Dispatches - Afghanistan

[CHIMO]

American Sarah Chayes's book is titled The Punishment of Virtue - Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.

The book grew out of her experience as a former journalist, assigned to Afghanistan after September 11.

Dressing as an Afghan man, learning the language, she gained access to its people. Her enterprise won her unparalleled access to the President, his friends and his enemies. And she cautions Afghans don't view Canadian forces as the liberators we might think they are.

Her book opens with the suspicious death of friend Zabit Akrem, another casualty who might have helped pull Afghanistan back from the "warlordism" that prevails again.

http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/media/060907_chayes.ram
http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/thisseason/september.html

Before that, warlords, gun-rulers and Canada's role in Afghanistan. A writer who's lived there since the fall of the Taliban fears Canadian forces are in for an endless fight.

http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/

[tuvor]

1. "In for an endless fight" is right.

With no defined goal, and therefore no way to measure progress, you can't know when we're "finished".

But don't worry, we'll stay there, uh...until the job is done.

[daleo]

2. We will stay until every young woman in Afghanistan has a PhD

According to the latest propaganda, anyway.

[MrPrax]

3. Dispatches is a good program...

Rick Macinnes Ray is one of their best...it really is too bad the show is at a strange (and forgetful) time slot...7:30 on Thursdays now, after 'As It Happens' (which is still pretty good even though Mary Lou Findlay has left)...

Shameless plug...

oh I heard her interview...highly recommend that whole program except Connie Watson's junk about 9/11