. Jones wriies. numerous codes o f law-penal. legal, customary. a n d religious-that women have to conform t o in each tribe o r ethnic group. T h e question of womcn's rights is never raised. If they don't obey orders. o r resist bcing abused. the men in their lives can have thcm arrested. A s in many Muslim countries there is n o specific law agalnsl rape-an Afghan woman who reports bcing raped is usually charged with adultery. Despite a new constitution that guarantees women's rights. many judges are barely literate and know only Sharia o r Islamic law. Unlorlunately .lones uses part of her book t o rehearse Ihe recent history of Afghanistan. S h e has not talked t o the polilicians and revolutionary lcadcrs who made much o l t h i s history a n d has t o rcly on printed sourcea which make hcr account reminiscent o l o t h e r Wcstern histories of the region. Joncs also indulges in a long diatribe against what s h e sces as the warlike, misogynist character of Afghan society. and the Western journalists who (ailed to criticize it. "Afghans a r c famous fighters," she writcs. "Fiercc, implacable, ruthless. bold. savage, brulal-these a r e the adjectives attached t o them in history books." She is particularly critical of Wcstern journa!isls such as Ihc loreign correspondenl Robert Kaplan. who in Ihe 1980s and early 1990s cclehratcd the heroism o l Mujahidecn fighters. Their reportage. she writcs.
sometimes read like fan mail, tinged with a kind of homoerotic glorification of manliness, yet safely homoerotic because these tough. fierce, idealized bearded warriors secmed the very pinnaclc o f macho masculinity.

,l,r / I fxlra,r

Nrrrior~al Arttry soldicr prlryif~g rllll.~,(le rlrc PI,/-i-Cliorkllipri.sorl, n,lrerc, lrr,,rdrc~d.vof firlibor! pri.sotrcr.s n,erc2 riorirrg. Kuh111.F<+rrtorv26. 2006

anywhere there may he danger." my CNN friend said. "It's a sad lime for American journalism." The two books under review, however. have been written by advcnturous Americans who have lived in Afghanistan and Pakistan a n d have come t o know both countries well. A n n Joncs. the a u t h o r of scvcral feminist books. arrived in Kabul in December 2002. about a ycar after the US stopped bombing the country. S h e bcgan t o work lor a small but effective NCiO called Madar. o r Mother, a n organizalion set u p some ycars earlier t o hclp womcn in Kabul who had been widowed during the country's many contlicls. In K l ~ h u lill Winfer. Jones describes her visits t o down-and-out Afghan women in prisons and her experience teaching English t o female teachers-jobs nobody else wanted to do. Her hook finely evokes thc plaecs Jones came 10 know. "Kabul in winter." she writes. is the color of the dust, though the dust is no color at all. 11's a line particulate lilted by winds from old stone mountains and sifted over the city like flour. It lies in the streets and driftsover the sidewalks whcre it compacts in hillocks and holes. Rain and snowmelt make it mud. Mountain suns hake it.. . . When Jones virits young Afghan womcn in prison, she finds they were almost invariably put lhcre alter being abused, raped. o r burned by thcir own men. She describes a typical case: Dustana said she was about twenty, though her sallow skin and sunken cheeks made her look older. S h e had been in prison lor

Rccenllv I asked a friend who is a senior rcporter with TNN why CNN has not had a slafl r c p o r t q j n - G h u l o r Islamabad for over :*-year. ~ A c s carc, after all. two capitals that a r e ccntral lo the Bush administralion's "war o n terror." and the lack o f reporters meant that the 18.000 US troops in Alghanislan a r e gelling almost no mention in CNN's international news coverage. In view of recent decisions by Titne magazine, The N e w York Titves. a n d other'major press organizalions to fire hundreds o f journalists, 1 though't my friend would talk o f costcutting measures a n d reduced budgets for reporting in dangerous areas. In-

This kind of feminist anger is prescnt throughout her book. At the same time, Jones sometimes relies on broad generalizations o f the kind she crilicizes in other journalists, as when she The New York Review

suggests that Western women working i n K a h u l dream o f having ;In affair w i t h t l i r i r handsome Afghan drivers. Jones i s much more inlormarive i n her account o f teaelling English to female schoolteachers. a sobering experience i n a country ravaged by ?car\ of Islamist rule and civil strife: O u r class meets i n a school i n the midst or a neighborhood of g r i m [iussi;in-huilt apartment hlocks. Once exclusi\,ely ; I high school. i t is now used for p r i n ) a r l and secondary (middle) school students S I ; well. T h e diffcrcnt age glou(>b are supposed t o usc thc building i n .;cpar;lte shifts, hut at any hour the h;~llwsysseemfilled w ~ t h small noisy hoys who run u p and down screaming and fighting while little girls wrapped i n hlg white ch;~dors sit silently i n the classrooms. Women teachers stand hopelessly i n the c(1rridors amid the swirl o i shouting hoys. as i f therc is nothi n g they can do. I t is like a prep school for mujahidin-tr.tirring u p another generation o f the k i n d o f guys who wrecked thc place durl i n g the c ~ v iwars. criticizes H a m i d Jones h;trshly Karzai f o r not taking a strongcr stilnd about women's rights. althougl) i t could he argued that he has not heen able to cst;~hlishsufficient control o f thc c.lunlry's legal system for any such pronouncements o n his part to makc ; I serious diffi'renee. Bur she rvrllcs perceptively ahout Washington's cronyism i n its funding o f development projects. T h e complaints o f Afghans and Iraqis that hundreds o f millions rif dollars o f development assistance are hclng squandered arc quitc understandahlc when. S I; Jones writes. thc US Agency f o r lnlcrnational Development (USAID) hired consultants for $1,000 a day to report on the way that projects were heing carried out. AfsIi;~n experts could d o such tasks just as well for a small fraction o f the cost. I n Afghanistan the higgest LlSAlD contractor for cducatiun is Creative Associ;~tcs Inlernalional, a Washington. D.C.-hased consulting company that has close connections to holh the Pentagon and the Statc Departmellt. I n 2003 it received a $60 million contr;tct from U S A l D to devclop p r i mary'education i n Afphanislan. Tile Wnshitrg~o~ Pr~sr. l i n recen! reports, has dcscrihed the failure o f t h ~ s project. Primary ~ c h o o l s huilt at a cost ol'$174.000 each could have hecn huill h) Afghan contractors for 620.000 o r less. I n Ti~lr~ Cups ~ e oJ Tea. G r e g M o r t c n son. whose story is recounted by the journalist D a v i d Rclin. is even more intrepid than Jones. A brilliant and well-known mountain climber. who today could he earning millions endnrsing rucksacks i n outdoor magazines. Mortenson decided instead to huild a school i n the most remote corner o f northern Pakistan. a place that is unknown to a l l hut very few Pakistan~s. R e l i n describes how Mortenson grew u p i n Africa, joined the U S A r m y , trained as a nurse. and became a climher. I n Pakistan i n 1993 he wab separated from a mountaineering party while trying t o climb K 2 , the second-highest peak i n the world. and was rescued hy the extremely poor

residents of a billage ealled K o r p h r . which is situated o n the edge o f giant glaciers i n Ballistan. a corner o f Pakistan close to chin:^: K o r p l i c was Par from the prclapsarian paradise o f Western fantilsy. I n every home. at least one family memhcr suffered f r o m @<\iters o r cataracts. The children. whose ginger hair he had admired. owed their c~jlorin: to a furm o f malnutrition called kwashlork c ~ r ... 'The ncareyt doctor was ; I s.cek's walk a r v i l in Skardu. an$ one out o l every three K:irplie children died hcforc reaching tllcir first hirtlid;~y. A f t e r Ivlortenson r c c o u e r c ~ l he promlscd to hurld thc \ill;tgcr\ :I sch(1ol. His mother starred a Pennics for Pakistan at the school where she teaches i n Wiscons~n. .At home i n Montana he sold ever!thing lie owned and lii*ed in his car 50 he could save money for the project. I n the meantime he lost his girlfriend and his job. and seemed t o be golng nowherc. H e (inally met Tara. the love o f his lifc. and married her a few days alter t h e ~ r first meeting. Finally M u r t c l ~ \ o n received a S 10.OOlI gift from a rlch benefactor. which he used to cstahlish the Ccntral Asla I n stitute-an N(;O dedictttcd to huilding c h o o l s and returned 10 Pahistan. I n the meantimc he encountered mullah\ who ~ssuedfatwa5 again:it him. I t I U < I ~ h ~ m threc d ~ f f i c u l t? c a r t o huilli h ~ \ first primar! sch<)r?l i n Korphc. hut i n the next thrce months he huilt three morL.. H c immedi;ltc.ly underrlood wily many experts have concluded that improving the lives o f the peopli. i n such region\ depends o n cduc;~tinp girls. By now. he has huilt fifty-livc schools In northern Paklbtan end A f ehani\tan. whcrc ?i.OOO \tu<lent\ arc heing cducatcd.; I n telling M o r t c n \ o n ' \ story. thc hook also trace\ the hi\tor! (11 the severely orthodox madrasas i n Pakistan and describe\ h o w rich A r a b Wahahhis arrive with suitca\es o f monc\ to fund them. Well hsfore Septemher II. M o i l e n s o n became a foresi@hted advocate o f strengthening the Pakistani education system as a means o f countering lslamic extremism. But the strongest part o f his book is its account o l how h ~ s~ngle-minded s pursuit o f his plan to huild a scliool i n spired a s i d e and unlikely casl o f cli;traclcrs ta j o l n h i m i n his \entures. A m o n g thcsc. f o r example. are the tribal elders who hefricnded him. ;I taki driver who hecanic I ~ i s puardiari angel. and [he W a ~ i r sfroni Waziristan who kidnapped h i m while tl~c! \Yere high o n hashish. A t one point. M i ~ r t e n s o n was called helore Pak~st;~n.s Shia clerics. who had hccn deliberatins ; ~ h ~ ~ \vhcthcr ut his s c h < ~ c ~ l building work could he pcrniittcd under Isi,~micla\\: Inside stood the eight ~ n i p o s i n p hlack-turhar~cdmemhers o f the Council o f Mullahs. F r o m the 4 e ~ c r i t y w ~ t h which S!cd M o hammed Ahhas Risvi greeted him. Llortcnson presumed [he w o ~ s t . With Parvi. he sank hea\,ily down o n :In exquisite Isfallan cnrpct woven rvith a pattern o f flowing
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vines. Syed Ahhas motioned for the rest of rhe council to join them i n a circle o n thc carper. then sat himself. pl;lcing a small red velvct box o n the plush wool hcl'ore his knecs. W i t h due ceremony. Sycd Ahhas tilted hack the l i d o f the box. withdrew a scroll of pnrchmcnt \vr;rppcd in red rihhon. unfurled 11. and revealed Mortenson's future. '.Dear Compassioni~tco f thc I'oor." he translated from Ihc cleoant Farsi calligraphy. "our I-loly Kor;ln tells us ell children should receive education. including our daughter.; and sisters. Y o u r nohlc work follows the highest principlcs o f Islam, to tend for the p o o r and sick. I n the H o l y K o r a n there is n o law to prohihit ;In infidel from providing assistance to our M u \ h m hiorher\ and sisters. Therefore." the decrcc continued. lo "we direct all cleric.; i n Pak~stan not ~ n t c r f c r cw i t h your noble intentions. Y o u have o u r permission. hlessingr. and prayers." T h e drawback o f Mortenson's story. 2 1 s t o l d hy Relln. IS that i t says little ahout the \\.iidcr, hackground o f world events. Whrlc Jones's hook goes o n t o o $rc;lt ; I length ahour rcgional history. 771rrc ( i i / ~ . v 7'r.n docs 100 11ttIe. Tlic t u i ~ i u l t u ~ u political s climi~te i n which Morten\crn tound h i n i ~ c l f i\ r a ~ e l v csplalncd s u l l ~ c ~ c n t l vand . when cvcr.t\ ;!re dcscrihed. there arc numcrrlus rni?t;~kcs i n names and dates, as. f o r ex;lmplc. In the ;Iccount o f the Afslian PCrition\ f ~ p h t i n gthe civil war i n the 1990s. T o o much is said itbout h l o r ~ c n s ~ ) n itttcrnpra 's to raise money ;!nd too little ; ~ h ( ~ the u t k ~ more r interesting p e r ~ o dfolloning Septen~her 1 1 . when hlorlens(1n took o n the Iask o f helpins Afph;ln\ huild \chools. Inevitably. Mnrtenson's hook has much t o say ilhilut ~ h c American 1:lilurcs i n Afgh;~nistan. "Everywhere we went. we saw IJS plnncs and helicopter\." say\ Julia Berpman.onc of Ivlortcnson's supporters nhci visils Afghanistan with h i m after Sep~emher I I . " A n d I can onlv i m i ~ ~ i n tllc c monc! wc. were spending o n our military. But whcrc war the did? I'd hedid 50 much ;lhout what Amcrica promised Afgh:~nistan's people-how rchuilding l h c country was one of ciur t o p priorilieh. . . ." B o t h Mortcnson and Joncs make a plea l o r Americans to learn Iron1 h ~ a tor!.. soniething the Bush administriltion ha? conslstcnlly rcl'uscd 10 do. Bush v l r ~ t c dKahul for the first time o n M a r c h I. Z(I(Jh. l o r ; I few hour\. where he rcniarkcd o n ho\v h r i l l l i ~ n t l y c \ e r y t h l ~ ~w p a going. I n hls nlorc lucid moment\. Z;thir Shah. the former k i n g (11' Afghanistan. n ( ~ w nlnctytwoyca~s old. rccalls the lirst US prcsident to v ~ s i Kahul. t That \\as President Dwight Eiscnho\vcr. who also canle for : I onc-d;t) visit. o n D c c c r n l w ~ 9. 1959. when. at f(~rtv-five. the K i n g ~ u l c i lhc l country 2nd was considered !<lung. Shah rcmcmhcrs that hc a\kcd Eisenho\\,cr for mure econoniic aid f o r his ~mpo\.crished country. as well ;IS d i p l o m a t ~ c help to improve A f ghanistan's deteriorating relationship \\'ith P a k i s t ~ ~ n 2nd . u \ustijincd LIS presence to proteci the country. The help he rcccived W;IS meager and ineptly supplied. Some things nevcr change. - !b/uy 24. 2006

*The W e h site o f the project is w ~ \ v .ikal.org.