the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

CHAPTER 9
LET’S GET RADICAL
Y
ears later, whenever anyone asked when the good war became not
such a good war, my answer was easy. On May 29, 2006, when a
U.S. military truck suered mechanical failure and plowed into rushhour
trac in Kabul, killing three Afghans. Peaceful demonstrations
quickly turned into antiforeigner riots. Soldiers red into the crowd.
Afghans ransacked buildings with English-language signs, from relief
groups to a pizza restaurant. They even set re to a building they
thought was the Escalades brothel, although the brothel was next door.
They shouted, “Death to Karzai,” and that regional catchphrase, “Death
to America,” and ran from street to street, asking guards if foreigners
lived inside. They almost threw a light-skinned girl into a re, until she
shouted in Dari and they realized she was Afghan. Karzai’s political
rivals from the Northern Alliance were blamed for stoking the violence,
the worst since the Taliban’s fall. At least seventeen Afghans were killed
in the rioting; despite considerable eorts, no foreigners died. Karzai
demonstrated his usual leadership skills, waiting until the riots had
almost run their course to broadcast a televised message, urging calm.
But even after calm was restored, Afghans stayed angry.
It wasn’t necessarily the booze and brothels. It was the growing gap
in the country between the haves and have-nots, the corruption, the
warlords now in parliament, the drug lords doubling as government
ocials, the general attitude of the foreigners from aid workers to the
international troops, and the fact that no one ever seemed to be held
accountable for anything. Even if the level of foreign aid had been low
compared to other “post-conict” countries, billions of dollars had still
poured in. Dozens of new gleaming wedding halls and shopping centers
dotted the Kabul landscape. Warlords, drug lords, and inuential
ocials had been handed government land for a cut rate in the