Once upon a time there was a country, more a space than a nation, landlocked, mountainous, impoverished and windblown. There resided many peoples, including Pashtuns and Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmen, and a new tribe called the Americans.
They had come, the Americans, after 30 years of bloodshed, to bring peace to this land called Afghanistan. But what did they know — what could they know — of life behind burkas, or on the other side of mud walls, or inside minds made mad by war?
Past goat herds and yellowing almond trees, the helmeted Americans drove armoured Humvees. Beside lurching stacks of battered tires children gathered in villages and, unlike those in another broken land called Iraq, they smiled and waved.
The Americans talked about empowering Afghans. Sometimes they took to Blackhawk choppers and swooped along the dun-coloured river beds and sent goats scurrying for cover.
The 26,000 US troops meant well. They wielded billions of dollars. They calculated “metrics” of progress. They had learned, to their cost, how this faraway place — invaded and used and at last abandoned to pile rubble upon rubble — could nurture danger.
Not only was it once home to the American-financed Islamists, who humbled the Soviet empire. It also housed their jihadist offspring, who, like sorcerers’ apprentices, turned on a distracted sponsor and brought the dust of two fallen towers to Manhattan.
To help forge a better Afghanistan — or merely an Afghanistan — the Americans involved their NATO friends. An alliance forged to defend the West against the Soviets was transformed into an agent of democratic change in West Asia.
How strange! The enemy now was Taliban Islamofascists rather than Kremlin totalitarians. On a hillside in Afghanistan rose “Camp Dracula”, a garrison of 700 Romanian soldiers on this NATO mission.
Looking apprehensive, the Afghans appear swathed in robes and headgear whose bold colours mock dreary US Army camouflage. Staff Sgt Marco Villalta steps forward: “We would like to ask you some questions about your village”.
The following is elicited: There are 300 families using 25 wells. Their irrigation ditches get washed away in winter. A small bridge keeps collapsing. They send their children to a school in nearby Shajoy, but it’s often closed because of Taliban threats to teachers.
Villalta takes notes. “We'll share this information with the governor and make sure that something is done.”
“We don’t trust the governor. If he gets food, he gives it to 10 families. He puts money in his pocket. We trust you more than him. Bring aid directly to us,” says Sardar Mohammed.
The children’s smiles suggest hope still flickers. To lose Afghanistan by way of smile-free Iraq — and do so on the border of a turbulent nuclear-armed Pakistan — would be a terrible betrayal and an unacceptable risk.
That, alas, is no fairy tale.
NYT
