U.S. Army Cpl. Joseph Rentie,1st Battalion, 279th Infantry Regiment, concludes a search of a truck at a Pakistan border crossing in Paktya province. (Photo by: U.S. Army)

The attack sparked fury in Pakistan and led the country’s leaders to close a critical US supply route to land-locked Afghanistan.

Before 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan, cargo transport across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was minimal. But now, with over 130,000 NATO troops to sustain in land-locked Afghanistan, supplies had to come from somewhere, and the cheapest and fastest route is through Pakistan.

“The industry has grown from zero to a phenomenal size,” said Mohammed Rajpar, managing director of a major shipping agency based in Karachi. “The way the western countries sustain their troops is even the water they shower in is imported, forget the water they drink,” Rajpar said. “And all their food, drink, transport, surveillance, weapons. It spawned an entire industry.”

At its peak, some 500 trucks carried fuel and goods each day from the port at Karachi to Afghanistan. Today, that number is down to between 200 and 300, as NATO shifted some supply to what is known as the “northern route,” going through the Central Asian republics. Even now though, almost half of NATO’s supply travels through Pakistan.

But after last Saturday’s attacks on a Pakistani border post, the Pakistani government closed off its border crossings with Afghanistan. Private transporter unions issued statements of support for the government reaction.

Nawab Sher Afridi, secretary general of the Oil Transporters Association, said six of his trucks are involved in the transporting fuel to Afghanistan, but that he has always been against NATO’s actions there – a contradiction he readily admitted.

“We are against NATO, I’m telling you plainly,” Afridi said. “Our original home is in Afghanistan. We are ruining it ourselves. What kind of interview do you want from someone who is ruining his own home. But when our livelihood is at stake then the name of necessity is “thank you”. There is no limit. You have to accept the law that they have imposed, and that is the dollar. And in front of the dollar, my faith is nothing.”

But now, the truckers said they’re glad the government is taking a stand against NATO, and, for now at least, they said they’re willing to bear the financial loss.

Babu Jan Shinwari, a driver and owner of a goods supply truck, said the personal gains they have made over the past 10 years have come at a cost for society.

“Its true, we are making more money than we did before,” he said. “But if you look at it another way, we have also suffered a great deal. We have lost human lives, homes have been destroyed, there have been drone attacks and terrorist bomb blasts. It’ a huge loss.”

In fact, in 2005, Babu Jan’s cousin was killed in a bomb attack near the Kandahar Air Base, in Afghanistan, while he was sleeping in the cabin of his oil tanker.

While the truckers claim to be in favor of Pakistan’s action, the closing of the supply lines is having an impact. Many of the trucks that would normally be on the roads to Afghanistan are sitting idle in Karachi. And shippers have had to rent extra space at the port to store cargo that has nowhere to go for the meanwhile.

This isn’t the first time that the supply lines have been suspended. And most observers find it hard to believe that Pakistan will keep the supply lines shut permanently this time, because of both strategic and economic interests.

But shipping company director Mohammed Rajpar said the industry is already starting to think of what comes next, since NATO has already announced plans to leave Afghanistan by 2014.

“These truck drivers and truck owners are probably among the most clever commercial, versatile businessmen on the planet. They have operated in the roughest of environments and the most difficult of circumstances at great personal risk to their life and property,” he said. “They’ll find other avenues of business. And second they will transfer some of this knowledge to elsewhere in the business. How to secure cargo, meeting deadlines. Hopefully they’ll transfer this to the commercial side.”

The officials blamed the Taliban, who they said had accused the women of “moral deviation and adultery”.

The police said two men had been arrested in connection with the murder.

The attack was only 300m from the governor’s office in Ghazni city, which is on a list of places to be transferred to Afghan security control.

The incident happened on Thursday in the Khawaja Hakim area of Ghazni city, where the family lived.

Marco Werman talks with the BBC’s Orla Guerin in Kabul, Afghanistan, about reports that a woman and her daughter were stoned and then shot to death Thursday by the Taliban in the city of Ghazni.

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Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman. This is The World. Ten years of war in Afghanistan have changed many things especially for women there. The Taliban who were ousted from power a decade ago were known for their brutal treatment of women who defied their strict rules. Improving the lives of Afghan women and girls was an often sided objective when the war started in 2001. So, it’s disheartening to hear this news from Afghanistan a decade later. A woman and her daughter were stoned and then shot dead by the Taliban in the central city of Ghazni. The BBC’s Orla Guerin is in Kabul and has the details.

Orla Guerin: At about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning, local time on Thursday morning, local sources say that armed Taliban entered the home of this young widow and her daughter. The women were accused of adultery. They were dragged into the yard in front of their house bordering the street. Initially, they were stoned and subsequently they were shot to death. Now that information is coming to us from relatives and from medical sources who have seen the bodies. This attack took place just 300 meters from the office of the Police Chief and from adjoining offices of the Governor, and also of Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency. It’s an indication of how easy it is for the Taliban to strike in this city, and this is a city which is due to be handed back from NATO to Afghan control. But very clearly, the Afghan government is struggling to establish its authority there.

Werman: Why is it believed that it was the Taliban that carried this out and not some other extremist group?

Guerin: Well, Afghan intelligence sources are telling us it was a Taliban attack. There are Taliban fighters roaming freely on the edge of Ghazni city, and the Taliban have a very visible presence. There are Taliban songs playing on some of the local radio stations. The Taliban have their own shadow governor for the province; they have shadow judges. They control the main roads in Ghazni province. They impose taxes. They threaten girls who go to school. This is a province of 18 districts. We believe that only 7 of those districts are in government control.

Werman: It’s a shocking murder, more so that it was done by stoning. How frequent though are these kinds of killings of women these days, especially in such a manner that evokes the rule of the Taliban pre-2001 in Afghanistan?

Guerin: Well, we hear of these cases and some of them come to light, not all of them. In this instance, although the women were initially stoned, we understand from medical sources that they died as a result of gunshot wounds. There was another case relatively recently which caused a great deal of shock and distress here in Afghanistan. That was a young couple who, if fact, were stoned to death last August in Kunduz province. But, video footage and mobile phone footage of those killings came to light only in January, and were particularly gruesome and particularly distressing. A woman was, in that instance, also stoned but survived the stoning, survived 2 minutes of a violent attack of stoning and she was also shot by the Taliban at the end.

Werman: It’s just shocking that 10 years after the occupation of Afghanistan this is still going on.

Guerin: It’s still going on and it’s one of the great concerns for Afghan women activists because now, in the preparation for the exit of foreign forces and also in the attempts to reach a peace deal with the insurgents, they feel that whatever little fragile progress has been achieved here in the last 10 years that that could be rolled back. Women’s activists here will tell you that they feel the clock is ticking. Many of those women now figure that they are targets. One said to me recently that it’s something they joke about between themselves, that they may be hung when the Taliban come back. She said they have to make it a joke because the fear is so real. And the complaint you also hear from these women is that the Afghan government is not giving them adequate representation. They are still struggling to be adequately represented at the Bonn conference in Germany at which so much about the future of Afghanistan will be decided.

Werman: I mean, so many people are talking about the Taliban being a part of some kind of negotiation in the future. An incident like this just doesn’t seem like Afghan women, even being at the table, will mean that much.

Guerin: Well, it appears inevitable that the Taliban will be part of some kind of power-sharing formula here. Nobody is sure of when that arrangement will come into being or how long it’s going to take. But it’s certainly very clear that the Taliban cannot be cut out of the picture; that they are in control, as we speak, of significant parts of this country and in those areas, life for women today is very similar to the life they enjoyed 10 years ago. They can’t leave their homes, they can’t educate their daughters, they can’t work for a living and they dare not be seen outside without a male relative. So, there are parts of the country in which that has never changed. And people here who lived under the old Taliban regime and who remember it say they still have the nightmares and they have the fears that, in some form, it will return.

Werman: The BBC’s Orla Guerin speaking with us from Kabul. Thanks so much.

Guerin: No problem.

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Lisa Mullins: I am Lisa Mullins and this is The World, the co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. A top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan had tough words for Pakistan today. Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti said the Pakistan troops simply look the other way when insurgents fire rockets from Pakistan against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He also said the cross-border communications with the Pakistanis remained difficult or non-existent. For some time now, U.S. officials have been charging Pakistan with aiding the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan. Sarah Chayes served as a special assistant to Admiral Mike Mullen. Admiral Mullen recently stepped down as Chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Chayes says that efforts to broker peace in Afghanistan through negotiations with the Taliban are misguided. She says that’s because the Taliban are essentially a proxy force of Pakistan and its military intelligence agency.

Sarah Chayes: When we talk about insurgencies and via negotiations, the presumption in that kind of statement is that you’re talking to a genuinely indigenous group or force. Whereas, the leadership of the Taliban and Haqqani network are essentially proxies of the Pakistani Military Intelligence Agency. So, what you are going to arrive at by negotiating in this route – and this is exactly what the Military Intelligence Agency wants – is for them to determine the outcome of these negotiations.

Mullins: But also, do we even know what Afghanistan wants?

Chayes: There is such an effort to try to accommodate Pakistan, and how can we get Pakistan on board with the peace process, that we are forgetting that most Afghans do not want to be back under the heel of Pakistan. And a lot of those Afghans are busily re-arming and re-positioning themselves to fight against this. So, if you bend over too far backwards to accommodate Pakistan in some kind of a negotiated settlement, you are going to get civil war.

Mullins: Yes, but at the same time, how can you deal with the Taliban or anti-American forces in Afghanistan and not deal with the ISI and the Pakistani government? I mean, it’s really a duel tracks.

Chayes: It is. Yes, a dual track is how I would do it. I would say, “Look, negotiating with the Taliban in this context is really negotiating with the ISI by proxies.

Mullins: This is the Intelligence Service in Pakistan.

Chayes: That’s right, the Military Intelligence Service. Negotiating with Taliban or Haqqani leadership is in effect negotiating with Pakistani leadership by proxies. So let’s do it directly. Let’s have state-to-state negotiations between Kabul and Islamabad that would be facilitated either by a U.S. facilitator or another international kind of “babysitter” and let’s really lay out on the table what is it that Pakistan wants out of Afghanistan. And instead of them going through this tortuous, indirect route to obtain what they want, let’s get it out on the table. What can they reasonably request or aspire to from their neighbor and what is actually unreasonable?

Mullins: Sarah, you have worked with some of the highest ranking U.S. officials at the U.S. military including General David McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal. You’ve been working with them, helping to advise them about what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan, what’s going on with Pakistan. What do you see as the transformation of thinking, say over the past 10 years, both about the U.S. role in Afghanistan and the relationship with Pakistan and that “Af-Pak” as Richard Holbrooke called that link itself?

Chayes: In the early years I saw the military as being much more switched on about Pakistan’s role, particularly military officers that I encountered in the field who were watching it. They were watching in 2003, 2004, 2005.

Mullins: When you were in Afghanistan.

Chayes: Correct. I remember hearing an officer say, “If it were to invade Pakistan, I would sign up for another tour of duty tomorrow.” There was a great deal of frustration on the part of military officers on the ground who were watching the facilitating role that the Pakistani military was playing with the insurgency. As you move higher up in the ranks and you are not as exposed to that reality, it’s quite hard for people to believe that this is actually going on and you are hearing that Pakistan is an ally. I would say, on the side of the State Department even more so, that the State Department is kind of hardwired to interact positively with its counterparts. So, it’s very hard to ask State Department officials to think critically about their counterparts, particularly a country that is being described as a vital ally.

Mullins: Thank you Sarah Chayes.

Chayes: Thank you.

Mullins: Sarah Chayes is author of “The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.”

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Hers is a life story that in many ways mirrors the history of Afghanistan over the last three decades. Now she is embracing a new dream for herself and her country. Koofi wants to become the next president.

Koofi’s story, the story of a life lived on the edge of death in Afghanistan, begins with a letter written to her two daughters.

Dear Shurha and Shahrazad,

Today, I am going on political business to Faizabad and Darwaz. I hope I will come back soon and see you again but I have to tell you I may not. There have been threats to kill me on this trip. Maybe this time these people will be successful.

Koofi’s letter is included in her new memoir. The words are touching, intimate and frightening. It reflects the threats, assassination attempts and danger she has faced throughout her life, most recently from Taliban fighters.

Koofi and her daughters live in a house just off a busy road in Kabul that is choked with traffic day and night.

Koofi with her daughters; Shuhra on the left and Shaharazad on the right. (Photo: Laura Lynch)

It is a tense time in Kabul. A senior politician was recently assassinated and when Koofi greeted me, she looked visibly fatigued. She shared a dream she had the night before.

“I couldn’t sleep the whole night and I had different kinds of dreams,” she said. “I believe in dreams. So I dreamed that I could not see. I’m struggling to see.”

Struggling could be a word that defines Koofi’s existence.

As a newborn, the 19th of 23 children in the household, her mother left her out in the sun to die.

Koofi survived that and the trials and violence that followed. In the rugged terrain of the northern province where she grew up, she watched her father beat her mother.

She knew from an early age that politics was a dangerous game.

Her father, a member of the Soviet backed parliament was killed by mujahedeen warriors before she turned four. She also lost her husband and two brothers through the years of conflict.

Now, she has become her father’s political heir.

Another excerpt from the letter

For me, now what I say that if you want to really stick to your values and don’t change on a daily basis, don’t become a political game player you have to pay a price. It means if I want to continue with what I am doing now, I need to see the sacrifice is there in one minute time, in hundred days time, I don’t know.. But it is there, I have to keep that in mind.

At a committee meeting inside the heavily fortified parliamentary compound, Koofi’s political skills were on display.

The justice minister arrived for questioning about the condition of women’s prisons, taking his place at the far end of a long conference table. As chairwoman, Koofi dominated the hearing, almost lecturing the minister. She controlled the questioning by handing other committee members written questions she wanted them to ask.

After half-an-hour the minister began banging the table with his hand, defending his attempts to overhaul prisons despite the country’s security challenges.

It is a bit of political theatre, one provoked by Koofi’s interrogation.

Koofi chairing a committee at the Afghan Parliament buildings in Kabul. (Photo: Laura Lynch)

Women’s rights activist Selay Ghaffar believes MPs, women included, are selfish when they should be selfless – it’s all about me, me, me, she said.

“All the topics of discussion in the parliament is to increase their salary to increase to give the number of bodyguards they have, to give them bulletproof cars, to give them better expense accounts, pocket money,” Ghaffar said. “This is what I am always hearing from our MPs. They are thinking of themselves, rather than what they need to do for their people.”

Koofi bristled at the accusation, saying she does not even own her own home. Displaying a flash of impatience herself, Koofi puts it down to the electorate’s inexperience.

“They expect you to get a passport for them, to get an Iranian or Pakistani visa for them. A job, a school or divorce from their husband. A high position job for their husbands or for themselves, if they are men. If they are police officers in Helmand they want to be shifted to Mazar because it’s more secure. You name it. They want you to help them financially for their marriage. Everything. It’s just such high expectations,” Koofi said.

The expectations seem even higher for a woman aspiring to the presidency, especially a woman who is raising her children alone. In fact, Koofi’s concern for her children could be the only thing that might hold her back..

“This is the only thing that makes me worry sometimes. What happens to my daughters because they don’t have a father as well. Let’s see if God wants me to be the mother of my daughters with all the things I want to do, I will. Otherwise, they will find their way,” she said. “I was three years old when my father was killed. I was 18-years-old when my mother died. We found our way. So my daughters will find their way as well.”

As far as the children are concerned, their mother’s ambitions are cause for both pride and worry.

Twelve-year-old Shaharazad spends time almost everyday working on her mother’s Facebook campaign page. Eleven-year-old Shuhra supports her mother’s political aspirations and admits she too would like to be president of Afghanistan one day.

Though they lost their father at a young age, they have enjoyed lives of relative peace and privilege. Still, it is easy for Shahrazad to summon the memory of the day her mother left that letter.

Koofi sits beneath a picture that shows her with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. (Photo: Laura Lynch)

In many ways, Koofi embodies the Afghan experience of the last decade, of the ways the country has and hasn’t changed.

She plans to run for president, but sometimes still wears the head to toe burka she hates for disguise and protection. Her life is under threat, but she says she worries more about rumors (some have suggested, wrongly, that she goes bare headed outside the country ) that could harm her reputation.

The life Koofi wants for her country, for her daughters, still seems a distant dream.

Another excerpt from the letter

Be brave, don’t be afraid of anything in life. All of us human beings will die one day. Maybe today is the day I will die. But if I do, please know it was for a purpose. Don’t die without achieving something. Take pride in trying to help people and in trying to make our country and our world a better place. I kiss you both. I love you both. Your mother.

Tzemach Lemmon has written about the lives of Afghan women both under Taliban rule, and post-Taliban rule.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: The Taliban regime in Afghanistan was notorious for its repression of women. Since the US-lead invasion 10 years ago the restoration of women’s rights have been a key goal in Afghanistan. It’s also seen as key to whether a viable democracy will be able to take hold there. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon has written about the lives of Afghanistan’s women both before and after Taliban rule. Her book, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells the story of one woman who not only manages to survive under the Taliban, she also manages to create a business for herself and other women. The author says that for women under the Taliban the main imperative was survival.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: When I started interviewing women who worked during the Taliban years what I saw over and over again was that these women had decided that their families were either going to eat or not going to eat, and that it was up to them to find a way to support them. And so you had women who were selling fruits and vegetables from their house, women who were making burkas, women who were actually teaching other women Microsoft Office in a women’s hospital, women who staffed up because they absolutely knew their families would not be supported otherwise.

Werman: What about the women you focused on in your book, the Dressmaker of Khair Khana, what was life like for them and what’s changed post 2001?

Lemmon: I first met Kamila Sidiqi who’s the protagonist of The Dressmaker in 2005 when I was there writing a Financial Times piece. And I asked her about this new business she was starting and I said so how did you decide to go into business? She said oh, well, actually this is my third business; the first one I started under the Taliban and it was an enormous success and that was actually what made me an entrepreneur. And that was for me as a reporter, I’m sure you understand this, a real Eureka moment because…

Werman: Right, it’s surprising to hear that.

Lemmon: Absolutely, because we are so used to seeing women as victims of war to be pitied, that we almost overlook stories about how they make the absolute difference when it comes to survival during incredibly difficult times. And here were girls who had managed to become breadwinners during years when they were banned from their own streets. And I think in the end you see in the story of The Dressmaker, there were women all around Kamila’s neighborhood who were desperate for work, who would just knock on the door and say my sister’s cousin’s friend tells me you have a job, can you please give me work? Because the economic story of the Taliban is one people often forget, that people could not feed their families. And so a business like this, the dressmaking business, really constituted the difference between survival and starvation for a lot of families.

Werman: 10 years ago women’s rights was something the US was pushing as being very crucial to the future of Afghanistan, people like Hillary Clinton said that treating women better in Afghanistan would be a harbinger of a more peaceful, prosperous and democratic future for that country. Has the promise of focusing on women’s rights been made good on?

Lemmon: Women themselves I think have been making good on that promise, but the international community which spoke a great deal about women’s rights on the way in is fairly quiet about it now, particularly in the US. And Hillary Clinton is doing a great deal to try to keep the issue on the agenda in terms of bringing it up often, and she has promised women that they will not be abandoned. But what is going to happen come 2014 I think remains a very open question. And I do think it’s very interesting that women were talked about a great deal at the start and almost no one wants to talk about them now that they’re trying to finish the war.

Werman: Is it simply because there’s a war and a deadline that women’s rights are no longer a priority?

Lemmon: Absolutely, I think that the domestic constituencies and the fact that this war has now become America’s longest ever means that this administration wants an end to the war. And I think women have become secondary, and so what you see now is women leaders, women community activists saying come on, we want to be heard. And I think you see women and I interview them all the time who say we are not collateral damage, we are contributors.

Werman: Right, now the pressure is mounting for the US to get out of Afghanistan and there’s more and more talk that any political solution there will involve the Taliban. What does all this mean for whatever progress has been made for women’s rights in the last decade?

Lemmon: It is an open question. Whatever happens the Taliban era that I talk about in the book is an example of this, women will find a way. Women will not be silent I think in whatever comes next. But will the international community support their effort to make a country that’s more stable, because countries are more stable when women have a role, and a voice and a seat at the table. And so the question is will whatever comes next in Afghanistan include a Taliban agreement to respect the Afghan constitution that does give women opportunity to go to work and go to school, which is what women are asking for. And I do not know the answer to that and I do not think that anybody in the international community can give you a good answer as to how serious they are about really holding sacred that idea that women must be a part of their own country. And it’s really amazing when you think that women are both half the population and relegated to a special interest group when it comes to having a say in their own nation.

Werman: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is the author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe. She’s also deputy director of the Council on Foreign Relations, Women and Foreign Policy Program. Gayle, thanks very much for speaking with us.

Lemmon: Thank you for having me.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Drone pilots may be on the ground, but they still require a high degree of aviation skills and training to fly the planes. The planes also require specialized mechanics and parts. And drones aren’t only for military applications. In the future, unmanned aircraft may well be used for everything from delivering packages to spreading fertilizer on fields.

The state of North Dakota is trying to position itself to become a leader in all-things-drones. But first order of business in North Dakota: don’t call them drones.

“Drone? Well, mmmm, yea, that word should not be used,” said Mike Nelson, with the University of North Dakota’s new unmanned piloting program. He said these are complex planes that require a high-degree of piloting expertise, and the word “drone” doesn’t reflect that.

“The Air Force calls them RPA’s, remotely piloted aircraft. The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) acknowledges them as UA’s, unmanned aircraft, or UAS, unmanned aircraft systems, because that’s a UA with its associated equipment, that’s why it’s called UAS.”

That’s the term they use at the University of North Dakota: UAS. Two years ago, the university became the first civilian school to offer a four-year degree in unmanned aircraft systems operations. Several other schools – in Alaska, Arizona, Florida – are also offering courses.

Nelson showed me around the new UAS training center in Grand Forks, located off-campus at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. The center includes a small room that’s essentially a cockpit on the ground. Pilots and sensor operators can watch what’s happening in the air through cameras on the plane.

Students don’t actually fly real planes though; the FAA won’t allow that. Instructor Mark Hastings showed me a simulated flight over Washington DC. He typed in coordinates and sent a plane to a specific point. He also dragged a mouse, made a click, and off the plane went to a spot near the Jefferson monument.

I suggested that it looked pretty easy, that perhaps I could’ve done it.

“Yea, yea. Absolutely. It’s pretty straightforward to use,” said Hastings.

It was also a little jarring watching an unmanned flight over Washington, even when it wasn’t real.

Before I got too alarmed though, or proud of my piloting ability, another instructor, Trevor Woods, put me in my place.

“One of the things you just said is that really looked easy, something that maybe even you can do. And you don’t need to be full-fledged pilot. However, because of the interaction with air space, because of the interaction with air traffic control, because of the interaction with other aircraft…”

…Because of all that, I can’t fly the plane.

The undergraduate students studying unmanned aerial systems begin their coursework by learning about aerodynamics as any traditional pilot would. Then the classes branch off to study the specifics of unmanned aircraft.

The students aren’t in the military, but they’ll likely end up working as military contractors when they graduate. For now, that’s where the jobs are.

Associate Professor Ben Trapnell set up the UAS degree program here. He used to be a Navy pilot, but he says unmanned aircraft: that’s the future.

“And if you do any research with the Army, the Air Force, there are people that will tell you they may have produced or are producing their last manned fighter.”

Bottomline: There’s no safety risk to a pilot on the ground. And Trapnell sees a lot more than just military applications.

“I’ve got about 90 different uses for unmanned aircraft. But some of the big things: agricultural uses – we can get imagery to farmers a lot faster than having to wait for satellites to do the same thing – pipeline patrols, powerline patrols, there’s the possibility of flying organs one place or another to get them there faster for transplants.”

At the moment, the FAA won’t allow unmanned planes to fly for civilian uses. Still, the state of North Dakota is positioning itself for when that day comes. It’s an ideal place to experiment with this new technology – wide open space and few people. Beyond the university program, dozens of businesses are springing up to support the emerging industry. A nearby college – Northland Community and Technical College – is training students for unmanned aircraft repair.

Two unmanned aircraft are currently allowed to fly above North Dakota; they’re patrolling the Canadian border.

John Priddy directs the National Air Security Operations Center in Grand Forks for US Customs and Border Protection. He said unmanned planes offer certain advantages, namely they can stay airborne for 20 hours at a time.

“That reduces a lot of things for us: cost, time to get to different areas.”

Priddy said unmanned aircraft allow his team to quantify the threat level at different parts of a long border and identify where crossings are occurring.

The pilots here switch roughly every two hours. There’s also a team analyzing the data sent back. Priddy asked one of his team members to pull up an example of the type of imagery the planes send back. Moments later, one of Priddy’s team members zooms in on a picture of tire tracks and footprints to see where earth has been overturned.

This was all amazing stuff. But I gotta say, for the pilots, it seemed, well, kinda boring. And tame. I suggested this to John Priddy. He flew Apaches in the Army before he piloted unmanned aircraft.

“It’s the most challenging airplane I’ve ever flown,” said Priddy. “You have to learn different cues for landing, and taking off that matter, but in particular landing, because you don’t have any aural perception, meaning you don’t hear the increase in the motor when you push the throttle forward, you don’t feel the acceleration.”

All the unmanned pilots I spoke with said more or less the same thing: It’s not the same rush as being up in the clouds, but you still have to be completely engaged in what you’re doing.

There is one compelling reason for young, would-be pilots to choose a cockpit on the ground: job opportunities. There aren’t a lot of pilots who can do this. And, if and when the FAA allows unmanned civilian aircraft to take to the sky, there will be an even greater demand for pilots on the ground.

“It was a hard fit for Richard Holbrooke,” according to David Corn, the Washington Bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine. “He just never found his footing in the Obama administration on this very vexing question of Afghanistan.”

A transparently corrupt election in the summer of 2009 poisoned Holbrooke’s already rocky relationship with President Hamid Karzai. Well-publicized tensions inside the Obama administration and with military leaders contributed to an image of Holbrooke as powerless and sidelined. By 2010, the President was leaving Holbrooke out of important strategic meetings on Afghanistan.

“I think it was somewhat an unfortunate cap to his long diplomatic career.” Corn said. “We’re left not being able to judge him fully on this last mission.”

But history has already judged Holbrooke favorably for re-framing the war effort, and explicitly connecting Pakistan with Afghanistan in the US strategic vision. Today, with routine coalition attacks on targets in Pakistan, the Afghanistan-Pakistan link has become conventional wisdom. But the widely-used shorthand “Af-Pak” was coined by Holbrooke just a few years ago.

“Previously in the State Department or the White House, these two countries were even managed by different bureaus,” according to Vali Nasr, a senior adviser to Holbrooke, and professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “Holbrooke understood that the most basic element of this diplomacy here was to understand that peace and security in Afghanistan is dependent on peace and security in Pakistan, and you have to get this right to find a way out.”

Journalist Kati Marton, Holbrooke’s wife for the last 15 years of his life, says he thought America’s “relationship with Pakistan was the most complicated, the most frustrating, the most fraught and the most dangerous. Richard and I never went for a walk in the park without him either getting a call from Pakistan or making a call to Pakistan. He established very close relationships with people where he was on first name basis with pretty much the entire power structure in Pakistan.”

There were some tensions with the Pakistani government and military; but Holbrooke deeply impressed many Pakistanis, wading out to distribute relief during the disastrous floods of 2010. Since his death, America’s image in Pakistan has been defined by drone strikes and the killing of Osama Bin Laden, which alienated many Pakistanis.

“The relationship with Pakistan has deteriorated rather dramatically,” noted Marton. “I cannot categorically say that that’s because Richard Holbrooke is no longer minding the store but he’s not — and things have gotten much worse.”

While his gains in Pakistan may have fallen apart, Holbrooke’s supporters point to a diplomatic accomplishment that could have lasting impact: strengthening diplomatic ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Relations between the two countries are deeply strained today. But before Holbrooke was involved, they were almost nonexistent.

“Since the creation of Pakistan in 1947 they had not really signed any treaty of substance,” according to Nasr. “Holbrooke said, ‘you have to begin to close this one treaty at the time.’ And he spent two years and an enormous amount of energy and time pushing these two closer and closer together.”

By October 2010, the two countries had signed their first border treaty in over 40 years.

Kati Marton says Holbrooke believed that dialogue between the Afghans and the Pakistanis was essential for any peace process. “His ultimate goal was to get some kind of a peace conference that would be a regional peace conference, and that was where he was heading, and that was where he didn’t get.”

It’s impossible to predict what will come next in Afghanistan, but the importance of Pakistan and a regional solution has come into even sharper relief. After the assassination of a key Afghan peace envoy, President Karzai announced this month that he was abandoning initiatives with the Taliban in favor of direct talks with Pakistan.

Arun Rath is a reporter for PBS FRONTLINE