Every foreign force that comes crashing in thinks it's intervening in a country, but it's actually taking sides in an ongoing contest among Afghans about what this country is.

Here are two enormous worlds side by side; what's remarkable is how little notice they have taken of each other. If the Western and Islamic worlds were two individual human beings, we might see symptoms of repression here. We might ask, What happened between these two? Were they lovers once? Is there some history of abuse?