Afghan Desk Weekly Roundup
US soldiers in Wardak attempt to read Afghan Desk via military satellite (photo by P.J.)
Quite a week at The Desk. It started with a lovely guided tour of Kabul’s poppy palaces, then we all got to see what an IED looks like.
I was beseeched to break the law (hey if Karzai does it, why shouldn’t I?) and the UN told us that contrary to popular opinion, insurgents are more dangerous than the US military. We all saw how fun and easy it is to buy cigarettes in Kabul, and a low-level Pashtun/Hazara war broke out over lunch.
Some good news came, when President Karzai finally made rape illegal in Afghanistan and some bad news came when we found out that the US allied itself with a very, very shady character who massacred thousands in the north.
Finally, we saw what a dead insurgent looks like and Richard Oppel of The Times summed up the Afghan governance problem in just 106 words. Snappy!
Stay tuned, I’m hitting the street for some reporting today and should have some fresh posts later this afternoon. Though if the Kabul internet donkey breaks down again, there could be problems.
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Do you think the massacre and the Cheney assassination squad stories are related…odd that they broke about the same time.
My God, man! What a week! I wish I’d found this blog sooner. You’re getting hella blogroll’d, homes. *Props* & keep your head down!
Gracias Pablo!
Lib: I don’t think they’re related in a specific/operational sense, but I do believe that American government during the Bush years had a guiding principle of secrecy and dramatic initiatives (like creating a secret CIA hit-squad that Congress didn’t know about.)In that way, these two separate programs are absolutely linked. Cheney and Defense clearly didn’t want the massacre investigated (even by the FBI) and Cheney and CIA didn’t want Congress to know about the hit-squad thing. Remove the CIA, Congress and FBI from those equations and you have a common denominator, famous for his grimace and lousy aim.
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