the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

paying my salary.
Many diplomats rarely poked their heads outside embassy walls.
Many consultants traded places every six months and then promptly
repeated all the mistakes of their predecessors. How out of touch were
they? Employees of the Department for International Development
(DFID), the British equivalent of USAID, decided it would be a good
idea to throw a going-away party just before the election, with the dress
code specied as “INVADERS—Alexander the Great, Hippies, Brits,
Mughals, Russians, and general gratuitous fancy dress. Gorillas
welcome.” It was unclear if the misspelling of “guerrillas” was
intentional. Pictures of the festivities were posted on Facebook,
showing one partygoer with her left breast almost hanging out of her
white Grecian dress, three pirates, two aliens drinking beer, two men in
turbans, a Mughal, a cowboy, a jihadi. Any member of the Afghanistan
Network on Facebook—and plenty of Afghans belonged—could see the
photos. Well, at least it wasn’t the Tarts and Talibs theme party, thrown
the year before. Graveyard of Empires, indeed.
Meanwhile the invaders continued their invasion. By August, the
month of the presidential election, a record 101,000 international
troops had arrived in Afghanistan, including a record 62,000 Americans,
each of whom cost up to $1 million a year. In July, not coincidentally,
a record number of international troops had been killed, largely by
roadside bombs, the weapon of choice of weaker insurgents determined
to wait out their enemies. Military spending in Afghanistan was set to
exceed Iraq for the rst time. The United States was also now spending
$200 million a month on civilian governance and development
programs—double that under Bush, an amount equal to the nonmilitary
spending in Iraq during its heyday. Too bad it was having such a hard
time attracting USAID employees to ll those jobs—one USAID ocial
conded that the agency would be lucky to get the C-team of
applicants. Almost eight years into this war, mustering new enthusiasm
was difficult.
Regardless, signicant results needed to be shown in the next year, in
time for the 2012 U.S. presidential election. The United States kept
reviewing its strategy and redening success; the goal posts kept
shifting. Our partners seemed equally tired—Canada had just reiterated
it would pull its 2,830 troops by 2011, and the 84 soldiers promised by