Compulsory reading

If you read one thing this week read Terry Glavin in the National Post.

It is a story of hope:

But there is also the new, real-world Kabul, out in the streets, where the bazaars are bursting with life and commerce, and raucous laughter erupts from back alleys where men sit around TV sets watching Afghan talk shows. This is the Kabul the Taliban hates so bitterly. Every morning, the streets are filled with schoolchildren. Even in the dingiest parts of this bomb-blasted metropolis, among the rickety vendors' stalls that sell cow heads and sheep guts, you can't turn a corner without coming upon another newly opened computer school, or a long line of unveiled women waiting for their literacy classes to open for the day.

And of the bitter threat of betrayal:

Among Kabul's human rights activists, student leaders and women's rights groups, the big fear isn't the spectre of Taliban militias rolling back into Kabul. The much greater threat comes from places like Washington, Tehran and Islamabad. It's the clamour for a backroom deal with the Taliban (with President Hamid Karzai's signature on it for the sake of appearances). The stink of a looming betrayal is everywhere, and Kabulis, betrayed so many times before, can smell it a mile away.

Hari, Steele and all the rest of that cosy coterie can sound so reasonable, so civilised, so sensibly pragmatic when they they use words like 'negotiation' and 'peace'. It is such an eloquent way to describe putting the lives of Afghans into the hands of grotesque murderers. Read Terry instead, the truth is much less comfortable.