Afghan Lessons: Culture, Diplomacy, and Counterinsurgency

What There Was, What There Should Have Been

58 fourteen What There Was, What There Should Have Been Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak was always very professional. Not only was he always willing to meet whenever I asked (his ministry was in a district near the president’s palace, just five minutes from my office), but I also had the pleasure of receiving frequent invitations to his home for lunch. Wardak’s cook prepared dishes that couldn’t be had in any other place. Afghan cuisine isn’t as sophisticated as that of Iran, nor is it as varied as that of India, but most people enjoy it because the dishes are simple, relying on quality ingredients like pulses, vegetables, spices, and fruit. Mrs. Wardak explained the problem to me one evening as she illustrated the various dishes on the menu. She said that not even culinary traditions had survived the ravages of the last thirty years. Certain types of rice, certain ways of preparing stew, certain vegetables cooked in a specific way had simply disappeared from the Afghan kitchen because no one knew how to cook them now. According to Mrs. Wardak, the recipes had been killed in action, like the Afghans who had invented them and handed them down over time, victims of a war that had spared nothing, even wiping out skills, and the most ancient had been the first to go. In Afghanistan there were no longer carpenters who could produce inlay, blacksmiths who could forge, makers of bird cages, dog breeders, hunters, furriers, butchers who could slaughter, weavers who knew how to use looms, potters, ceramists, goldsmiths, and silversmiths. And in the kitchens there were no cooks who knew how to prepare traditional recipes . At first, I took it to be the ramblings of a society lady, maybe even a bit of a snob. But I was wrong and she was right, and the proof came from two of the most renowned restaurants in the Afghan capital—the 14-2423-0 ch14.indd 58 6/3/13 1:52 PM What There Was, What There Should Have Been 59 Sufi and the Rumi—where diners were always offered the same four dishes and one meal was enough to sample everything on the menu. Then I asked Hamid and Jawid, the two houseboys who cooked for me. Like others I’d asked, they too waxed lyrical about the succulent dishes they’d eaten as children, but over the years these aromas had become but a distant dream. minister wardak was a general, and when he wasn’t wearing one of his elegant pinstripes, he could be seen in uniform, but however he was dressed, and whatever the occasion, he always spoke in the same direct way. He had ambitious ideas for the Afghan army and they weren’t always on the same page as those of the Atlantic Alliance. He would have liked aircraft, helicopters, and tanks; he wanted to make Afghanistan a country that would be able to compete militarily with its neighbors, and he wasn’t satisfied with means and equipment suited for low-intensity domestic conflict . I kept telling him the same things he heard every time from Brussels, where the problem wasn’t viewed only in military terms. Then I’d add that, if anything, there were already far too many weapons in circulation, not too few. Wardak wasn’t a man to give up easily, however, and indeed he always repeated his opinions. So, on certain evenings, he might get started talking about the war against the Soviets, how he’d conducted various operations, and always he came to the conclusion that two decades earlier he’d had a better military force at his command than the one he had now. Sometimes, Wardak’s frustration with the scant resources of the Afghan army was justified and had nothing to do with his delusions of grandeur. He was right, for instance, when he said that not all the coalition nations cooperated in training the Afghan army with the means and the type of personnel that were needed. He was referring mainly to the international instructors and mentors, of whom there were far too few. These figures are highly specialized personnel, and the countries that send them think twice before sending them on overseas missions because they play valuable roles back home. The best come from special units like the Italian carabinieri, whose training center near Herat was seen as an example for all others to follow. The instructors are used...