Another 16 French soldiers were injured, some seriously, in the incident in Kapisa province.

An official told the BBC that an Afghan non-commissioned officer got into a “verbal clash” and opened fire.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was suspending its training programs in Afghanistan following the attack.

Marco Werman talks with the BBC’s Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. There was an incident today in Afghanistan that highlights a growing problem for US troops and their allies there. A soldier of the Afghan National Army opened fire on a group of French military trainers. Four French soldiers were killed and at least 16 more were injured. In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy reacted by saying French troops are not in Afghanistan to be shot at by their allies.

Nicolas Sarkozy: [Speaking French] We are the Afghan people’s friend and we are the Afghan people’s allies, but I can’t accept that Afghan soldiers could fire on French soldiers. If the security conditions are not clearly established then the question of an anticipated withdrawal of the French Army will be raised.

Werman: This is not the first time an Afghan soldier has fired on allied foreign troops. The BBC’s Bilal Sarwary is in Kabul. What’s known about this soldier, this Afghan soldier and his motives, Bilal, and the circumstances under which his attack on the French soldiers took place?

Bilal Sarwary: Well, we do know that he is a noncommissioned officer with the Afghan National Army, and that he had a verbal clash. Soon afterwards he fired at the French, killing 4 and injuring 17 others. The Afghan Minister of Defense here in Kabul has sent a delegation to find out more, but we do understand that the Afghan National Security Forces, the French soldiers serving with NATO, the International Security Assistance Force, were conducting a huge clearance operation in what is known as a volatile region.

Werman: This is not the first time this has happened where an Afghan soldier or policeman kills foreign troops inside Afghanistan. Do you know how many coalition troops have been killed by Afghan forces in this manner?

Sarwary: I don’t have an exact number, but I know enough to say that this is a very grave problem, one which has created deep mistrust between the Afghans and the international forces.

Werman: Any sense of why it’s happening now?

Sarwary: Well, it’s very difficult to say why, but I’ve followed the case of one Afghan rogue soldier who killed six US Special Forces. In this case he was recruited for 3-1/2 years by the Taliban. His uncles were leading the insurgency in that region, and the Afghan government totally failed in terms of counter intelligence to really understand that this was no more an Afghan border policeman, but a Taliban infiltrator. And it’s really difficult to have intelligence on people who come from areas where the Afghan government is simply not there. What is really ironic is that a lot of the Afghan National Army and police soldiers have Taliban hypnotic chants as their ringtones on their mobile phones…

Werman: Really.

Sarwary: including those serving on joint Afghan international bases I have come cross in the eastern province of Nangarhar, I saw it in Kandahar last week. If you listen to those hypnotic chants, if you listen to those Taliban songs with their music, they really prey on the most basic emotion of an Afghan. And a lot of those people who come to the Afghan Security Forces come from the country’s royal areas with no education and with areas where the Afghan government has never been there. The second big problem that seems to be there is the issue of cultural differences. For example, when I was in the eastern province of Nangarhar I went to an Afghan border police training center where the Americans were training the Afghans. And the problem there was that the Americans were absolutely disgusted in their own words, tired and frustrated that the Afghans were taking hours for their lunch, prayer and tea breaks. And according to the Americans the Afghans there were simply lazy, they were not working hard. Now, if you went to the Afghans in the same camp they would have told you the Americans are using the F-word, they’re not allowing us to pray, they’re not allowing us to eat, so both sides were involved in a tit for tat sort of war.

Werman: Well, thanks very much for the update. The BBC’s Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.

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.

The Marine officers named a lead investigative officer in the case Friday.

All four Marines seen in the video have now reportedly been identified.

US officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, are worried that anger over the incident could undermine the US military effort in Afghanistan.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Prof. Morris Davis of Howard University School of Law about the rules US service members are required to follow when it comes to enemy dead on the battlefield.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. The Pentagon is following through on its promise to quickly investigate that infamous video, the one of four marines apparently urinating on dead Taliban fighters. Today the Marine Corps officially named a lead investigative officer in the case, and all four marines seen in the video have now reportedly been identified. U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, are worried that anger over the incident could undermine the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan. Fawzia Kofi, a member of the Afghan parliament is worried too.

Fawzia Kofi: Our deviated Taliban, and the utilities, and links to Taliban are looking for an excuse to use against intermission forces in Afghanistan. This could be good propaganda means.

Werman: A swift US investigation could help counter the negative image created by the incident. But, the Afghan government wants more than that. According to Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman, Janan Mosazai.

Janan Mosazai: Our expectation is that an economist will conduct a thorough investigation into this incident, and punish all of those soldiers found to have been part of this reprehensible crime, and that they will be punished accordingly.

Werman: So what sort of legal charges could the four Marines involved be facing? Morris Davis is a retired Air Force colonel. He served as chief prosecutor at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from 2005 to 2007. He resigned from that post in 2008, and now teaches at Howard University School of Law. Colonel Davis, article 15 of the First Geneva Convention of 1864 prohibits the delivered mistreatment of a body on the battlefield. It appears that in this particular case in Afghanistan, the soldiers did not abide by the Geneva Convention. Would that be where the legal case starts?

Morris Davis: It could, but if you recall when we started the war in Afghanistan, the Bush administration said the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply. The Supreme Court disagreed in the Hamdan decisions, said Common Article 3 applies, but regardless, customary international humanitarian law recognizes that mistreating a corpse is prohibited.

Werman: And what are the guidelines for how you treat corpses in battle?
Davis: Well, there aren’t detail-specific guidelines other than the Geneva Conventions that talk about showing respect for the treatment of the dead body. I mean, there are certain things you would assume don’t need to be written down for most reasonable human beings to understand you don’t do, and certainly the behavior depicted in the video falls well below that standard.

Werman: This is not the first time we’ve heard of such an instance in Afghanistan; it also happened in Iraq. I’m also reminded of stories of American soldiers in Vietnam taking body parts as souvenirs. Can you help us understand how the generally accepted rules of war can fall by the wayside on the battlefield when it comes to the dead?

Davis: Some people have a hard time grasping that there are rules that apply to war. I mean, I think some people assume that if the situation reached a point where war is broken out, then it’s “anything goes”. And that’s one of the arguments that you hear now, is “look at how the Taliban behaves”. But, we don’t gage our conduct by the conduct of our adversaries. And there are certainly, as you mentioned, exceptions from Iraq and from Vietnam, and from World War II. But that doesn’t change the fact of the matter, that we pride ourselves, the military, for our professionalism and living up to a higher standard than our adversaries.

Werman: How psychically difficult do you think it is to treat the dead with respect when you’re in the midst of war and there’s bullets flying all over? Is it too much to ask of troops?

Davis: I don’t think it is; I mean, I think it’s basic human dignity not to mistreat the dead. I mean, the law of war permits conduct that in normal circumstances would not be permitted, for instance, killing. But, once the enemy is no longer capable of fighting, whether they’re sick, wounded, captured or killed, then you lose the right to do things that you ordinarily couldn’t do. And certainly, in this video, if it is what it appears to be, then our soldiers, their conduct fell below the standards that are acceptable.

Werman: Colonel Davis, when the rules of war are not followed, where do you place the blame? On the troops themselves or is this a leadership problem?

Davis: I think accountability and responsibility should be throughout the process. I mean, certainly there’s no excusing what’s depicted in the video. So that’s kind of the bottom of the pyramid, but at the top of the pyramid, when we started out this war in Afghanistan, the Bush administration said the Geneva Conventions were quaint and didn’t apply. Basically, “take your gloves off and anything goes”. So, there should be some accountability at the top too for creating this atmosphere that allows this kind of behavior to occur. I mean, it’s certainly a lack of leadership to create an environment where any troop would think that this behavior is acceptable for a member of the U.S. armed forces.

Werman: It sounds like you take it back to that statement from the Bush administration that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply. Do you think that things started there?

Davis: Without a doubt in my mind. You know, America for 200 years, we viewed ourselves as the city on the hill that others should emulate and live up to. We still serve as an example, but often we serve as a bad example, not a good one. So, I think in this instance, the Pentagon is taking it seriously; I think the people will be held accountable, and hopefully this kind of behavior will continue to be the very rare exception and not the rule.
Werman: Retired Air Force Colonel Morris Davis recently served as executive director at the Crimes of War Education Project in Washington, D.C., where he worked to enhance global public awareness of international humanitarian law, and to highlight violations of the laws of war. He’s currently teaching at Howard University School of Law. Colonel Davis, thank you very much for your point of view.

Davis: Thank you.

A statement confirmed the move, which has been backed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Marco Werman talks to David Roberts of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar about the proposed Taliban office.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Afghanistan today officially welcomed peace talks between the United States and the Taliban. It also welcomed the proposed opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf Emirate of Qatar. US and Afghan officials hope the new office will help hasten the end of the war in Afghanistan. Officials in Qatar lead by the country’s monarch may be relishing the fact that they get to play the role of matchmaker in any deal. Qatar, which is home to the Al Jazeera news network has worked hard to increase its influence in the region. David Roberts is with the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. He’s based in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Roberts says the opening of a Taliban office there makes a certain amount of sense.

David Roberts: Qatar has been involved for a little while now with America and Germany specifically, to try to I suppose engineer some kind of a resolution to some degree. And to be perfectly honest it makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that this has happened here. Qatar has a quite long and illustrious history in recent years of trying to help with mediating in various conflicts.

Werman: Well, we’ll get to that in recent history, but as far as the Taliban, what does it mean to have an office in Qatar? I mean in my mind I see Taliban headquarters on the door of the office. What kind of physical profile will this office actually have?

Roberts: Yeah, indeed, I’m curious about that myself. I confess I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does to be perfectly honest. A lot of the way things work in Qatar are pretty ad hoc, no one knows specifically what the form will be. But in terms of the use of the office, I mean if we look at a couple of recent attempts to get some kind of negotiation going in Afghanistan, in September last year an Afghan government mediator was assassinated because he couldn’t find the right Taliban person to speak to. And the year before the American was fined several hundred thousands dollars for pretty much the same reason. So with the office here it’ll provide a bona fide represents to the Taliban, which it’s a very small step, but a crucial one.

Werman: As you say David, I mean this is the latest of several efforts by Qatar. It’s made efforts to try and broker deals in Syria, and Darfur and Sudan, on and off in Yemen. It sent four of its Mirage jets to the no-fly zone over Libya. Now this business with the Taliban. Why is Qatar stepping forward internationally?

Roberts: To some degree it’s because it can. It’s a very small state. It’s a threat to no one. It’s completely secured by America, it has two huge bases here, so it’s sort of intrinsically able to do this. The last point on that idea is obviously it’s a very small place as I say; if the mayor or the prime minister who’s very emboldened here, if they have an idea that they want to push forward no one in the bureaucracy will stop them at all. So it’s quite personalized in that way. And in recent years the elite have obviously had this desire to mediate in conflicts around the region. And if I could just mention Qatar and Darfur, they’ve been involved there for many years now to affect some kind of a resolution there. So why they’re doing this, yes, I think we can mention some altruistic reasons perhaps, but let’s not forget that Sudan is the bread basket of Africa as it’s known. Qatar is a very food insecure country. And obviously with all these years of negotiations they’ve built up a huge amount of goodwill in the country, not to mention a huge raft of contacts. So in that specific example we can see other reasons afoot shall we say. And you know, we can’t go through all the examples, but there are always multiple reasons essentially for this.

Werman: David Roberts, the deputy director of the Qatar office of the Royal United Services Institute. He joined us from the capital, Doha. Thank you very much indeed.

Roberts: Thank you.

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.

"Ready for rent" (Photo: Laura Lynch)

Behind the security gates lie the secrets to living safely and living well in Afghanistan. I’ve come for a tour of a house, a mansion really, that is sitting empty.

“And it’s ready for rent and everything is clean and clear and recently painted,” said Mohammed Daoud Rahimi, the real estate agent. He eagerly showed the features of the five story, seven bedroom home.

“It has the central heater and also the cooling system.” The main salon also has a series of crystal chandeliers.

There is a jacuzzi tub downstairs and rows of roomy closets.

The influx of cash that accompanied foreign aid agencies, diplomats and private security firms led to a big building boom in Afghanistan, especially in the cities.

In 2009 alone, house prices jumped 75 percent, but it seems the good times may be coming to an end. Rahimi has 15 vacant houses on the market.

“For example, before the rent on this house was about $ 14,000 per month and this season it’s available for $9,000,” Rahimi said.

A conference focused on rebuilding Kabul was held in the splendor of the spectacular Babur Gardens southwest of the old city last week. It seemed a world away from the bleak reality of life for most Afghans. But it was where the mayor of Kabul was seeking fresh ideas and money to salvage his city.

Kabul Mayor Muhammad Younus Nawandish (Photo: Laura Lynch)

“All these houses you can see, this is illegal. 70 percent of the houses are unplanned and most of them are illegally. Because this is a big challenge for Kabul municipality,” he said.

It is an enormous challenge, caused partly by rising house prices and partly by the rising population. Kabul has grown from 1.5 million to 5 million residents over the last several years without any formal planning, as frightened Afghans piled into the city from rural areas. As rents climbed, people simply moved further out and built wherever they could.

Nawandish is keenly aware of the problems facing the community and also of the city’s dependence on foreign money to keep it going.

“This is very important for Kabul and Kabul economy to have the assistance of the international community. Now we have assistance from the World Bank, the United States, Turkish government, Japanese government, United Arab Emirates and other countries.”

It adds up to billions of dollars. The United States alone spends about $320 million a month in non-military aid across the country. Plucking grapes from a plate in front of him, Nawandish laments the end of such largesse, even as he promises he will find another way.

“Unfortunately, I became the mayor of the Kabul in the end of this big assistance. I am not happy to lose this big assistance. But it is the politics, if they want to leave we do not have another option. But we are working on another form of the income of the Kabul municipality. I am sure we will increase the income.”

Income may well mean higher taxes on residents and businesses in one of the few places in Afghanistan where it is safe enough to even try to collect them and that makes life even harder for local businesses.

Hajji Hameed (Photo: Laura Lynch)

Meant to cater to the tastes of foreigners living in the city, the store also attracted locals with three floors of food, clothes and hardware, but Hameed has watched business slide.

“The main problem here is security, the security situation is very bad,” said Hameed. “We do not have customers for months if there’s a bombing in Kabul.”

For him, it is all made worse by the rising costs that accompanied the foreign community driven boom of the last decade.

“The rent has gone up a lot recently even though the economy and the security situation is getting worse every day. In order to pay the rent, taxes and utility bills, I’ve had to get a loan and spend my savings.”

Add to that the unique and dramatic problems facing entrepreneurs here. Hameed has done well over the years, opening other stores, buying property. That made him a target. Two years ago, he was kidnapped.

The men who grabbed him one night as he made his way home from work demanded the equivalent of $700,000.

“I sold two houses and I borrowed $200,000 from the bank. I was held for 19 days and nights and they only released me after they received the ransom,” says Hameed.

Now, he has hired bodyguards to protect him and he closes the store early. He says it all makes it harder to pay back his growing debts. Hameed’s difficulties highlight the critical link between security and the economy – and the need for both to ensure Afghanistan’s future.

The only other viable parts of Afghanistan’s economy are illicit – drugs and smuggling. Earlier this year, the US Senate Foreign Relations committee warned that the country could suffer a severe economic depression when the majority of foreign troops leave in 2014.

That worries many Afghans who have never been able to build a sustainable economy and a peaceful existence.

Graffiti by Shamsia Hassani (Photo: Shamsia Hassani)

It began in the darkness of night. Guerrilla warriors of a different kind, armed with cans of spray paint. They painted slogans such as “cost of war” and stenciled images of helicopters, guns and soldiers onto the high concrete walls of buildings in the city.

They weren’t Afghan, but they came back in the daytime, and showed locals like Shamsia Hassani how to create street art.

“It was my first time and it was a very new experience for me because it was different. Usually we use brush but it was spray paint. It was different and a little difficult for me because it was my first time.”

Hassani was one of a group of Afghans who attended a workshop held by a British artist. She was captivated and soon went to an industrial park to create her first work – a huge mural showing a group of women wearing blue burkas emerging from water. (See the image above.)

“You can see the water and woman coming from the water,” she says. “Blue is a freedom color is a clean color and I shows that all Afghan women are like water clean and blue.”

It might be a portrait of progress or hope were it not for the menacing black background. Walls in Kabul are often covered in simple advertising slogans. This new artistic frontier is irresistible to many including Ahmed Ali Akbar. After the workshop, he created his own image of a man screaming.

“This kind of art has rarely been seen here in Afghanistan. It’s something new. Luckily, I was part of the first workshop on it. It’s new and it’s interesting,” says Akbar.

And just in case you think it’s all the preserve of young disaffected youth – Akbar is the director of Afghanistan’s National Gallery.

He says he’s seen a wide range of graffiti – from slogans critical of corruption, political incompetence and druglords to flowers that are meant to signify peace.

“There’s no one single way to characterize it, the main goal is for an artist to express his ideas to the public.”

But trying to exercise freedom of expression here isn’t easy. Even though many walls do carry advertising, graffiti artists aren’t so welcome. So they work at night and work quickly for fear of being caught by police, private security or criminal kidnap gangs.

As a woman, the challenges are even greater for Shamsia Hassani in this conservative country. She’s created wall art only twice – both times inside open air compounds but she’s not letting that stop her.

“I couldn’t go to street to do graffiti work and I decided to have to find a way for myself and I start.”

Captivated by the art form, Shamshia now uses computer software to digitally paint on photos of Kabul’s streets. While she may not gain the same kind of recognition of her male peers, she’s hoping she’ll be able to stage a show – trying to guarantee graffiti is accepted as real art no matter where it appears in the city.

The museum's focus is on landmines but it also features many other weapons, such as rockets (Photo: Iqbal Sapand)

* The broadcast of this report incorrectly cites 40 people that are estimated to be killed or injured each day in Afghanistan. The figure is actually per month. We regret the error.

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Marco Werman: Hundreds of protestors took to the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan today. They demanded an international investigation into last week’s assassination of former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani. He was killed at his home in Kabul by a suicide bomber. The Afghan capital has seen a sharp rise in violence in the past couple of weeks, that includes two attacks on US targets in Kabul — one was a 20 hour siege of the US embassy by militants firing rocket propelled grenades from a nearby construction site; the other was Sunday’s fatal shooting inside the CIA office. The World’s Laura Lynch is in Kabul. All these reports make Kabul out to be suddenly more of a target for militant attacks. Have you sensed that on the ground, Laura, is it palpable?

Laura Lynch: Well, I think certainly people feel more tense than they have in a while and it is because so many things have happened in such a short space of time. I was speaking to a member of parliament this morning who told me that she noticed that everywhere she went and everyone she talked to just seemed to be so much more on edge than they had been in the past. And you’ve got to remember that this is a place and these are a people who are used to an awful lot of violence. So to sense that they’re feeling a little bit more on edge than they usually do, that’s saying something.

Werman: Have people changed their daily routines at all?

Lynch: To some extent they’ve been forced to change their daily routines because when these incidents have happened parts of the city have been locked down and you can’t move anywhere within those parts of town. So it’s all these disruptions to life here, which is not easy at the best of times. If you’ve ever been in Kabul, then there are the most extraordinary traffic jams you’ve ever seen. Well, this just makes it worse. In spite of all that, people are trying to get on with life and trying to stick to their routines as much as they can. The shops are open, not easy for them, but they’re trying to get things as normal as they can be.

Werman: Kabul used to be considered the one place in Afghanistan that US and Afghan forces could really protect. What has changed that?

Lynch: I think that some would say is that the US forces and the other international forces have drawn back and have let the Afghans take care of the security in this city. And it was seen as a test for the Afghans, if they could control security within Kabul itself. And when there was the incident two weeks ago, the 20 hour siege, you saw these insurgents were firing on the US embassy and they had to bring out US soldiers to get involved on the roof of the embassy to fire back. They didn’t want to get involved directly in the operation in the city itself because they needed to let the Afghan army show and the Afghan police that they could take care of their own. But boy, that sure shook a lot of people’s confidence in the Afghan forces’ ability to take care of security in this city.

Werman: In the wake of these high profile attacks, Laura, has it become harder for you and other journalists to do your jobs?

Lynch: Well, I’ve been here for a week now and I knew when I was coming that there were going to be restrictions in the way I could do my job, and that’s been true of working here as a journalist for some time now. It’s meant that I have to figure out where I’m going, if I should be in a crowd, whether that’s too much of a risk. So, absolutely it affects the way that you can report and it affects your ability to tell the story — the way you tell a story, if I was in London for example, or some other city where I could move about freely and stay anywhere as long as I want.

Werman: Well, yesterday you reported on Afghan widows who live in a neighborhood overlooking Kabul. Was that a dangerous thing to do?

Lynch: Well, you wouldn’t think so. It’s not dangerous in and of itself, Marco, but the rule of thumb nowadays is if you are going to go to a place perhaps on the fringes of the city, refugee camps, you better not stay long. And the fear is that there might be people who are looking at you, seeing you as a foreigner, seeing you as someone they might be able to kidnap for ransom. And these things you do pay attention to. So I stayed there for about 20 or 25 minutes. I would’ve much rather stayed longer, and I had to get back.

Werman: Laura, remind us of the last time you were in Kabul and tell us about one thing that you noticed that really struck you, something that surprised you.

Lynch: Well, the last time I was here was in 2007 and the first change that I noticed when I came back here this time was actually a good change — an airport that was an absolute mess and has now become a relative model of efficiency and security. So that is a good thing. But the other thing I’ve noticed driving around now is the number of barbed wire and security guards around government buildings, around cultural buildings, around private homes. To an extent it seems like this really is far more of a city under siege than it was a few years ago.

Werman: The World’s Laura Lynch in Kabul. Thank you, Laura.

Lynch: You’re welcome.

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.

Banner commemorating Rabbani who had been meeting Taliban commanders, returning from abroad a few days ago specifically for the talks. (Photo: Laura Lynch)

People across Afghanistan are mourning the death of a former warrior who was trying to sow the seeds of peace. Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated last night in his home by a suicide bomber who detonated explosives hidden in his turban. Rabbani was the head of the peace council, charged with negotiating an end to conflict with the Taliban. Now, some are asking whether there is any hope for peace.

On the street outside Rabbani’s home the mourners gathered early and gathered in anger at the assassin who took his life. Soon, banners featuring his photograph were draped over the building, marking his status as a martyr for peace among those who supported him.

Member of Parliament Fawzia Koofi was one of the first people to go to Rabbani’s house last night, as soon as she heard the news. “Of course it was shocking for me to see his dead body and his face which was completely damaged,” Koofi said.

Koofi didn’t always agree with Rabbani, but they were from the same province of Afghanistan. His death makes her question the value of trying to make peace with the Taliban.

“It is a big political loss and of course morally it affects everybody,” she said, “because for people who struggle for peace this is the response they get from the enemies of Afghanistan.”

For Afghan president Hamid Karzai, it is yet another blow. Within the past three months, two other close advisers, including his half brother, were also assassinated.

Government spokesman Janan Mosazail predicted more will die on Afghanistan’s rough road to peace, but he insists it’s no reason to stop negotiating.

“We have made it very clear from the beginning, and I think the world agrees with us,” Mosazail said, “that there is no military solution to the war in Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan have suffered for thirty years. There has to be a political solution, there has to be an end to the war in Afghanistan that is supported, that is endorsed and that is respected by everybody – countries in the region, and others further afield.”

“So that’s why we have announced this peace process. Of course there have been setbacks, there will be setbacks. Professor Rabbani is not the first and he will not be the last prominent Afghan leader who has been killed by terrorists trying to derail the peace process. But we will continue with our efforts,” Mosazail said.

The peace process was already fragile under Rabbani’s leadership. One of his closest advisors, Atta Mhummad Nur, now wants only vengeance.

“I am calling on all the followers of the great leader to unite and take revenge on those parasitic worms and those dragon-like blood-thirsty people behind the killing of the martyr and national hero,” he said. The peace council does not have any meaning for us any longer. Peace and understanding do not mean anything with these killers in Afghanistan.

No one is certain who sent the men who killed Rabbani. But the prospect of more and more Afghans taking up arms is worrying in a country beset by civil war less than two decades ago, a civil war that gave way to the brutal rule of the Taliban.

On the streets of Kabul today, there is a continuing unease. Yesterday’s assassination came just a week after the city was locked down by a 20 hour attack by the Taliban. Rabbani’s violent death is one more reason to worry about the future.

As an elderly man made his way down the street with a prayer mat slung over his shoulder, he predicted the worst is yet to come. And not just in Kabul.

“Even in my home village,” he said, “a leading politician was recently killed. The continuing violence makes it harder for me and others to believe in the chances for a lasting peace.”

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Lisa Mullins: Candace Rondeaux is a senior analyst based in Kabul for the International Crisis Group. She says the killing of Berhanuddin Rabbani may widen the ethnic divide in Afghanistan.

Candace Rondeaux: Certainly, ethnicity has emerged in the last 10 years as the primary fault line. In a large part because the Taliban which resides primarily in the south and the east where there are lots of Pashtun tribes see themselves as the dominant power in Afghanistan. There has always been this linguistic divide between Pashtuns who speak Pashtun and non-Pashtuns who generally speak Persian, and that consists of several other ethnic groups including the Tajiks of which Mr. Rabbani was one. In fact, he was probably one of the most well-known, most powerful Tajik figures to enter into this reconciliation process, and that is why his death is so significant in many ways. Because it really implies that the divide between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns is getting much bigger and I think that this really points toward a greater possibility of a move toward civil war upon the withdrawal of foreign troops. Essentially, what it comes down to is a sort of divide between several different ethnic groups that seems to be growing by the day.

Mullins: It’s growing by the day but what’s at the core of this particular divide that you are worried about?

Rondeaux: Well, at the core of it is that the Taliban for the last 10 years and more has been pushing for an Islamic emirate and an essentially closed state in which a small group of religious figures, much like an Iranian state controlled by the clergy, dictate the cultural norms, the legal norms and impose Sharia as a means of a political structure. But the non-Pashtuns, who I guess in this scenario sort of count as liberals if you will, fear is that everything that has been built out of the Islamic Republic will be lost. So the right to vote, the right to send girls to school, the right to conduct business as you see fit, without having to rely on religious figures as the final authority.

Mullins: Candace you have written for the Crisis Group that, you say it’s very clear that even if the Taliban were not directly responsible for this assassination though it seems that they are, there are some members who do not want this peace process to go forward, who are not interested in cutting deals (meaning with the Taliban) who are in fact frightened by the idea of a brokered peace deal taking place in Afghanistan. What frightens them?

Rondeaux: Well, I think for members of the inner circle of the Taliban, particularly from very hardcore sections of the Taliban, the fear is that they will lose their strategic advantage by cutting a deal with a government that is very weak. I think we can all agree that the government of President Karzai has never been weaker, and there is no guarantee that if the Taliban were to enter into a deal that they would receive the kind of security guarantees that he has been promising.

Mullins: We also see that those who are advocating peace and working toward peace, even those people who are extremely divisive like Mr. Rabbani himself, have lived such a fragile existence. What’s the upshot of this on the people of Afghanistan who do support some kind of peace process? Where does this leave kind of the psyche of the Afghan people you speak with?

Rondeaux: Well, the Afghan people are incredibly resilient. After 30 years of war, this country has really come through a lot and has slowly but surely tried to remake itself into something new. I also think that the Afghan people are under no illusions that what was taking place under the administration of Mr. Karzai and Mr. Rabbani was actually a peace process. I think there was general agreement, even within the High Peace Council itself, that, in fact, this is not a reconciliation process. This is about deal making. This is about money passing hands. This is about powerful men making decisions about marginalized peoples’ lives. And that, unfortunately, is why we are where we are today. I really do think that most Afghans recognize that to make peace happen here, what it needs, of course, is real institutions and real, genuine backing from a broad-based public. But right now the Karzai administration really doesn’t seem to understand that and nor do his backers in the United States who I think have really failed in the architecture of this process.

Mullins: All right, thank you Candace Rondeaux, senior analyst in Afghanistan for the International Crisis Group. Thank you.

Rondeaux: Thank you.

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US officials are now downplaying the attack’s impact. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said it wasn’t an assault but more like harassment. Another US official put the total death toll at 27. He said the number included Afghan policemen, civilians, and the attackers themselves.

But even if no Americans were killed, the attack’s brazen nature has stunned many in Kabul. Candace Rondeaux is the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst based in Kabul. She was inside the building when the attack on the American embassy started.

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Lisa Mullins: The insurgent attack against the US embassy and other key buildings in Kabul, Afghanistan is over.  The siege began yesterday.  It ended early this morning.  The US ambassador in Kabul, Ryan Crocker, is downplaying the attack.  He’s saying it was a form of harassment and not a very big deal.  Another US official put the total death toll at 27.  That number included Afghan policemen, civilians and the attackers themselves.  The attack’s brazen nature has stunned many people in Kabul.  Candace Rondeaux is the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst in Kabul.  She was inside the US embassy building yesterday when the attack began.

Candace Rondeaux: I was at the US embassy in the cafeteria having a working lunch with some of the staff when the P.A. alarm went off announcing that there was some sort of attack outside and that this was not a drill, and asking us to take cover.

Mullins: Where did you go for cover?

Rondeaux: First we were stuck in the cafeteria and then we were ushered upstair to a hardened area that had a lot less windows.  We were actually taken into a safe room.  There were about maybe 40 of us all in this very small safe room waiting to hear what was going to happen next.

Mullins: And what did happen?

Rondeaux: Well, we did hear some booms outside, but we didn’t hear any of the gunfire because the walls are very thick and hardened against these kinds of attacks.  There were constant announcements over the P.A. saying the situation was ongoing, asking us to take cover.  You know, we got some updates from the ambassador who was working at the time, and some of the other security staff kept coming in every 15-20 minutes to give us updates on what was happening outside on the street.

Mullins: So what was it like though during that time inside?

Rondeaux: Well, there was a lot of anxiety about how our families would view the situation, although we were feeling I think relatively safe.  However, I know that there were other people around the embassy who were much more exposed and for them it had to be very frightening.

Mullins: How long did this all last for you?

Rondeaux: It was almost 24 hours that I was at the embassy because there was fear of continued fighting in the morning until about 11:30 or 11:45.  So it was really pretty drawn out and I know for a lot of people, particularly the Afghan local staff at the embassy, they were extremely anxious, very worried, very worn out because of course they were thinking about their families, their children who were outside and exposed to some of these dangers.

Mullins: So, just to be clear, for 24 hours you were in that small safe room?

Rondeaux: Well, no, actually I was very lucky.  We happened to be a section of the embassy where there was a little bit more freedom of movement.  We were close to the cafeteria so food or water was not really an issue for us, but I know it was for others. We ended up actually, a few of us, bunking on the people’s floors in the embassy campus just waiting for something to change, basically.

Mullins: I can’t imagine what it was like to leave there when you finally did and came out.  I wonder what it was like when you finally emerged?

Rondeaux: Well, it was odd.  It was a bit surreal.  You know, sun was shining, things seemed to have returned to normal.  There were a cluster of police at the gates of the embassy who were sort of anxiously looking around when we were emerging, but otherwise, it was normal.  I think we were all a bit dazed and confused when we left.

Mullins: And you have been in Afghanistan for how long?

Rondeaux: I’ve been here almost four years.

Mullins: I don’t know if you’ve had any brushes quite as close as this one, you know when it’s a single, but spectacular event; but does something like this which you experienced so personally, can it have a bigger effect on the way you see things right now?

Rondeaux: Well, in four years time I’ve of course had much closer brushes, which is unfortunate and I’m sure my mother would not like to hear that, but it’s true.  So of course over time you know, your point of view about the violence here and the sort of shape of the conflict changes and in a way you do become a bit jaded.  I will say that yesterday’s attack certainly made me rethink you know, what we’re gonna do as an organization 2-3 years from now when the transition from NATO control of security to Afghan control actually happens and is completed.  And I think on a very personal level for many NGO and aid workers here, this is very much on our minds.  It’s becoming very difficult to work and get out in the open and talk to people.  And I think that is one of the more discouraging factors in terms of the kind of work that we do here.

Mullins: Are you gonna stay?

Rondeaux: I will stay.  I am committed.  I started this journey 10 years ago.  I used to work at the World Trade Center.  I was a cub reporter for the New York Daily News and I really feel strongly that part of getting to peace is understanding war.

Mullins: You were based at the World Trade Center in New York 10 years ago?

Rondeaux: I worked there.  I had a summer job and I’d just quit just before the towers fell.  And then I found myself on my second day of working for the New York Daily News as a cub reporter intern at Ground Zero basically.

Mullins: So this is in a way a bookend, but what you’re saying is it’s not over for you.

Rondeaux: It’s not over for me.  It’s not over for the Afghan people.

Mullins: Candace Rondeaux was in the US embassy in Kabul during yesterday’s attacks.  She is with the International Crisis Group in Kabul.  Candace, thank you, stay safe.

Rondeaux: Thank you, Lisa.

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Caroline Wadhams (Photo: Center for American Progress)

Lisa Mullins talks with Caroline Wadhams of the Center for American Progress about the Taliban and what Tuesday’s attacks in Kabul tells us about their current standing.

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Lisa Mullins: Caroline Wadhams is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington.  So, Caroline, Jean MacKenzie there in Kabul tells us the Taliban is still a viable and destructive force which is exactly what they’re seeing today in Kabul.  What does Washington do with this?  I mean how does a day like today affect Washington’s calculation of the Taliban’s strength in Afghanistan’s future?

Caroline Wadhams: I think that the administration for some time has been very concerned that in fact, the United States is not winning in Afghanistan, that NATO is not winning.  And these attacks are just another example of the resiliency of this insurgency.  It is able for the first time to conduct a very coordinated set of attacks.  Yes, they were not able to breach walls or do significant damage in terms of lives lost, but still, the fact that they can hit the most secure part of Afghanistan I think shows that this insurgency is not going away. And I think the administration sort of understands this, which is why they have shifted the strategy to move into a desire to reach out to the insurgency and to try to come to some sort of political settlement which the insurgents…

Mullins: Does this mean talking, having a conversation with the Taliban which has been happening behind the scenes?

Wadhams: Yes, the fact that this insurgency is more resilient than was imagined, there’s a sense that there has to be some kind of deal with these insurgent groups.

Mullins: And have the insurgent groups themselves, has the Taliban changed in recent years or is this the same group we’re talking about now that we were talking about 10 years ago when the US first went into Afghanistan?

Wadhams: It’s uncertain, I mean what’s clear is that they are much more technologically savvy than they used to be.  They have only increased in strength.  In terms of their ideology it doesn’t seem that it’s significantly shifted.  You know, you get an indication from some that maybe some members of the Taliban are more receptive to decreasing the extremism around women, and others deny that, so it’s uncertain…

Mullins: But what about, sorry, but what about in the bigger picture though?  What is the ideology now?  What was it then and what is it now?

Wadhams: Well, they want to basically impose an Islamic form of government throughout all of Afghanistan.  And where there is debate is whether they have to be linked in with al-Qaeda.  al-Qaeda itself, which is why we went into Afghanistan to begin with, we saw them as sort of interchangeable. There is a belief by many people looking at this that those are very distinct identities, and that al-Qaeda has been significantly weakened.  That has been one success story within Afghanistan, that al-Qaeda is basically not a presence anymore.  And so there is a belief by many that the Taliban is its own local Afghan movement that does not have global aspirations. Now others may, there are some that disagree with this notion and it’s hard to know, but the Taliban at least publicly, they have tried to distance themselves from al-Qaeda and have, there was a recent statement by Mullah Omar where he was speaking about economic development in Afghanistan and the mineral sector, and you know, it’s the public rhetoric, it’s hard to know where the truth is underneath it.  But Mullah Omar and his insurgency, they’re trying to present themselves as a viable political movement within Afghanistan.

Mullins: So what is in your opinion the way forward for Washington?

Wadhams: I think the best way forward probably for Washington is to seek some kind of political settlement with the insurgency, as difficult as that’s going to be.  There has to be some kind of negotiation where more Afghan groups and especially there, both the armed and unarmed groups, are brought into this process, and brought into a political system in Afghanistan.

Mullins: Caroline Wadhams, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, thank you.

Wadhams: Thank you.

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Ghulam Haider Hamidi in a family member's office in Kandahar in 2007. (Photo: Paula Lerner/Aurora Photos)

The mayor of the volatile Afghan city of Kandahar, Ghulam Haidar Hamidi, has been killed in a suicide attack, officials say. The attacker detonated explosives in his turban as the mayor made an address at the city hall, police said. Two weeks ago, President Hamid Karzai’s influential half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, was killed in the same city. Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Sarah Chayes, an advisor to the US military in Afghanistan.

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Lisa Mullins: Extremism and violence are part of daily life in Afghanistan.  Today brought another example.  The story actually begins in Alexandria, VA.  Ghulam Haidar Hamidi was working as an accountant there four years ago.  Then he heard from a longtime friend in his home country of Afghanistan.  That friend was Hamid Karzai.  The Afghan president asked Hamidi to be mayor of the turbulent southern city, Kandahar.  Hamidi accepted, though as he told us, he understood the dangers.

Ghulam Haidar Hamidi: One day we have to die.  You will die if by car accident, by some other event.  You will die in Kandahar by bullet or by bomb.  What’s the difference?

Mullins: Today, Hamidi dies in Kandahar by a bomb.  An Afghan suicide bomber killed Hamidi as he was meeting with tribal elders at his office. Sarah Chayes advises the US military in Afghanistan.  And Sarah, you lived yourself in Kandahar for many years.  I wonder if you can tell us what you believe is happening there right now, because it was just two weeks ago that President Karzai’s half brother, who was a power broker in Kandahar, was killed.  Kandahar’s police chief as you know, was killed a couple of months ago, and now the mayor of Kandahar.  What’s going on?

Sarah Chayes: Just to be clear, this is my own personal view based on my experience of Kandahar.  And the first thing that I would say is that it really seemed like everybody else was getting killed, but nobody really close to Ahmed Wali Karzai was getting killed.  This apparent impunity gave people in that inner circle a real arrogance and you would see them throwing their weight around. And I definitely have a feeling that there’s a sense that the spell is broken; whoever killed Ahmed Wali Karzai, the impact has been, someone described it to me today as though an egg shell had broken and the egg is no longer protected.  So you saw almost immediately another Karzai insider was killed in Kabul, and now Mayor Hamidi.

Mullins: Well, what happens then to the perspective from some of the population anyway, and some on the outside, that for instance, the mayor himself who was killed today, that this is a man who was in a sea of corruption, perhaps more honest than some of those around him, and that he was doing things that were fighting on behalf of some of the people there, trying to bring in normal city services and send back some of the vendors who had overtaken property — even though that would get many, many people very angry?

Chayes: What I got overwhelmingly from the people that I live with and their friends is that there was an enormous high-handedness that Hamidi successfully marketed to us as you know, upholding the laws of Kandahar, but in fact what he was doing was engaging in a campaign for the last couple of years — a campaign of evictions.  And that meant yes, clearing vendors from streets.  And in the case of the last couple of days he was bulldozing houses and in fact, two children had been killed the day before yesterday I think when a bulldozer was plowing into a house.

Mullins: What was the reason for the bulldozing?

Chayes: His claim is that these were government lands and in many cases they were.  But the point is that in the case of a market that he had bulldozed, the small shopkeepers who had their shops in that market had purchased those shops or had been paying rent to the city.  There was no procedure developed to deal with those legitimate claims or legitimate grievances.

Mullins: And what’s your best advice?  And I know you’re speaking here as an individual, you’re not speaking for the Pentagon.  But what is your best advice for the Pentagon?  Is this a time to try and reach out more to the citizens of Kandahar if possible?

Chayes: I think in general, and this goes for US foreign policy at large, if you look at the Arab spring for example or you look at Kandahar, our tendency at first is to default for stability because you know, reaching out to the population is complex, it’s dynamic, it’s volatile.  Decision making in a more democratic system frankly is messier than it is when you’ve got a strongman, be he Mubarak or be he Ahmed Wali Karzai.  But it’s my personal view that long term stability is actually better served by solutions that may look a little bit messier in the short run because they offer an opportunity for people to make their grievances known, to have them addressed, and to vent some of their frustrations, honestly.  And frankly, if there aren’t channels for doing that in a nonviolent way people have a tendency to get violent.

Mullins: Sarah Chayes has lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan for about a decade.  She advises the US military in Afghanistan, and she’s the author of the book, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.  Thank you, Sarah.

Chayes: Thank you.

Mullins: We profiled Mayor Hamidi in 2009.  You can listen to that story at theworld.org.  And you can also find an audio slide show of the life and death of another activist in Kandahar, Sitara Achakzai left a comfortable life in Germany and ended up fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan.  Hear her words and witness her activism at theworld.org.

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The Life and Death of Sitara Achakzai
Sitara Achakzai was born and raised in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the city known as the birthplace of the Taliban. Sitara served as a local legislator in Kandahar, where she was a vocal proponent of women’s rights. In April 2009, she was shot and killed outsider her home. Photographer Paula Lerner produced this audio slideshow about Sitara Achakzai:

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“Very unusually, he once told me that had he not been a marine general, he would like to have been archaeologist,” Ricks said.

And we’re not talking Indiana Jones. Gen. Allen told Ricks that his big archaeologist-hero was the British Colonial Administrator Gertrude Bell. She helped draw the modern lines of Iraq in the 1920s.

“Gen. Allen kept the writings of Getrude Bell handy, quoted them frequently, and quoted them … off the top of his head,” Ricks said.

John Nagl, the president of the Center for a New American Security who also served in Iraq said, that Allen’s choice of a British woman who was famous for her cultural sensitivity to a group of people very different from herself “speaks to what he values, what he values in himself, and the conduct he is going to try to model.”

This sort of empathy was evident early on, according to Gen. Charles Krulak, the commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 until 1999. Krulak remembers Allen as the ideal scholar-warrior, a voracious reader with three masters degrees.

Allen served under Krulak in peace-keeping operations in the Balkans and Haiti.

“You have a young officer coming up through a corps where people are focused on this new vision of this new type of warfare, this asymmetric warfare,” Krulak said.

Allen wrote that after Haiti, he came to see humanitarian work as a type of low-intensity combat. And, it turns out; Haiti was a good finishing school for counterinsurgency in Iraq.

“Allen cut his teeth on some of these issues in Haiti, Gen. Petraeus also spent some time in Haiti-and in both cases these very intellectual generals who read books as well as do push-ups, came to understand that building government stability depends a great deal on government legitimacy, having the support of the people,” said John Nagl, who wrote the modern counterinsurgency field manual with Gen. Petraeus in 2006

In fact, while Petraeus became the public face of the Iraq War, for many Americans, it was Allen who put in serious face time with the Iraqis.

“Gen. Allen came in, reached out to tribes, not only in Iraq themselves; many of them had to flee the region because of al-Qaeda and intertribal warfare,” Tom Ricks said. “Some were in Gulf States and others were in Syria. He actually pursued them, went to these places, met with them in the lobby of Sheraton of Amman for Tea and coffee, talked, about what it would take to bring them back.”

Strange as it sounds, a cup of tea in the Amman Sheraton could lead to tangible gains on the ground in Iraq.

“You could try to recruit police in Anbar and get nowhere just by putting out the sign and getting out the word,” Ricks said. “But then Gen. Allen would be conducting negotiations with the sheikh-the next day and 300 police would show up right outside the police station.”

The integration with the locals reflected more than cultural sensitivity. It was a canny military strategy, an adaptation to war, Iraqi-style. The question now is whether Gen Allen can do this in Afghanistan — especially with the troop drawdown well underway.

“If anybody can do it, it’ s John Allen, but he now has the challenge of performing that same task stabilizing the eastern part of Afghanistan, the part that’s closest to Pakistan,” Nagl said.

All Gen. Allen has to do is re-integrate Afghan tribes, train the Afghan Army, defend against militant attacks from Pakistan — oh, and please a president, congress, and the American people who want nothing more than to forget Afghanistan.

It could be enough to make him wish maybe he hadn’t been so successful in Iraq.

Arun Rath is a reporter for PBS FRONTLINE

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Lisa Mullins: Fred Kaplan is National Security Correspondent at slate.com and he’s written extensively on how the war in Afghanistan is going.  He’s not optimistic about it.  Kaplan says General Allen is going to have to take a different approach from the one he pursued in Iraq.

Fred Kaplan: I think he’s going to have to lower expectations and in fact, alter the strategy.  The military made a calculation a couple of years ago that they would need at least 30,000 additional troops to carry out the counter insurgency strategy that the National Security Council approved.  Those 30,000 troops are now being withdrawn.  If you don’t have the numbers and President Obama said that the cutback of 30,000 was just the beginning of the draw down, then you’re going to have to scale back your strategy to something much less ambitious; mainly just to go after the insurgents with nighttime raids by special forces, and unmanned aircraft, and helicopters.  Maybe continuing counter insurgency in a couple of areas, say maybe in Helmand or Kandahar Province, but certainly not beyond that.

Mullins: But what does that leave in the long run?  I mean it sounds like he’s sort of the caretaker of the drawdown, but is he also making deposits in the long run toward a more secure Afghanistan?

Kaplan: Even under Petraeus, and even under a more ambitious strategy, the ultimate goal was to build pressure on the Taliban so that enough of them defect or enough of them want to pursue peace and come to the table, and work out some kind of what would probably be a power sharing arrangement with the Karzai government.

Mullins: Does a resolution to the conflict have to include a negotiated settlement with the Taliban?

Kaplan: Yes, I mean General Petraeus said these wars do not end with you know, victory signing on the USS Missouri.  They end through some kind of negotiation.  The question is what are the terms of the negotiation?  Right now we have a deal open and it has been open for a couple of years now to the Taliban you know — turn in your guns, renounce violence, accept the Afghan constitution and we can bring you in.  But there doesn’t seem to be enormous willingness to do that.

Mullins: As you write in your article, the insurgents usually have a task of making progress by sewing disorder, and thereby undermining the government’s legitimacy.  As the allies have been present in such strong numbers, has that not given the Afghan population a sense of order versus disorder.  And is that not enough to continue to take hold, to take root in the long run?

Kaplan: Well, it has in certain pockets.  And you know, another reason for creating order is then you build trust among the population and then people in the towns can tell you where the bad guys are.  But the advantage in the insurgency is it doesn’t take much to sew disorder, and so for example, when these guys can brazenly kill Hamad Karzai’s brother, when they can kill another presidential palace associate of Karzai, this leaves the impression with ordinary people that my God, if the government can’t protect those people who can they protect me?  And therefore, I’m going to think twice when some Taliban guy comes to me and says don’t cooperate with the Americans; otherwise we’re going to chop your head off.  That’s the real difficulty in fighting this kind of war is that it’s so easy for the insurgents to gain an advantage like that.

Mullins: So when General Allen leaves Afghanistan, what will that Afghanistan resemble most?

Kaplan: Well, one thing that President Obama made very clear is that even with the troops being draw down, the special forces are going to stay exactly the same — you know, the forces doing the nighttime raids.  The unmanned aircraft and manned aircraft dropping bombs, very precise bombs, on Taliban targets, that’s going to remain the same. So basically we’re going to be fighting a stalemate for quite a while.  We’re going to be trying to fight a war of attrition against the Taliban hoping that at some point enough of the senior leaders will be killed, incapacitated, captured, so that the pressure will be on for somebody to make a deal.

Mullins: Fred Kaplan of slate.com.  He’s written an article called Hearts, Minds, and Murders about the situation in Afghanistan; you can find the link on our website, theworld.org.  Fred Kaplan is also senior fellow at the New American Foundation.  Very nice to talk to you.

Kaplan: Thank you.

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