Newshounding the World

So Election Day passed in the usual flood of contradictory assessments. What else do you expect in a country as complicated and dangerous as Afghanistan?

But I’m not about to discuss whether the elections were a success or failure here. We’ll leave that for another time.

I do however want to talk about a bout of post-election blues. Serious post-election blues.

In the course of covering Afghanistan for many, many years, I’ve made some extremely dear friends – so dear, I consider them my extended Afghan “family”.

So when I get an alarming message from an Afghan “family” member – and from one as imperturbable as Manizha Naderi – it’s disturbing to say the least.

In the interest of full disclosure: Manizha is an old friend from New York days, before she moved to Kabul as executive director of WAW (Women for Afghan Women), an organization that runs women’s shelters in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Kunduz – among a host of other things.

She came, she made the appropriate noises about partnerships, she even praised the local mangoes, which was well received by the local press. The independent Geo TV happily reported that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had “bought and savored” Pakistani mangoes during her recent visit and proclaimed them “delicious”.
 

What does it take for a US Secretary of State to be favorably covered by the alarmingly anti-American Pakistani media? It’s money, not mangoes. And Clinton came in offering billions of it.
 

Under the Kerry Lugar Bill, named after US Senators John Kerry (Democrat) and Richard Lugar (Republican), which was passed by Congress last year, Washington has committed to $7.5 billion economic and development aid to Pakistan over the next five years.
 

Okay, I’ve read the text – or should we say, I’ve squirmed through the offending Rolling Stone article on Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
 

As a resident of Paris, I’m amused to learn that the City of Lights is, to quote a McChrystal adviser, “the ‘most anti-McChrystal city you can imagine.’”
 

For the record, I’m not taking offense. I guess if you’re the top US commander in Afghanistan, soldering through the dust of Helmand and you’d just like a Bud Light Lime, candles and Bordeaux on the table might seem a bit ooh-la-la-la.
 

But I’m being deliberately flippant. There are some serious issues at stake and I’m wondering what the good general is thinking as he makes his way to that White House meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan today.
 

The meeting, by the way, is closed to the press. So we can only guess what will happen behind closed doors.