5.14.2005

Afghanistan in the Wake of Bush Invasion

From the wire:

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN; AND WASHINGTON - The case of an Afghan village police chief, named Inayatullah, is a small example of a much larger problem.

Is Commander Inayatullah a courageous law-and-order crusader responsible for smashing the drug mafia in his hamlet? Or, is he an opium smuggler? Or, as his bosses say, is he both?

It's a question that hangs over more and more public officials here. The post-Taliban boom in opium production means that drug money now permeates every stratum of Afghanistan's society - from the farmers cultivating poppies in the east to those in the highest levels of the central government of Kabul, according to senior Afghan and European officials working here.