"The world was new each day for God so made it daily. Yet it contained within it all the evils as before, no more, no less." —Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing.
MAZAR-E-SHARIF — Southwest of the airport, where the Northern Plains slope up into the dramatic massif of the Hindu Kush, a clay road meanders through some farmland until it meets a dried-out freshet. Park here and turn off the engine. Step outside and sit among the earthy tang of the grazing goats. Turn your back on the mountains, and watch gusts of wind drive herds of green wheat horses across the emerald valley; the coffee-colored billow of dust undulate above the low sprawl of Mazar-e-Sharif; and, beyond it, the dun, barely irrigated desert shimmer with diffraction.
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If you sit here long enough, you will hear a low rumble at the airport: a B-52 Stratofortress bomber taking wing. It can carry 18 2,000-pound "smart" bombs, 51 500-pound bombs, 29,250 cluster bomblets, 12 nuclear cruise missiles. It could pulverize the Hindu Kush into beach sand.
A B-52 cruises at almost 50,000 feet. You can't build a clinic or a well from that high up.
In 2001, I watched this plane's sisters drive the Taliban out of power. I watched the children of my friend, Mahbuhbullah, dance atop the mud-brick fence of his farm and sing, "Airplane, airplane!"
Northern Afghanistan was brimming with hope then.
Almost nine years later, I traveled across the region to visit Mahbuhbullah and his children. The two-day road trip from Mazar-e-Sharif took me in and out of Taliban territory a dozen times. This time around, there were no checkpoints to mark my entries and exits, no friendly gunmen to direct my route. The Afghan government may control a town by day, and the Taliban, by night. There is no front line.
There is also no electricity, no clean water, no health care, no education for most Afghans. The land seems suspended in time. I notice two big changes. One: Islamist insurgents are gaining new ground in the north -- a region largely hostile to the Taliban the first time I came here -- almost daily. Towns that never saw Taliban rule before the war are now little fiefdoms of the militia. Taliban strongholds pincer my friend's village.
Two: the proliferation of cell-phone towers. In 2001, there were no cell phones.
Afghans have little hope for the future. But they have good cell-phone reception almost everywhere.
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