Eggs Laid by Tigers

Barge Natal is a village of some 500 folks, in what the Washington Post calls a "forbidding region" of Afghanistan. Don't know why the Post called Nuristan "forbidding".

Nuristan is a province in the extreme northwest of Afghanistan, just opposite Chitral, in the Hindu Kush Mountains. Some Nuristani cross the mountain to live in Chitral Town, where they are successful merchants; others smuggle opium and arms across the border; but most remain at home, doing what their ancestors have done since time immemorial.

President Karzai specifically asked that the U.S. send 100 Marines to Barge Natal because the village had been overrun by Taliban. Our commandeers reluctantly agreed to send in troops.

The Talib come from Chitral as refugees fleeing from Pakistan's successful routing of the Taliban in Swat. Small bands of 6 or 7 Talib would find their way to Chitral, where they were hunted, I gather, for sport. Presumably it is some of those who "overran" Barge Natal.

If the Nuristani can cary out successful guerilla activity against the Russian Army for 10 years, they can surely defend a village of 500 folks.

Barge Natal is hard for us to supply

and hard for us to defend, and has no strategic importance.

So why was Karzai insistent on sending troops to protect a remote village of 500?

Well, Nuristan has some 300,000 people, they vote, and it is an easy assumption that they vote in a bloc. Is that an ample motive? I think so. We were used to bolster Karzai's margin.

Here are Nuristani lining up to vote in Barge Natal. Guess who they voted for. [They would love our 2nd Amendment.]

Barge Natal, and 93% of the other people who live in the province of Nuristan, are Nuristani, a people remarkable for their cohesion and ferocity. Many are fair, as this boy illustrates,

and the folks in Nuristan are thought to be descended from Alexander the Great's troops. Many folks in the Hindu Kush mountains are fair and make a similar claim. They like the idea. Alexander made quit a splash as he traveled through Central Asia.

The province is beautiful.

This, as nearly as I can make out, is the largest city in Nuristan. They don't seem to care much for automobiles and electric poles are not in evidence.

Our troops know how to make friends with children. This pic might have been taken in Germany right after WWII, except the devastation was greater. Malcolm, a housemate, says that giving children candy was common when he was recently in al Anbar, except that you had to watch out for kids wearing hand grenades, intent on suicide. Don't think we had that problem in Germany.

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Can Mcchrystal be trusteed? The papers carry stories ofd the misreporting of Pat Tillman's death. The military reported his death as heroic standing up to enemy fire to save his fellow soldiers. Bushco used the story as a propaganda event, to bolster hit's chances of winning an election. In fact, Tillman was killed by friendly fire, as his family discovered. McChrystal knew the true story and went along with the lie, to bolster Bushco's election chances. Can he be trusted to tell Obama the truth? I'm worried.