Three People I Would Interview About Afghanistan

 

 

"Tribes in this part of the world, Mr. Friedman, have a saying: Me and my brother against my cousin. Me and my brother and my cousin against the outsider.

Americans were the outsider, and the Taliban could always find plenty of passive and active cousins for its project of getting you out. But now they and their brothers will have to deal with all their cousins inside — from those 14 different ethnicities — and that will be a different story. The Taliban have no idea how to govern a modern country. Vietnam’s nationalist leader, Ho Chi Minh, spent his exile in Paris. These Taliban guys studied, at best, in madrasas in Pakistan, where they don’t even teach science."

 READ COLUMN BY THOMAS FRIEDMAN