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BILL HARRISON
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Member Since: 4/2007Last Seen: 11/06/2009
Member Since: 4/2007Last Seen: 11/06/2009
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PrintThe Man Who Would Be President - Obama Goes To Afghanistan
News Type: Opinion — Mon Jul 21, 2008 7:42 AM EDT
Tribal map of the region.
"The men who would be kings of the FATA", Michael Caine as "Peachey" Carnehan and Sean Connery as Danny Dravot in John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King
Pakistani Frontier Corps paramilitary soldier
Photo: daylife.com
Pashtun tribal soldiers of the "Khyber Rifles"
Photo: Wikipedia
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"We have been all over India and we have decided that India isn't big enough for such as us."
"We are not little men, and there is nothing that we are afraid of except Drink, and we have signed a Contrack on that. Therefore, we are going away to be Kings."
British Indian Army Sergeants Danny Dravot (Sean Connery) and "Peachey" Carnehan (Michael Caine) to Rudyard Kipling announcing that they are off to Kafiristan in John Huston's adaptation of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King.
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there.
Barack Obama in an op-ed appearing in the New York Times on July 14, 2008
______________________________________________________________________________________
Leaving aside the fact that Barack Obama is not proposing any sort of "new strategy" for Afghanistan, what are the challenges facing the United States, Afghanistan and our NATO partners in stabilizing Afghanistan against a Taliban insurgency allied with al Qaeda that emanates across the border with Pakistan? Perhaps a brief history lesson is in order here.
The provinces of eastern and southern Afghanistan where most of the trouble is and the sanctuaries for the militants across the border in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are the realm of the Pashtuns, fiercely independent tribesmen whose resistance to central authority goes back to the time of classical antiquity and Alexander the Great's inability to bring the area under his control. But while the Pashtuns are uniformly hostile to attempts to control them from afar they are also hospitable to outsiders who come as travelers as is codified in the Pashtunwali, or "Way of the Pashtuns", their unwritten tribal code. This code governs all forms of Pashtun societal intercourse from the local ruling councils (jirgas) to the conception of honor (nang) and most importantly for our purposes here nanawatey or "truce/asylum".
We are all now familiar (or should be so) with Osam bin Laden's "last stand" at Tora Bora in 2001 and his subsequent flight with his band of Uzbek, Chechen and Arab fighters into the FATA back in December of 2001. Not long thereafter a report surfaced in the Washington Post (article no longer available on the web) from an American filmmaker traveling in the region that he encountered foreign militants living openly in the tribal regions as "honored guests". This would be fully in keeping with the Pashtunwali's emphasis on giving succor to outsiders provided that they observe tribal customs. Most Americans would be astounded to learn this but until the Soviet war it was quite possible to travel in this region (with connected local escorts, of course) as a Westerner without undue fear as did a friend of mine who was studying Hindi and the local languages and history of the region while we were both graduate students at the University of Virginia in the early 1980s and had traveled there as an undergraduate in the mid 1970s.
In reality the border separating Afghanistan from the FATA is more of an arbitrary division. The Durand Line separating the two has never been accepted in Afghanistan and is merely a British contrivance left over from the days of the "Great Game" in southwest Asia of the mid-nineteeth century. These are Pashtun lands on both sides of this line of demarcation and the Pakistani government and army in Islamabad composed of Punjabis has over the years from time to time encouraged militancy in the area as a form of exerting influence over its neighbor Afghanistan. The Taliban (Pashto for students) originiated in the refugee camps of the FATA during the Soviet-Afghan war and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may or may not be (probably the latter) purged of Taliban-al Qaeda sympathizers with most of this faction allied with the former head of the ISI -- Gen. Hamid Gul whose views in this regard should be viewed with alarm.
Under the Musharraf government, Pakistan would make periodic forays into the FATA in brief but bloody engagements with local militants. But the Pakistani army is composed of primarily Punjabi officers and the paramilitary Frontier Corps (which goes back to the famed Khyber Rifles of the British raj) composed of local Pashtuns is poorly equipped and led. Over the past seven years these engagements have brought little in the way of stability to the region or succeeded in neutralizing the troublemakers but they have alienated many of the local tribles. Periodic truces with the militants have accomplished little more. And economic aid projects in the area, of equal importance to security operations, have not really gone forward and planned stepped up US aid to Pakistan in this regard remain mired over questions of possible corruption in Islamabad.
Now no one questions the need for additional ISAF forces in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made repeated calls for more soldiers from our NATO allies but aside from a battalion of French special forces and the continuing commitment of Danish, Dutch, Canadian and UK soldiers to the spear's tip in the south and east the rest of NATO continues to sit on its collective hands. Things have gotten so bad in this respect that even former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer has lambasted his fellow Germans and the Merkel government for refusing to allow Bundeswehr soldiers to serve in the fighting area. Nor are things much better on the economic aid front which is just as important as the military effort. At a recent donors conference in Paris in June, while the United States pledged 1/5th of the total $50 billion pledged, the EU contingent's pledge amounted to a niggardly $770 million.
Notwithstanding the recent spectacular attack that claimed the lives of nine US soldiers, there have been successes in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Aid projects and tribal security have been improved and the militants seldom launch the type of attack mentioned above. Building on the success of similar tactics employed in Iraq, US forces have begun deploying Human Terrain Teams to the area which employ an array of both 'soft" and "hard" power in classic counterinsurgency tactics and strategy.
So while it is clear that what Barack Obama is talking about isn't any sort of "new" strategy at all the central fact remains that until such time as the Pakistani government alters its approach in the FATA, and indeed its policies in this regard as described by Jim Hoagland yesterday in the Washington Post can best be called delusional, any such beefed up NATO presence across the border is likely to come to very little in solving this problem in the long run. In Vietnam, despite the presence of 500,000 US soldiers and Marines the war effort there even after the change in tactics to "clear and hold" under Gen. Creighton Abrams who replaced Gen. William Westmoreland as MACV CINC in '69 and the US incusion into Cambodia as long as North Vietnamese forces were able to use Cambodia and Laos as staging and supply areas there could be no good outcome. At present I am at wit's end as to offer a suggested plan to get Pakistan off its duff in the FATA or to address the massive problems associated with the growing of opium poppies in both Afghanistan and the FATA that finance much of the instability on both sides of the border and are the source of the world's heroin supply. If Barack Obama has a plan in this regard, I'm all ears but so far all I'm hearing is the typical lofty and pretty empty rhetoric that isn't even true as regards recent US actions in the area.
Author's Note: While the opinions expressed in this piece are mine and mine alone I wish to acknowledge the work of fellow Newsvine members and friends Shaheen Buneri (who reports from the region) and BlaiseP. Their knowledge of the region and its peoples has much to teach us all and I would strongly suggest that fellow Newsviners visit their columns often.
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{"commentId":2241671,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
As I type this Richard Holbrooke is babbling about Pakistan and how the Pakistanis hate Hamid Karzai. Well -- duh. For all the reasons I enumerate above, that is likely to continue and all the lofty talk in the world about more troops, resources, yada, yada, yada isn't going to change that.
{"commentId":2241671,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
- 8 votes
#1 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 7:46 AM EDT{"commentId":2243677,"authorDomain":"politicalcenter"}
Bill, I know you are aware of Obama's 2006 or so call for a potential invasion of Pakistan if necessary, with or without Pakistan's permission and the continuing statements favoring this over the past month or two. Are you saying that some or all of these are in unclaimed territories so that it would not actually be invading anyone's country, or that doing so would be something else?
{"commentId":2243677,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"politicalcenter"}
- 1 vote
{"commentId":2252868,"authorDomain":"neoconstant"}
Excellent tie-in to The Man Who Would be King, which is an excellent movie and Kipling story. I'm fully with you on this:
At present I am at wit's end as to offer a suggested plan to get Pakistan off its duff in the FATA or to address the massive problems associated with the growing of opium poppies in both Afghanistan and the FATA that finance much of the instability on both sides of the border and are the source of the world's heroin supply. If Barack Obama has a plan in this regard, I'm all ears but so far all I'm hearing is the typical lofty and pretty empty rhetoric that isn't even true as regards recent US actions in the area.
I am heartened by Shaheen Buneri's article about the Pashtun tribal leaders standing up to the Taliban. One wonders what incentives, or what set of circumstances, might lead to a more widespread rejection of the Taliban by the jirgas. There is much to be said for the Iraqi sunni leaders turning against the al Qaeda operatives in Iraq. Something similar is less likely to happen in Pakistan, as the threat posed by the Taliban to those people is not in any way similar to the chaos created by al Qaeda in Iraq. Still, at some point, one wonders if the tribal leaders will grow tired of the parasitic Taliban fighters.
The impotence of the Pakistani government is very frustrating. One incentive for the jirgas could possibly be the reality of troops entering their region seeking the Taliban. They may tire of a guest who brings with them the full fury of the international community and the American and Pakistani armed forces.
I disagree on one point. I think more troops will help in the basic security of Afghanistan. I believe other things need to accompany this--more economic development etc. More troops won't address the root of the problem, however they will address the symptoms. Sometimes that's a good place to start...
{"commentId":2252868,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"neoconstant"}
- 4 votes
{"commentId":2253216,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2253423,"authorDomain":"neoconstant"}
Exactly. I am trying to look at this situation in terms of incentives vs. detractors. Right now the tribes have very little incentive to assist in the ousting of the Taliban. It would be very bloody and expensive, and without US or Pakistani aid it would likely fail anyways.
The incentive of military and economic aid, with assurances of protection from the US and Pakistan would probably do the trick, but like you've said, Pakistan is unwilling to do anything in this regard.
So how do we approach Pakistan? Can we force their hand?
{"commentId":2253423,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"neoconstant"}
- 4 votes
{"commentId":2255987,"authorDomain":"neoconstant"}
Such a move might also coincide with a conference to settle the question of Kashmir which is also a sticking point between India and Pakistan and an area where there has also been any number of terrorist attacks associated with Islamic militants.
Years of war and a nuclear arms race, too. Fixing the Kashmir problem would be an enormous benefit. I don't, however, think the UN has what it takes to move on this. I like the idea of a Pashtunistan as you termed it, but the UN is so completely ineffectual at this point, my skepticism is overwhelming...
{"commentId":2255987,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"neoconstant"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":2256911,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2242120,"authorDomain":"keggerlord-1"}
As always, Bill, an amazing and well thought out effort! It's amazing how many people will choose a sound bite over understanding the problem in sum. I do believe that Senator Obama is sincere in his beliefs, but horrifyingly naiive in the complexity of solving problems like this one; it's not some Gordian knot that can be slashed at with good intentions without creating a larger scale problem. This is not the right time for these kind of politics. We need someone with more savvy and political capability, someone not afraid to engage in the kind of Machiavellian politics that are needed when we face the threats from abroad that we do today.
{"commentId":2242120,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"keggerlord-1"}
- 9 votes
#2 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 9:37 AM EDT{"commentId":2243745,"authorDomain":"politicalcenter"}
As one you have regularly called uninformed and perhaps worse, it is a relief to see that you are willing to consider staying. Despite your sometimes well-informed statements on a number of subjects, you also could include some more commentary on this one, as I point out in comment 1.1.
Many of us begin with a great reservoir of education and years of knowledge. The refusal or inability to provide regular and constant support for opinion, or worse face continual claims for support that is either obvious or worse has been repeated more than once before, makes this a free-for-all upon which some claim the ability to judge the writings of others.
Try out the view that one single view is rarely if ever right, that humanity is diverse, and that people can see the same accident as if an almost infinite amount of facts, many in direct contravention of the others, actually occurred.
We should laud those willing to write at all, much less write what they feel. Not feel some academic superiority because of education, writing style or ability, or other factors including time. And certainly not leave the fray because of some sense that your work either is not sufficiently appreciated or somehow degraded by the company you keep.
Of course, you could go to Huffington Post, The National Review, or any number of other publications and be subject to claimed "editorial" review. The problem is that you still end up with the same type of writing, more or less, when dealing with opinion.
{"commentId":2243745,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"politicalcenter"}
- 3 votes
{"commentId":2243956,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2242208,"authorDomain":"SuperUnspecial"}
There is one very successful method that would achieve the goal of routing out the Taliban. But no one would like it and it's pretty brutal. Village by village, murder civilians who give hospitality to the enemy. This is the Roman way, the Brits used it, in fact most successful conquering empires used it. But it doesn't work when the occupying empire is a Democracy, and it's pretty @!$%#ed up.
{"commentId":2242208,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"SuperUnspecial"}
- 3 votes
#3 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 9:53 AM EDT{"commentId":2242727,"authorDomain":"SuperUnspecial"}
Bill
That tactic worked for the British until Badshah Khan and the non-violent movement. The main difference between, this campaign and the Soviet one is that we wouldn't be trying to subdue the Pashtuns. We essentially wouldn't care. We would just be saying, if you harbor these people we'll kill you. Brutality aimed at citizens who harbor enemies ALWAYS works (except against a non-violent movement, but that's almost unthinkable in this instance since those harbored are not native). In a matter of months the population begins to see those they're harboring as the enemy, not those killing them and salting their crops (they get to say "hey I'm just following orders, sorry dude"). It's almost like Stokholm syndrome. That along with a little bit of sophistical diplomacy to convince the populace that their hospitality code can't apply to the Taliban the problem would be solved.
But that's just it. We wouldn't have the stomach for it. We didn't have the stomach for real Imperialist brutality in Vietnam...we did in the Philippines, in Haiti way back and against Natives here, but we don't anymore, we didn't even attempt it when we were occupying Japan. The populace no longer sees foreigners and brown people as less than human, so that type of imperialism is not possible. And we wouldn't want to do it anyways. But that is the time honored effective tactic.
What we need to do instead is view ourselves as something other than the world's policeman. The word doesn't like it, we don't like it and the people we're policing don't like it.
We should withdraw our armies to within our own borders and wait to be asked for help.
And our foreign policy should begin to revolve around providing jobs in impoverished lands for impoverished people. This should be based around teaching them how to help themselves not work in a sweat shop. If stability were our goal, this would be our policy.
I agree bill, 2 more brigades in Afghanistan is stupid as a policy. But I doubt that would actually happen, and if it did, they would probably just hang out on base. This seems to me to be a triangulated policy built for votes. It shows the pro military types on the fence that Obama isn't a pussy, it mimics this line that the Dems have been using for about half a decade about how we need to focus on Osama, and it shows the military and, more importantly, the contractors, that they'll still have some business under an Obama administration.
{"commentId":2242727,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"SuperUnspecial"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":2242740,"authorDomain":"lisaed"}
what Obama's proposing is only more of the same that isn't working.
Bill 3.1---great article---and I quite agree that Obama's policy for Afghanistan is simply more of the same disguised in pretty rhetoric as "change".......how do you think he'll do overseas? Upsides...downsides?
{"commentId":2242740,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"lisaed"}
- 5 votes
{"commentId":2242896,"authorDomain":"SVForbes"}
Interesting read, Bill.
One approach that might have merit is to call for a UN Trusteeship for a nascent Pashtunistan that would be carved out of Afghanistan and the FATA. The Afghans don't recognized the Durand Line anyway and the Pakistanis are hardly that attached to the FATA except as a matter of national pride. Might be worth a shot because right now what we're doing isn't working and what Obama's proposing is only more of the same that isn't working.
Good thinking, IMO.
{"commentId":2242896,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"SVForbes"}
- 5 votes
{"commentId":2243037,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2243609,"authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
lisa:
is simply more of the same [emphasis added]
You got that right. We went too light at the beginning, too light in the middle and now we need to go heavier to secure the objective we went after SEVEN FREAKING YEARS AGO.
That is a change of strategy.
{"commentId":2243609,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
- 6 votes
{"commentId":2243675,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2243915,"authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
Bill:
Now do you have anything relevant to add to the question of the problems in dealing with the FATA from either a historical or modern geopolitical standpoint
Why is irrelevant to point out that Bush's strategy has been literally worse than useless? That is, counter-productive at achieving the objectives stated in 2001?
{"commentId":2243915,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
- 6 votes
{"commentId":2243993,"authorDomain":"lisaed"}
Jack 3.6---why so grouchy today? Your boy is poised to get the greatest media thrust into office I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing.......you should be happy as a clam 'bout now.
{"commentId":2243993,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"lisaed"}
- 6 votes
{"commentId":2244149,"authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
lisa:
I guess pc's article put me in a bad mood. Plus the Red Sox got swept while your Yanks were sweeping the A's.
Funny, though. I'm annoyed as hell at the media coverage. What Maliki said toDer Speigel warranted wall-to-wall coverage. Plus his three-pointer yesterday didn't get enough coverage.
{"commentId":2244149,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
- 4 votes
{"commentId":2244167,"authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
Bill:
The Soviet strategic objective was about as far from ours as can possiby be imagined.
They wanted to conquer the unconquerred Afghans. We need to get one guy, maybe two if you count Al Zawhiri.
{"commentId":2244167,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
- 3 votes
{"commentId":2244516,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2244611,"authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
Bill:
It was almost certainly the "local help" that screwed us over.
And 50/50 might not be great odds, but it's better than the 0.000 we ended up with, isn't it?
If we try it again--and we should--then that Ranger Battalion sounds like a heckava lot better plan than trusting the locals, be they6 Pushtun or Pakistani Regulars.
{"commentId":2244611,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
- 3 votes
{"commentId":2245111,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2245202,"authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
Bill:
Shrug. Let's say you're right and it's more difficult than either I or Obama glibly assume.
So what? We either try it or we don't and it either works or it doesn't. Trusting the locals and/or coddling Mussaraf HAS DEMONSTRABLY FAILED. At least if we fail with a Ranger Battalion (or Obama's two brigades) it'll be us failing, not some unreliable so-called ally.
Damn, Bill, we might at least pick a trail if we stick enough boots on the ground. Maybe get lucky. Getting bin Laden and al Zawhiri is a strategic objective. It is an affornt to our sovereignty and an insult to the victims of 9/11 that they remain free seven years later.
{"commentId":2245202,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":2245419,"authorDomain":"lisaed"}
What Maliki said toDer Speigel warranted wall-to-wall coverage.
Jack 3.11---and so now what Maliki says matters? Why now? And thanks for the link re the 3 pointer....I hadn't seen it. I had to watch it without sound (at work).....imho Obama's youthful appearance makes him seem more like he should be standing in uniform among the men --not leading them as their commander in chief.
{"commentId":2245419,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"lisaed"}
- 6 votes
{"commentId":2245710,"authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
lisa:
Because (as I just mentioned to Chuck Todd on his new article, please go ask him a question so we get high-quality Qs at the top) it puts Maliki, Obama, the Iraqi parliament, the US Congress, the American electorate and the Iraqi people all on the same page.
THAT is how stalemates get broken. And that's why what he says matters.
{"commentId":2245710,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"jfxgillis"}
- 4 votes
{"commentId":2245734,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2245938,"authorDomain":"lisaed"}
Bill---I think it's hard to have discussion about Afghanistan without Iraq coming up in discussion but if that's the way you want it you got it.
{"commentId":2245938,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"lisaed"}
- 5 votes
{"commentId":2246135,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2243135,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
I don't know. Holbrooke was talking about a "regional" solution to the problem of the FATA this a.m. on Scarborough. But I'm not sure drawing in the Chinese and Indians to put pressure on the Paks will work. Bush has been shoveling money to Islamabad for seven years now and it hasn't bought us much. Maybe it's time to go in the reverse direction and put the economic squeeze on them in the form of sanctions if they don't come around.
Of course, the problem right now is Pakistan is a country without an effective government. Nawaz Sharif's PML-N is feuding with coalition partner the PPP led by Mrs. Bhutto's widower and as the WSJ reports today, the economy is in shambles. The problem with tripling the non-military aid package (an idea being pressed by Biden and Lugar) is that much of it will probably vanish down a rathole without ever getting to the FATA.
{"commentId":2243135,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
- 4 votes
#4 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:08 PM EDT{"commentId":2243252,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
Now no one questions the need for additional ISAF forces in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made repeated calls for more soldiers from our NATO allies but aside from a battalion of French special forces and the continuing commitment of Danish, Dutch, Canadian and UK soldiers to the spear's tip in the south and east the rest of NATO continues to sit on its collective hands. Things have gotten so bad in this respect that even former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer has lambasted his fellow Germans and the Merkel government for refusing to allow Bundeswehr soldiers to serve in the fighting area.
if our president wasn't so hated.. if his plans actually seem like ... well they were planned.. had we not decided to go into iraq while our buds were helping us in aphghanistan... perhaps more of our allies would be more willing to to put more bodies on the line.. but politically that has got to be hard, with the growing resentment of the us, as well as the unneeded heated and public complaints about our allies, when we know the major problem is being bogged down in iraq. and they get sick of beign told they arent doing enough
and then their public hears of torture, rendition, secret prisons, imprisoning people for life, torutre deaths,and the innocent people we tortured and released.. despite what you think the media did to those stories, that would make anyone think twice about whom they are supporting.
Someone without a chip on his shoulder that will treat world leaders with respect, as equals, will bring more of our allies back into the fold.
{"commentId":2243252,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
- 2 votes
#5 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:24 PM EDT{"commentId":2243267,"authorDomain":"lisaed"}
Someone without a chip on his shoulder that will treat world leaders with respect, as equals, will bring more of our allies back into the fold.
Joules---5.0---now that's some wishful thinking if I ever heard it.
{"commentId":2243267,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"lisaed"}
- 5 votes
#6 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:27 PM EDT{"commentId":2243679,"authorDomain":"jjdw1993"}
Great article, Bill; I learned a lot. Hope I can look forward to more writings from you in the future.
{"commentId":2243679,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"jjdw1993"}
- 3 votes
#7 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:21 PM EDT{"commentId":2243691,"authorDomain":"charles4000"}
Everyone should read the book, "The Great Game" by Peter Hopkirk. Nice article.
{"commentId":2243691,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"charles4000"}
- 2 votes
#8 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:23 PM EDT{"commentId":2244016,"authorDomain":"wharrison55"}
{"commentId":2244801,"authorDomain":"charles4000"}
sounds good, i'll pick up a copy of that.
{"commentId":2244801,"threadId":"316689","contentId":"1679263","authorDomain":"charles4000"}
- 2 votes
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