The Foreign Service Journal, September 2021

38 SEPTEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL at the compound of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek commander who had led the key forces that collapsed the Taliban in 2001. Dostum retained a brutal but effective control in parts of the north but was convincing in his assertion that the “new AK” (or Kalashnikov) for the Afghan family was the voting card, promising that going forward he would put his efforts into developing an effective electoral strategy, not marshalling fighters. I mused in a cable about a “post-warlord” society. But, like the Taliban and other ethnic leaders, Dostum had a very difficult time giving up the raw expression of power he had been accus- tomed to and continued to hold an absolute lock on the Uzbek voting bloc. The youth would have to wait until his generation faded from the scene. The Kabul Museum and Noh Gumbad During my first tour, Kanishka and I visited the Kabul Museum, which had suffered the depredations of the Taliban against anything that smacked of religious pluralism or cel- ebrated the country’s multiethnic heritage. The curator had hero- ically tried to preserve as many of the objects as possible, with boxes full of the crushed pieces of statues and a showcase full of the shredded canvas of paintings. He had built a false wall to hide the films from Afghanistan’s once-active movie industry. A decade later, one of our quiet projects in the north was the restoration of the Noh Gumbad Mosque, Afghanistan’s oldest religious building, dating to the 9th century CE. It was a beauti- ful structure, laced with wonderful stonework and a graceful architecture, but what remained was in danger of collapse and it was deteriorating quickly. Our funding, along with other donations, allowed the Aga Khan Foundation to save the mosque and recover this piece of Afghanistan’s heritage. The contrast between these two experiences hit hard on a soul- crushing day in April 2013, when we received word that Foreign Service Officer Anne Smedinghoff (my former intern) had been killed in Zabul province along with six others while traveling to a school for a book donation. By then cynicism had set in, many expressing doubt that the Afghanistan mission could have ever been worth the life of a young diplomat or soldier. Even our measure of time was affected by pessimism; a decade had somehow become “forever.” But to many of us on the ground, it was the continuation of the struggle that had been going on for decades, a struggle, as I wrote home at the time, “between two competing models for civilization—one violent, ignorant, depraved; the other enlightened, hopeful, just. Where one kills educators and those who support them, there one will also kill the future; where one destroys millennia-old cultural monuments, there one will also destroy cities.” By the time I left, five of our PRTs were closed and “transition” was the order of the day. Policymakers had never been honest about the length of time required for political consolidation in a broken state, so the mission—even at a time when casualties were extremely low—was to withdraw, a long process that has now reached its natural conclusion. I wrote in a 2013 cable of the ambivalence many of us felt: “It is debatable whether Afghanistan will ever be a fully func- tional, inclusive country; it is simply hard work to pull a medieval country into the modern age. But it is nearly guaranteed to fail without our continued focus and resources.” The Afghan mission was always cursed with a blinding self-doubt and persistent impatience. As the late Ambassador Lawrence Pezullo told The New York Times in 1981: “We’re a developed nation that is accustomed to quick answers because we produce quick answers in almost every other area. But when you throw yourselves into a revolution, there are no quick answers.” Several thousand diplomats have now served in Afghanistan. For most, the experience will turn bittersweet as it is increasingly difficult to see the future portending anything other than yet another civil war. Few could have done more than they did. But with or without us, the struggle between Afghanistan’s compet- ing visions will go on, and the Afghan people, tenacious to a fault, will continue to fight for the future they believe in. As in so many other parts of the world, on a tightly globalized planet there is no guarantee that we won’t once again be drawn in. If you still have your Dari-language CDs, you might want to hold on to them. n GETTY IMAGES/NATALIEBEHRING The 2002 Loya Jirga brought together 1,700 Afghans from all parts of the country for 10 days of deliberation to choose a new government. Inset: Hamid Karzai, at right, was chosen president. U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATE