People In Afghanistan Get High... Are We Just Figuring That Out For The First Time? You Could Have Asked A Hippie... Or A Soldier

I wonder what this stuff is for. Soup?

I was in Afghanistan twice-- once in the late '60s and then a couple years later in the early '70s. I loved it both times. It seemed so free (though not necessarily in the sense that the Heritage Foundation means free). It sure wasn't part of the modern world. I spent one winter in a... well, not a village; there were only two compounds... and no one had ever heard of the United States or experienced electricity. My first day in Afghanistan, though, was in a far more sophisticated setting-- Herat, not from the local fount of civilization, Persia, recently called Iran. I rolled into town with my brand new shiny red VW van and every dignitary in town understood that I was there to buy hash. (I wasn't-- I was on my way to India... although I was easily talked into it.) The hash is really strong, strong like acid and heroin are strong. The best Mazar stuff never gets exported. They just smoke it up in Afghanistan. I never met an Af who wasn't a stoner. Never. Well, I once met an Af in DC who was driving a taxi and he wasn't a stoner as far as I know. I never spent a single night in a hotel on either trip. I was down in the hood with the peeps. And the peeps were either smoking or chillin' but that is the stonedest society I was ever in.

My best friend in Kabul was the postmaster and his father was a governor and a cousin of the king's. He was stoned. The cops who arrested me and threw me in jail... they were stoned. The soldiers who made believe they were going to kill me and my friends... they were goofing... and stoned. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker... everyone. So, you can imagine that I wasn't exactly surprised when ex-UN envoy Peter Galbraith announced this week that Karzai's a stoner. Like someone isn't? You think I'm joking, right? Or nuts. Watch this short clip of some British troops working with the stoned out Afghan army.



Galbraith attributes Karzai being "emotional" and "off balance" to him being on "drugs." I bet Galbraith was a real odd man out over in Kabul. Drugs! Ooooooooooo... Maybe Karzai is off balance and emotional because his country's been fighting a war for decades and because American planes keep shooting up innocent civilians and their relatives all blame him and he-- unlike Galbraith apparently-- knows that the Pashtun code, Pashtunwali, means they have to kill him. Have to-- no choice in the matter. I'll wager the only time Karzai isn't emotional and off balance is when he's zonked. Watch these three clueless squares:

Joining the Taliban isn't really an option for Karzai. "The Americans are furious, his own supporters are incredulous and opposition politicians think that he is mad."

In three successive outbursts this month, President Karzai of Afghanistan has blamed foreigners for last year’s election fraud, accused Western troops of meddling in his country’s internal affairs and even threatened to join the Taleban.

Yesterday the Afghan leader suffered two key blows as the insurgents ridiculed his offer and, more seriously, the White House seemed ready to show a diplomatic cold shoulder.

Speaking of Mr Karzai’s planned visit to Washington on May 12, Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s official spokesman, said that the visit was still on, but added: “We certainly would evaluate whatever... further remarks President Karzai makes, as to whether it is constructive to have that meeting.”

Scoffing at the idea that the Afghan leader might join the insurgents, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taleban spokesman, told The Times yesterday: “It’s just a game he is playing. He is trying to show people he is not under the control of the Americans but it’s completely false.

“If he really wants to join the Taleban, first he should face justice. He should face justice for bringing foreign troops to Afghanistan. He should face justice for all the crime which has happened during his rule in Afghanistan, and for the corruption and for what is going on now. Then we’ll decide whether we will join with him or not.”

It was at a closed meeting of Afghan parliamentarians in Kandahar on Saturday that the increasingly eccentric President-- who is still smarting from a failed attempt to change election law-- threatened to join the Taleban. He also said that the Taleban could be seen as a legitimate resistance movement. “If I come under foreign pressure, I might join the Taleban,” he told MPs.

Galbraith may come off as a blithering fool from a cross-cultural context but he gets the American politics of this right. He explains that the untenable domestic situation in Afghanistan dooms Obama's absurd and ill-informed strategy. At least Obama has been high; he should have been able to... no, no... forget it. It's hopeless. Anyway, Galbraith points out that "counterinsurgency strategies depend on having a reliable, local partner." Like that was ever going to happen! "We need," he went on, "an Afghan government who can come into an area after our troops have kicked the Taliban out, who can provide honest administration and win the loyalty of the population." He could be asking that everyone gets a pony. [Obama wants a pony too.] Or he could be describing Norway, which is where he was doing the interview from. But he's surely not describing anything that has to do with thousands of years of Pashtun tribal history. The idea that Karzai is "in office by fraud" (meaning not fairly elected by some Western procedure as foreign to Afs as predator drones killing their women and children) is the reason the counterinsurgency won't work is beyond idiotic. The counterinsurgency won't work for the same reason no people like being occupied by a foreign army. How empathetic does one have to be to figure that one out?