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RedditToward the end of my stay I meet a European "contractor" who is in fact a Western intelligence agent in charge of several important dossiers pertaining to Afghan security. All of this is confirmed through Afghan intelligence sources. But my "contractor" friend maintains his pretenses and I remain respectful of that, and we proceed with otherwise very frank conversations.
Research assistance was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.
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Blackwater's Not Going Anywhere
Jeremy Scahill: Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Business has never been better for Blackwater and its future looks bright.
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Obama in Afghanistan: Careful What You Wish For
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Obama, Iraq and Afghanistan
Tom Hayden: Obama's plan to de-escalate the war in Iraq only to ramp up another in Afghanistan just might work. It could also entrap the US in an even wider quagmire.
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The Wedding Crashers
Tom Engelhardt: In Bush's wars, the singer dies, the bride does not get a chance to run away, and the event might be relabeled my big, fat, collateral damage wedding.
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Getting Pakistan Wrong
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Wasteful Weapons and the Pols Who Love Them
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Meet the New Dr. Strangelove
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Class Struggle in the New China
Christian Parenti: Across China there is a rising rural and urban class struggle as the economy moves from Maoist socialism to a strange type of quasi-Maoist capitalism.
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Letters
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What Nuclear Renaissance?
Christian Parenti: Despite a slick PR campaign hyping its promise, the nuclear industry isn't going anywhere. It's too costly and won't save us from global warming.
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A New Diplomacy for Pakistan
Christian Parenti: As American policy-makers and pundits seek a Plan B for Pakistan, it's time to recognize the desperate need for a new diplomacy for the Muslim world.
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The Fight to Save Congo's Forests
Christian Parenti: A history of colonial neglect and endemic corruption has unleashed a lawless logging binge in the heart of Congo's massive woodlands.
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Christian Parenti: Congo Diary
Christian Parenti & Laura Hanna: The Nation's international correspondent journeys deep into the heart of the Congo Basin woodlands to see how a massive logging boom is decimating the world's second-largest tropical forest.
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Big Is Beautiful
Global Warming & Climate Change
Christian Parenti: Green utilities are growing, but they need to grow faster.
The papers paint an arrestingly bleak picture of Afghanistan as a political "fiction," a buffer state that no longer buffers, a collection of fiefdoms run by brutal local warlords. The coalition's mission is portrayed as a fantasy game managed by sheltered careerists. One of the papers is by an American. It ends on this note: Nothing short of an open-ended blank check from the United States will keep Afghanistan from returning to chaos.
One of our meetings takes place at a dinner party. The contractor and I get rather drunk and talk politics by a big outdoor fire pit. He sums up the situation with a Kipling poem: "When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains/And the women come out to cut up what remains/Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."
I can't believe how grim his view of things is (though he is cheerful), and I keep pushing him to test for exaggeration. "I know an Afghan commander who is with the government and has been at this for quite a long time," says the contractor. "He described the current situation as 1983: The Taliban can't take on armored columns yet, but they are building momentum."
This analogy between the present and 1983 seems a bit unfair. "The mujahedeen had US backing," I suggest. "The Taliban have no superpower patron."
"Yes, but neither does Afghanistan," says the contractor. He fills my glass once more with dark red wine and stares into the flames.
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