The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [126]
“Fucking asshole, fucking asshole,” the woman shouted, slurring her words. “I am one step away from Obama. Do you know who you’re dealing with?”
The entire restaurant did. A restaurant worker rushed toward her, followed by her husband, who tapped over with his cane.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” she shouted as they hustled her out the door. “You have no idea.”
The song “Highway to Hell” came on. It seemed apt. Why did the West keep getting Afghanistan wrong? Situations like this were as good a reason as any. Most foreigners had created a world where it was possible to rarely deal with the natives, where acceptable behavior included being staggeringly drunk by 8:45 PM on a Tuesday in an Islamic country that banned alcohol, frowned on pork, and certainly would never tolerate a drink named after sex.
Some foreigners wanted to make Afghanistan a better place, viewed Afghanistan as a home rather than a party, and even genuinely liked Afghans. But they were in the minority, and many had left, driven out by the corruption and the inability to accomplish anything. For most, Afghanistan was Kabul High, a way to get your war on, an adrenaline rush, a résumé line, a money factory. It was a place to escape, to run away from marriages and mistakes, a place to forget your age, your responsibilities, your past, a country in which to reinvent yourself. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but the motives of most people were not likely to help a fragile and corrupt country stuck somewhere between the seventh century and Vegas.
I was hardly better than the rest. A life led constantly inside, whether in a house or a car or a burqa, whether by a foreigner or an Afghan, sparked a constant desire for release. But at least the taxpayers weren’t paying my salary.
Many diplomats rarely poked their heads outside embassy walls. Many consultants traded places every six months and then promptly repeated all the mistakes of their predecessors. How out of touch were they? Employees of the Department for International Development (DFID), the British equivalent of USAID, decided it would be a good idea to throw a going-away party just before the election, with the dress code specified as “INVADERS—Alexander the Great, Hippies, Brits, Mughals, Russians, and general gratuitous fancy dress. Gorillas welcome.” It was unclear if the misspelling of “guerrillas” was intentional. Pictures of the festivities were posted on Facebook, showing one partygoer with her left breast almost hanging out of her white Grecian dress, three pirates, two aliens drinking beer, two men in turbans, a Mughal, a cowboy, a jihadi. Any member of the Afghanistan Network on Facebook—and plenty of Afghans belonged—could see the photos. Well, at least it wasn’t the Tarts and Talibs theme party, thrown the year before. Graveyard of Empires, indeed.
Meanwhile the invaders continued their invasion. By August, the month of the presidential election, a record 101,000 international troops had arrived in Afghanistan, including a record 62,000 Americans, each of whom cost up to $1 million a year. In July, not coincidentally, a record number of international troops had been killed, largely by roadside bombs, the weapon of choice of weaker insurgents determined to wait out their enemies. Military spending in Afghanistan was set to exceed Iraq for the first time. The United States was also now spending $200 million a month on civilian governance and development programs—double that under Bush, an amount equal to the nonmilitary spending in Iraq during its heyday. Too bad it was having such a hard time attracting USAID employees to fill those jobs—one USAID official