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Afghan Strongman Calls For Rearming Against Taliban
Women in Converse sneakers jog untrammeled — if still in full, flowing chadors — in this western Afghan city’s biggest park, enjoying freedoms rarely witnessed in the rest of Afghanistan.
Rich businessmen, refugees for a few days of “picnic” from more violent Kandahar, pull on apple-scented shisha pipes like lotus eaters in the pagodas of the local pleasure garden. Unwary for once of kidnappers or suicide bombers, they punctuate the night with hoots of laughter.
Herat, an ancient trading city of minarets and wide avenues in the brown borderlands of western Afghanistan, has probably advanced further than any other in this country toward modernity over the past 10 years. There is a quiet and firm belief here that if any place can ride out the coming economic and security turbulence as international forces and money depart, it will be this city.
Yet there are still whispers of encroaching violence, tremors of economic downturn, calls by a local strongman to rearm against the Taliban, conservative opposition to modernization — and doubt. readmorehreere
