J. Malcolm Garcia: Afghanistan Today, Where the Taliban is “The Opposition”

With the war in Afghanistan occupying the news, Congress, and President Obama, we offer this dispatch from J. Malcolm Garcia, author of The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul. Garcia has worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and a regular contributor to the Virginia Quarterly Review. His travel essays have appeared in Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Non-Required Reading.

In August, I returned to Afghanistan for the seventh time since Sept. 11, 2001, to cover the presidential election in which 41 candidates were vying for the top post. When I arrived it was a lovely 100 plus degrees in Kabul, and the traffic was worse than ever. This is what happens when a city built to house 1.5 million people takes on 3 million. Unless it was absolutely necessary to take an automobile, I walked with my translator everywhere I went. It could take up to three hours to drive what was at most a 30 minute trip just two years ago.

I could not go alone anywhere outside Kabul. Wardak, Logar and Ghazni provinces, minutes to a few hours outside the city, are now under Taliban control. So all the traffic and reconstruction activity in Kabul was weird; sort of an illusion of security and progress that in reality doesn't exist at all.