Lessons learned long ago and forgotten today: Afghanistan, the quagmire
In model Afghan city, kidnappings surge
By Kevin Sieff, WashPost, Wednesday, April 24, 3:12 PM
HERAT, Afghanistan — Nine-year-old Ali Sena Nowruzee’s disappearance was disturbingly predictable, even in a city largely untouched by the Taliban and often held up as an example of what a peaceful Afghanistan might look like.
As in dozens of other kidnappings targeting Herat’s burgeoning middle class, residents assumed that he would be released once his family delivered tens of thousands of dollars in ransom. Instead, the rosy-cheeked third-grader became famous here after the discovery of his body, hastily buried on the city’s outskirts.
In death, he has become a poster child for an unlikely crisis in an unlikely place.
In this modern city far from the battlefields, the growing epidemic of abductions has raised a troubling question about Afghanistan’s future: What if eradicating the insurgency only creates space for a new generation of criminal networks?
(More here.)
HERAT, Afghanistan — Nine-year-old Ali Sena Nowruzee’s disappearance was disturbingly predictable, even in a city largely untouched by the Taliban and often held up as an example of what a peaceful Afghanistan might look like.
As in dozens of other kidnappings targeting Herat’s burgeoning middle class, residents assumed that he would be released once his family delivered tens of thousands of dollars in ransom. Instead, the rosy-cheeked third-grader became famous here after the discovery of his body, hastily buried on the city’s outskirts.
In death, he has become a poster child for an unlikely crisis in an unlikely place.
In this modern city far from the battlefields, the growing epidemic of abductions has raised a troubling question about Afghanistan’s future: What if eradicating the insurgency only creates space for a new generation of criminal networks?
(More here.)
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Afghanistan: the graveyard of empires.
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