Monday, October 30, 2006
Taking the Fight to the Taliban - N.Y. Times
... This valley in Zabul reminded one of them, Specialist Joshua Pete, of canyons where the U.S. Army once fought his Navajo ancestors. Pete thought he had had a calling, that his country needed him. But because of Afghanistan, he had lost both his scholarship to Dartmouth and his fiancée. He didn’t believe in “this” anymore. Half the Afghans, he said, didn’t even want “our billions to build this country.” He wanted to be home fighting drug gangs in downtown L.A. or helping impoverished people in Flagstaff.
...
Later, when I met a Taliban commander in Pakistan, he told me that they knew the Americans listened to their radios, so that the five daily prayers were often used as code to signal anything from “I’ve run out of food” to “Ambush them.”
...
... This valley in Zabul reminded one of them, Specialist Joshua Pete, of canyons where the U.S. Army once fought his Navajo ancestors. Pete thought he had had a calling, that his country needed him. But because of Afghanistan, he had lost both his scholarship to Dartmouth and his fiancée. He didn’t believe in “this” anymore. Half the Afghans, he said, didn’t even want “our billions to build this country.” He wanted to be home fighting drug gangs in downtown L.A. or helping impoverished people in Flagstaff.
...
Later, when I met a Taliban commander in Pakistan, he told me that they knew the Americans listened to their radios, so that the five daily prayers were often used as code to signal anything from “I’ve run out of food” to “Ambush them.”
...
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