Breaking news: Holy Victory! (Source: Taliban in talks with Allah regarding transitional government)

Frustratingly vague grad school admissions question: Write a letter to the editor about a fictional/real, past/future news story.

My answer:

Dear Editor of Al Emarah (official newspaper of the Afghan Taliban),

Reporter Zabiullah Mujahid’s 15 September 2015 lead story, “Holy Victory! Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan takes Kabul” serves as a grim reminder of both the failure of the International Security Assistance Force’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and the importance of standing in solidarity with those who fight Islamist fundamentalism.

While US officials (or the “imperial mouthpieces,” in Mujahid’s words) claim that no one could have predicted this “sudden and ruthless coup d’état,” Mujahid’s prescient timeline of events shows that this outcome was both predictable and preventable. He cites as "key lead-up events" the U.S.’ neutral reaction to the Pakistani ISI’s December 2012 coup d’état, the 2013 bursting of the “Aid Bubble” and the ensuing “Poppy Massacre of May 2013” (when Afghan National Security Forces shot down 130 Helmand farmers protesting the burning of their fields), and the migration panic of mid-2014 in the face of the impending withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. While Mujahid attributes these events to “the Muslim people’s dissatisfaction with the oppression of the foreigners,” they were in fact the predictable result of a U.S. counterinsurgency strategy that put so-called “realism,” faith in bloated aid spending, and domestic political calculations ahead of a population-centric approach. Indeed, the lynching of President Amrullah Saleh earlier this week and yesterday’s official power handover serve as a warning to any future U.S. patrons of the limits of committed U.S. will.

But Mujahid’s story should also serve as a warning to Americans. Mujahid notes that Pakistan was quick to officially recognize its “Islamic brother,” and Iran’s President indicated an eagerness to meet with the new administration. These neighbors have already proved they are not content with limiting the depravities of Shariah law to their own people (in 2013 an Iranian assassin carried out the Ayatollah’s fatwa against the director of the film adaptation of The Satanic Verses, and Pakistani terrorists continue to target Americans abroad). America has long undervalued its friends and freedoms, and yesterday’s coup promises less of both.

In the graveyard of straight-shooters

An exclusive report on the strange land where only the most perfunctory survive

(Published at the Daily Caller)

US Army Major General Peter Fuller was relieved of his command in Afghanistan earlier this month because, when asked about Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent hand-over-heart vow that, “If there is war between Pakistan and America, we will stand by Pakistan,” he called Karzai “erratic” and asked, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me.” But what was more surprising than MG Fuller’s reaction – which, if one considers the 1,800 Americans killed protecting Afghanistan, was restrained – was that of a “western diplomat” who, wishing to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his statement, observed, “The phraseology could have been better.” In other words, weeks after Joint Chiefs Chairman (Ret.) Michael Mullen’s testimony specifically confirming Pakistani intelligence’s support of the Taliban’s September attack on the US embassy in Kabul killing 25, six months after the US hunt-down of Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani Army town of Abbottobad, and ten years into a war against a Pakistan-fueled insurgency, criticizing the grammar of a pro-Pakistan statement remains one step outside-the-shade too far for the coalition of the willing.

The firing comes amid revelations about a “secret memo” delivered from Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to Admiral Mullen last May. The memo called for US support in convincing the ISI to axe its Taliban-training “Section S,” revealing the US’ ongoing courtship of the ISI – a courtship the US plans to continue, judging by Jeffrey Goldberg’s December Atlantic profile “The Ally from Hell,” which ominously concludes with an insider’s assurance that General David H. Petraeus, in his new role as CIA director, will make progress with the ISI because he has “a good personal relationship with these guys.”

Whatever the US position, it has not taken a “secret memo” for Afghans to conclude that Pakistan is at the root of their problems. For most Afghans in Kabul, the target of a startling trend of shopping center attacks this year despite its vaunted “Ring of Steel” security perimeter, “Pakistani” is nearly synonymous with “terrorist.” Even in Pashtun-dominated Kandahar, most Afghans consider the violence – this year has brought the assassination of the provincial police chief, the provincial shurah chief, the Kandahar City mayor, and many district officials – to be a Pakistani export. Southerners rank Pakistani support as one of the top three reasons the Taliban fight, according to an Asia Foundation survey released this month. Shurah leaders in Kandahar and surrounding provinces privately say not only that they believe the ISI is supporting Taliban operations in the south, but that Paksitan will reach further as America exits.

President Karzai’s statement of Pakistani solidarity was, then, meant for Pakistani consumption, not domestic. This reflects an instinctive bow to Pakistani power at a time when the waning US presence was unable to prevent the July assassination of Karzai’s close advisor Jan Mahmad Khan and the September assassination of his nationally-respected Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani.

But the intended audience of the US’ perennially tame statements on Karzai’s corruption and Pakistan’s subversion (Admiral Mullen’s statement came only after he retired) is less clear. The center of gravity in counterinsurgency, according to Gen Petraeus’ Army field manual, is not external actors but the domestic population. An Afghan population left guessing about US feelings towards the puppet-masters in Pakistan or the corrupt administration in Kabul is more likely to be suspicious of the promises ISAF makes with conviction, particularly regarding the “transition” buzz: as a NATO spokesman assured Afghans this week, “NATO’s combat role will be progressively reduced, but Afghanistan will need support after 2014 and that support will continue.”

Unfortunately, the US’ fixation on institution-building and politicking comes at the expense of Afghans’ trust. MG Fuller was fired for weakening ISAF’s “solid relationship” with the Afghan government, but it is unclear how Afghans, a record 56% of whom reported corruption to be a major problem in daily life in 2011, view anyone boasting affinity with such a dubious bunch. Meanwhile, those who emphasize fixing “AfPak” relations, to use the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s tired phrase, overlook the second and third order effects of gaining the grassroots trust of the population: Afghans confident in US intentions, and presented with an apolitical timetable for US withdrawal would be far likelier to stop facilitating the Pakistan Taliban’s presence in Afghanistan. This, coupled with drastic cuts in the US aid given to Pakistan (and, consequently, to the Taliban and radical madrassas via the ISI), would disrupt the flow of insurgents into Afghanistan, not to mention the spill-over of the fundamentalist Deobandi teachings tightening their grip on Afghanistan’s mosques.

Indeed, the diplomats and civilian advisors are as guilty as the military in favoring politics over COIN. Too often, the most cherished metric for evaluating the over $18.8 billion the US has spent on foreign aid in Afghanistan is the “burn rate.” As the June 2011 “Evaluating U.S. Foreign Assistance to Afghanistan” Senate report put it, “Political pressures create perverse incentives to spend money even when the conditions are not right.” The result is a distorted Afghan economy (it is geo-politically taboo to even suggest deregulating Afghanistan’s poppy cash crop) and a looming depression, a preoccupation of many elders at this week’s Kabul “jirga.”

As for civilian advisors, consider the lax COIN metrics of Andrew Exum, an Afghanistan expert at the Center for a New American Strategy, “Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs,”as the Washington Post has suggested. In July 2009 he said the “11^th hour” was at hand, predicting that by August 2010 ISAF would have to be able to demonstrate progress in lowering civilian body counts and increasing security force competence. Yet the percentage of Afghans agreeing that the police force is unprofessional and poorly trained remained a constant 58% in 2010 (dropping to 56% in 2011), and civilian deaths in the first 6 months of each year have increased from 622 in 2009 to 1,167 in 2011. Undaunted, last December Mr. Exum predicted July 2011 would be a COIN “watershed,” when “the unmistakable outlines of progress or deepening evidence of problems will emerge.” Yet as 2012 approaches, any Afghanistan verdict remains murky.

There are some encouraging signs of breaking the political impasse. Last month Afghanistan signed a long-overdue strategic partnership agreement with India, the natural enemy of the Taliban and al Qaeda in the region. This came in the wake of the US’ summer decision to delay payments on hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid and reimbursements to Pakistan. As for the state department, its Afghanistan budget has passed its peak, giving hope that “burn rate” obsessions and million dollar salaries for civilian “technical advisors” will be a thing of the past. Yet with Kabul jirga attendees and an Afghan opposition figure in Washington warning this week of a post-2014 civil war, the US still has a counterinsurgency effort to win. When world leaders convene in Bonn next month to make sense of where Afghanistan goes from here, “phraseology” ought to be the least of their concerns.

(Photos by Founders' Porch)

How to lose your command in Afghanistan (animated)

Last month President Karzai said something about how he would side with Pakistan against the US if it came down to it. The most common reaction by people who think it would be kinda cool if we win the war in Afghanistan was something like, "Why don't you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You've got to be kidding me." US Army Major General Peter Fuller went a little further though, and he actually said that. He was hastily fired, with ISAF apologizing and pledging to increase aid to Afghanistan's needle industry in order to show the Afghan people our sincerity.

In the Iraq War, something that seemed to help were the occasional paradigm shifts, like "CPT Trav's" cut-the-crap cartoon called "How to win in Al Anbar," found here.

I don't know what that looks like for Afghanistan, but here's one, ahem, anonymous (lest anyone else lose their job) shot at it. (Click on the first image, and the slideshow will come up).

A Merry Little Ramadan

A Founders' Porch exclusive profile on the most feared holiday ever

It was beginning to look a lot like Ramadan, everywhere I went. The ninth of the Islamic calendar’s twelve months – known for supermodel-scale fasting, forced cordiality, praying, grudging forgiveness, and alms (yes, you have to pay for this misery, too) – was two or three nights away, depending on which Afghan astronomer’s earnest lunar calculations you heeded. The Mayor of Kandahar City had been killed by a turban-bomber two days earlier, in the wake of the turban bombing of a national religious council chief at the wake for the late warlord of greater Kandahar Ahmad Wali Karza. And this year, the holiday season that really does come earlier every year would coincide with the Taliban’s perennial August finale: During a holiday when a single prayer counts for 1,000 months of prayers, would the Talibs be trying for 7,200 virgins? Or would they front-load attacks in preparation for a parched Ramadan respite? Meanwhile, my staff making its list of Ramadan-induced office disabilities, and me checking it twice due to my shock at its length and scope. The crap, crappiest time of the year, it seemed.

As I rode my Chinese “honda” motorbike to the Kandahar City police headquarters for a hoped-for meeting with its newest marshal – the young, charismatic, controversial General Abdul Razziq – with visions of pomegranate break-fasts dancing in my head, a flimsy mustached teenage policeman (one of Santa Razziq’s eager little helpers, as it were) stopped me at a makeshift checkpoint. Passing for a gangly, pasty Pashtun, I was nearly waved through, until my Chinese sleigh stalled out. A rookie mistake – but from young Cub Scout Sahib’s perspective, a nervous Talib’s mistake.

In a twitch his baked eyes went rabid, perhaps seeing faces of friends killed by the Taliban’s daily motorbike attacks.

I raised my hands. “Zuh Americayum,” I’m American, I said, wondering whether he was one of the Taliban’s ANP-infiltrators who would not believe his luck.

“Ta Americayay?” he mocked me, as if I were lying, then cocking his AK-47 and aiming it at my chest.

In April, a ticked off Afghan pilot killed eight US servicemen at Kabul International Airport in a whimsical shooting spree. While it’s debatable just how whimsical cold killings like this can be – “He always used to say that he wanted to see the corpses of dead ISAF invaders shot with his machine gun b4 his own death,” a Talib tweeted after an Afghan officer’s 29 October killing of 2 Australians –a phenomenon of un-premeditated emotional killings of Americans by Afghan security forces was plaguing the country this year, and the thought “so this is how it happens,” was fluttering in my blurred eyes as I dropped the bike and crouched behind the hood of a parked Corolla, ever-so-gently shouting “mashkeel nasta,” no problem.

So ingloriously it may have ended if a brave Kandahar friend who had been tailing me had not rushed to the scene of what would have been a non-criminal escalation of force, yelling in Pashto “It’s ok, I know him.” Cub scout Sahib exchanged some words and lowered his rifle, his eyes receding to the stoner’s happy-squint, the bullet ejecting to the ground with the most immaculate brass glimmer I’d ever seen, and earnest offers of “chai, khariji (foreigner)?” My friend mentioned Razziq, and fearing Allah-knows-what, the policeman pelted me with apologies. “Mashkeel nasta,” I said, “manana, manana, thank you.” My life-saver and I scrapped the meeting plans and called it a day.

This was my personal preface to Ramadan-in-Kandahar, but violence, confusion, mistrust, vengeance, and chaos in the infamous “spiritual heartland” of the Taliban comprise the banal preface to every Kandahari’s Ramadan. Barring a summer Ramadan-in-Alaska, where the midnight sun would make the daylight fasts fatal, the stress of Ramadan here must make it one of the world’s fiercest. It was this appreciation of the 30-day jihad ahead –not some multi-culti kick or a dark Kurtzean mission to know the people by knowing the horror – which led me to accept the Ramadan Challenge. Not that it had been offered. Even when I’d accept tea-time offers from locals, my negative reply to their customary, “You are Muslim, right?” would unfailingly suck the joy from the dry air. Anyone who couldn’t have guessed Greg Mortenson was something of a fraud before Jon Krakauer’s April 2011 investigative revelations regarding “Three Cups of Tea” should see how far Mortenson’s third-time’s-a-charm formula gets them in Kandahar: After nearly three-hundred cups of tea with Pashtuns, what mattered more to them was that Islam was not my cup of tea.

Nevertheless, most were shocked and flattered by my solidarity, with some even interpreting it as a hopeful turn towards the light. As one dogmatic staffer’s post-Ramadan e-proselytization pitched, “Islam don’t order killing of innocent people, robbery, mugger, steal, drinking of wine, [now in bold, perhaps sensing a tragic flaw] prostitution and other bad things,” generously adding, “I think you are most able to become a real honest Muslim, so kindly please study about real Islamic religion.” But overall, the Kandahris’ appreciation of my Ramadan participation was secularly genuine. As the Hazara cook Ali Baba put it, “Even if we were Buddhist and you did our Buddhist tradition, it makes us happy that you respect our tradition.”

Kind words, though an inference too far. My immediate purpose was of practicality rather than respect: the staff, hard-working though it was, was already scape-goating the month of the spiteful sun: working without food, water, cigarettes, and chai would demand shorter hours, more breaks, and an AC purchase order, for starters. If our civilian aid efforts were not to fizzle out in a year of record casualties, I had no choice but to preemptively partake. When the first “but I am fasting” excuse flew on day one, my wry “aren’t we all…” struck a devastating blow.

To mark the arrival of Ramadan (or “Ramazan,” as Afghans pronounce the Arabic letter Ḍād’s affricate trill) is to dirty oneself in the first of many catechistic free-for-alls over Ramadan’s legal loopholes. It begins when the new moon can be seen. But by whom? And with eye-glasses? And supposing it’s cloudy? Geo-politics scavenge on the confusion: Saudi Arabia declared Ramadan on the first of August, but Iran said the second. To my dismay, Pajhwok Online News reported on July 31^st that Afghans would recognize August 1^st. And so it began:

11:30 pm (Ramadan Eve): I chug three waters and stuff myself with stale nan, the Afghan bread delivered hot and soft every morning only to magically turn to cardboard by the afternoon.

11:35 pm: Shameless in my infidelity, I will not be praying for Allah’s strength during Ramadan – an all-natural yet perilous strategy never before attempted by a Kandahari. Nevertheless, since Koran-study is a special tenant of Ramadan, I decide to read a sura-a-night. Most Kandaharis, just like the Prophet Muhammad (or when g-chatting, “The Prophet – PBUH”), are illiterate, and few speak Arabic – the unalterable language of the Koran. I often saw 8 year-olds sitting cross-legged along the backstreets with heads bobbing stoically over their laps’ Korans, it being the thought that counts. This gives the local Pakistan-trained mullah pre-vaticanesque power in his Friday homilies: whether the Taliban or ISAF conquers Kandahar, it will be by the consent of the reverend. I, however, have a bootlegged English-language Koran. Tonight’s two-page sura: Thick Clots of Blood. “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful…”

12:30 am: I am dreaming of accidentally sleeping past sunrise and facing panicked hunger.

1:30 am: I wake up to relieve a desperate bladder.

3:30 am: My alarm rings. I plod in flip-flops and basketball shorts to the refrigerator. Muslims wake up before dawn for the day’s first prayer even in Ordinary Time, but in Ramadan it’s followed by a hibernation meal, prepared by the women-folk who have been up since perhaps one. Lacking a Men’s Health Guide to Ramadan, I realize I have no food strategy: some foods, I suppose, might make me hungrier or expand my stomach. I opt for the food pyramid: buttered nan, a melon slice, a spoonful of chopped cucumbers, what appears to be a leftover chicken spinal chord (this is Kandahar), and a piece of Ali Baba’s delicious cocoa-swirl pound cake. I had chugged three more waters (Ramadan, after all, means “scorched”) when out from the mosques there arose such a clatter.

3:45 am: At dawn from our rooftop, Kandahar City seems peaceful: with the power supply switched off, the only lights are the stars, the green glow of generator-powered minaret bulbs, and the red flicker of the US Army’s surveillance blimp keeping watch above the American base ten kilometers away. From a checkpoint stereo, Farhada Darya and his run-on rebab serenade the police. An occasional whiz of a traffic cop’s whistle; a hint of sewage and campfire smoke – “yeti,” as some US soldiers call the primeval smell. And now, a tap-tap-tap from the mullah’s loud-speaker, and an “Alla-a-a-ah Akbar” sealing our fate. Betraying my inner-atheist, I am in awe at this reveille’s timelessness and power. All adult Kandaharis of able health have hereby submitted themselves to the fast, as their ancestors have done for over a thousand years. Feeling as if I’ve entered Kandahar’s orbit, I go back to sleep.

5:45 am: I have to go to the bathroom, again. Is this interstitial cystitis? No, it’s Ramadan.

7:15 am: I wake up for work realizing I’ve dreamed of stabbing a would-be thief who bizarrely bleeds thick clots of blood. If that’s one sura’s effect on my psyche, I wonder what the entire book might do to a collective sub-conscience.

The true challenge of Ramadan, of course, is not to simply survive it, but keep your job in the process. Responsible for Afghan staffs in Uruzgan and Zabul provinces as well as Kandahar, I had hitherto thought it a dereliction of duty to not be properly spun on Nescafe during working hours. Yet to my relief, hunger was just as strong a stimulant, and my caffeine withdrawal was limited to a light headache.

After a mid-morning walk to the warehouse to meet aid beneficiaries from the Taliban-infested Zhari district, I realized the kicker would not be coffee, but water. Kandaharis say that Allah, in his wisdom, made Ramadan to purify the body after eight months of parasites and rot. Albendazole works fine for me, but whatever dehydration’s healthy payoff, it didn’t appear to help, for example, the Minnesota Vikings’ Muslim safety Husain Abdullah over the past few football season Ramadans. As his coach Brad Childress recalled: “We said, ‘What's wrong with Husain Abdullah? It doesn't seem like he has enough spunk.’” Here, the spunkless day-laborers loading food bags, solar panels, and tool chests for spunkless longbeards whose sons were killed just weeks earlier in Taliban crossfire, only showed signs of vim (albeit schadenfreude) when I informed them that I too was on the nothing diet.

Back at the office, lunchtime came like the birthday of an ex-lover. I resorted to my iPod to keep my mind off it. Having survived the lunch hour, I informed Noor, the hard-working but religiously lax (he’s more interested in WWE wrestler John Cena than the local mullah, for example) 30 year-old office coordinator, of my secret weapon. “But you know, we are not listening to music in Ramadan,” he said with a regretful smile. Jesus, I thought, momentarily panicked over whether sleep is even permitted (it is). It seemed the only genre with Ramadan immunity was Kandahar music – the name our office guards had grimly given to the bup-bup-bops of nearby Taliban firefights. But moments later in the separate-but-equal female office, I heard 19 year-old Sediqa listening to Pakistani pop music. Granted, she is likely the most liberal woman in Kandahar, having boasted of once pushing a flirtatious bicyclist into the gutter as she rebelliously walked to work without a burka. But being liberal in Kandahar just means knowing the loopholes. “We already are not eating or drinking. We can at least have music,” she said.

The true test would be Amin, the 25 year-old wispy-bearded aspiring mullah who I’d had my eye on for openly calling himself a non-violent Talib (aid work in Kandahar is impossible without a few shady connections, but I’d have had zero tolerance for open admiration of the actual Taliban). Aha, he was listening to music on his computer. “Yes, but that is Islamic music, so that is ok.” Sensing space for interpretation, I chose the Sediqa School of Jurisprudence.

It is widely understood that one is at greatest risk of Ramadan relapse between the hours of 4 and 6 pm. Speech becomes salivaless and precious, resulting in stocatto mumbles, which prompt requests to repeat, ultimately escalating into a scene of irritability and parsimony. Thus, it’s best spent isolated, which in turn brings sinister temptations as the minds turn dark: “But no one will ever know…” Yet I was never able to get a Kandahari to admit to even thinking of cheating. I thought of it quite often, usually justifying it in terms of work efficiency. Luckily I had an antidote. The common nap: relieves hunger, foul moods, and exhaustion, and helps you forget for an hour that you need a saline IV.

Iftar, the breaking of the fast, came at 7:15 pm that first day, dropping to 6:40 by the end of Ramadan.

Loopholes abound, with the desperate ones calling it from the lowest possible vantage. But when you’re within listening distance of a mosque, you wait for the mullah’s verdict. At this point, I felt lightweight and giddy, my appetite slightly fading. Then came the old man’s familiar tarzanish call to prayer. But this time it was beautiful – perhaps in an unhealthy, Stockholm Syndrome kind-of-way – but beautiful still, especially knowing that the generous cantor, to whom I felt allied for the first time, was delaying his own break to allow us ours. The water hit me like an endorphin cocktail. The pound cake, which I took first, was like a “special” brownie, making everything seem pleasant. These Muslims might be on to something.

The highlight of the following two weeks was my time conversing at Iftar with the two twenty-something compound-hands: Mashal, a posh Dari-speaking Kabuli with a “Broken Angel” ringtone, who wears a sleeveless soccer shirt over his Pashtun capri pants and can usually be found updating his facebook status with a “missing u still!!! :(((” for his Kabul girlfriends with Indian actress profile pics. And Jafar, a goofy-faced, gullible, kind, 6’4” Pashtun, born-and-raised in Kandahar City, often rendered incoherent by Mashal’s unsure translations of his Pashto. They prepared true Iftar meals – which start with eating some dates and end with lots of melons and oil-with-rice – and were eager to talk to the foreigner.

A common topic was the Taliban. While the first day of Ramadan had brought a summer record low of 5 attacks, zero deaths, and a partridge in a pear tree in the southern region of Afghanistan according to UN security reports, death tolls soon rose back to 10-15. There were even some particularly gruesome reports of children being hung, or forced to step on prototype IEDs.

Mashal: The fucking Taliban man. They fucking ruin everything man.

Kabir: (wild-eyed, trying his English): They are junglemen!

Me: What?

Kabir: Junglemen!

Mashal: He means, they are wild, like people in the jungle. All of our problems are the fucking Pashtuns.

Kabir: (smiles sheepishly).

Mashal: And Pakistan. And Iranian. And Russian.

Kabir tells us how he recently returned from a medical trip to Quetta, Pakistan. Amazed at the kingly aura of the black-turbaned, eye-shadowed young Talibs – Pakistani soldiers salute them, and people yell “make way!” as they enter his café – Kabir tried to take a photo with his cell phone, only to have a dour Talib order its deletion.

Mashal: Yeah man, fucking Taliban. In Kabul it’s not like this. We are listening to music, the girls are not covered, we are even drinking. I am telling my girlfriends, ‘give me head.’

Me: (eager to validate a flowering classical liberal) Nice.

Kabir: (smiling, not understanding).

Mashal: How is America? There is a girl in America that wants to marry me so I can come there. She is from Kuh-something.

Me: Colorado?

Mashal: (pulls up her facebook profile: a 40-something Kentucky carnie, balding and jack-toothed).

Me: Oh Kentucky. Yeah, Kentucky is kind of like our Paktiya. Mountain people, you know.

Kabir: (upon hearing the translation) Woooow. Kentucky.

Most aid workers are pampered with frequent leaves in Afghanistan, and I was due on the 12^th day of Ramadan. I flew first to Kabul, where I lowered the Enrique Iglesias cd volume to ask Abdul, my glittery-jeaned taxi driver, how his fast was going. “It’s very hard man. But I’m here in a taxi, I can put down the windows. I just think about all the laborers out in the sun, and think man I have it easy.”

I had a 5:15 pm flight to Egypt via Dubai. I had had two beers the previous night and missed my 3:30 am wakeup, so I was thirsty. I sat next to a non-English-speaking Jalalabad Pashtun. We were traveling west, so Iftar would be delayed (some say that simply sitting in a top-floor Dubai Tower office adds three minutes to your Iftar). The stewardess handed out special box meals of dates and water to be stowed until sun-down. I asked for one. “Are you Muslim?” “No, but I’m fasting.” “Really?” Pleasantly surprised, she handed it over. Eventually, an older man, satisfied with the sunset, dug in, followed rapidly by others. To my horror, Jalalabad Dimmesdale put down his prayer beads to wag a finger at me. After ten minutes I ask him to reassess. He approved, and we had our dates and water. Then he pulled out a peach from some mysterious stash and gave me half. No grimy half-peach had ever meant so much to me, and I thanked him for his Ramadan charity.

Ramadan in Egypt: I arrive in Alexandria too late for a proper meal. I spend the following Iftar with a cab driver in the airport parking lot, where I am waiting to retrieve a lost bag. The next day, having found the bag and forgiven the airline (‘tis the season), I continue to Israel via Cairo, where my 3 hour bus-layover gives me a chance to stroll the bustling tea-alleys near Tahrir Square. An Egyptian family eagerly invites me to join them for a generous Iftar of dates, chicken, and rice. The teens next to me brag about having fought Mubarak’s police months earlier.

Ramadan in Israel: I’ve heard it said by mischievous Muslim-American friends, “Allah does not see what happens in Las Vegas.” If that’s so, then he probably does not watch over the “Zionist entity” either. Still, I must now confess: on Day 15, having lost ten pounds on the Ramadan diet, I eliminated myself from the Ramadan Challenge with a falafel. But it was damn good falafel. As it turns out, summer in party-hard 24/7 Tel Aviv presents a unique Ramadan challenge due to its many temptations: this is one of the few cities, for example, where the daylight romance clause cannot be taken lightly. Glimpsing a few Israeli Muslims during my trip as I ate falafels, I felt like Cool Hand Luke on-the-run, destined to soon return to them, my prison-mates.

Back in Kandahar with a week to go, I resumed the fast. By now, thanks to my nightly studies, I was well versed on the posthumous torments awaiting infidels such as me: For the Infidels we have got ready chains and collars and flaming fire…We will brand him on the nostrils…Then pour on his head the tormenting boiling water… And thereupon shall ye drink boiling water. Tea, anyone? The Koran, I’d concluded, was a nightmare from which few Kandaharis were trying to awake.

Prayer value inflates dramatically over the final three days of Ramadan. Friday was “Quds Day,” so I asked the staff about praying at the mosque. Amin, eager to collect my bounty perhaps, consented. Noor was grave: “They will ask you if you are Muslim. They will ask, ‘why don’t you know how to kneel and pray like us?’ That is not good for you.” Amin offered to teach me the basics, noting that the whole world will become Muslim by 2013 anyway according to science. I yielded to Noor.

Saturday was Lailat-ul-Qadar. As my morning security text put it: “You are advised to stay more alert tonight and tomorrow than the previous times, due to the 27th of Ramadan which all people do not sleep on this special night continuing prayin and reciting the holly Quran, might insurgents use this opportunity for their target execution.” Indeed, two suicide bombs shook our office that afternoon, with Iran’s Press TV giddily reporting 64 Americans killed (the toll was actually 4 Afghans). The next day, I asked the staffers if they had stayed up all night reciting. Amin gushed that yes it was wonderful. Noor, for his part, had successfully watched John Cena until 2 am, and then fallen asleep.

Finally, the morning of Eid-al-Fitr (literally, “Festive breaking of the fast”). The compound was quiet, the staffers home celebrating three days of “picnics” (the Kandahar euphemism for parties), and Ali Baba off to his native Ghazni Province, having stocked the fridge with a lifetime supply of sheep’s organs. Yet it felt obscene to eat even a grape, so I went out to the gruff custodian Khaliq, who confirmed via translator that on Eid, it is haram not to consume. Khaliq, who has placed a flower sprig in his ear, is slurring his words and balancing his eyes, for this is his first full day since July of naswar, the rank, olive-colored powder placed on the gum like a tobacco pinch, but with ten times the effect. "It is Eid!" he reiterates with a finger in the air.

Even the most protective staffers had told me that on Eid I could take my Chinese bike anywhere, as no one would fight on that joyous day. To my surprise, the streets had been transformed into a block party of gaudily-crowned urchins in diamond studded shalwar kameeses and priestly jerkins, all heavily armed with RPGs, AKs, and klobbs. On closer inspection, these were just “toy” guns, the Tickle-me-Elmo’s of Eid-in-Kandahar. Sons were gathered with fathers near the mosques, reminding me of Salman Rushdie’s “Snotnose” Sinai, who rarely prayed, “except on Eid-ul-Fitr, when my father took me to the Friday mosque to celebrate the holiday by tying a handkerchief around my head and pressing my forehead to the ground.” In one bustling market, giant subs were blaring tunes, and even the women in their new exactly-the-same burkas looked like they might be smiling under their veils.

That night, in Martinet Ramadan’s wake, the sliver of the waxing Shawaal moon seemed like a new teacher slacking on her class: “Do whatever you want. I’ll be over here.” I wondered if it had looked that way to Babur, too -- the ancient Afghan emperor who wrote of suffering a hangover after celebrating Eid with “a few mule-loads of wine.” (I settled for fresh pomegranate juice.) After a year in Afghanistan, the happiness and freedom surrounding Eid was greater than I’d witnessed on any other day. If Afghanistan’s modern history is itself a 30-years-and-counting peace fast, one wonders how far off the forgiving era of Shawaal is.

As Noor once melodramatically put it, “I think there is no happiness in Kandahar. Everyday there is blast. Everyday there is attack.” Indeed, for now in Kandahar, “peace on earth, goodwill to men” is delusional. But I can say that both have been given to me in generous portions by many Muslims – whether Kandahari, Kabuli, Egyptian, or Palestinian – who perhaps appreciate those gems as I an Iftar chicken’s liver. Until that day of peace and goodwill, may my gracious hosts’ days be merry and bright, and may all their Ramadans be short, wintry, and white.