"Something is rotten in the Islamic State of Afghanistan," an old Afghan is saying to me one night after dinnertime. He is a Kabuli, a local humanitarian worker, and he seems to like making literary jokes. We have just dined together on fried chicken and rice in his small apartment. He is explaining why he is pessimistic about Afghanistan's future.

"The leaders are criminals," he says, referring to Afghanistan's warlords. It is a cool spring night earlier this year, and the old man is sitting on his couch across from me, lecturing me about the past. All of Afghanistan's current military and police leaders, he says, have blood on their hands from past war crimes. Specifically, he refers to the civil fighting in Kabul from 1992 to 1995, detailing how various commanders, including Fahim and Sayyaf, were involved. They killed, he says, and now they rule.

"Like Hamlet's uncle," he says. "But," he continues, "they have no remorse."

As usual at night in Kabul, it is very dark in the apartment. There is no electricity, and the old man's face is lit up by the ghastly white glare of a propane lamp. In fact, he looks like he could play the ghost of Hamlet's father. He is an intellectual; he was once a professor. The dramatic lecture works well for him.

The Soviets were terrible, he admits. The regime they imposed in Afghanistan in the 1980s was relentless and cruel, and the country was a police state. But when the mujahedin took over Kabul, he says, life became "the law of the jungle." People were made into beasts.

As the evening goes on, he brings out photographs of his youth, when he was studying abroad, before the war. He shows me pictures of him, seated with some other Afghans in Italy. He also shows me pictures from an art book filled with Picasso sculptures of nude women, one of which he calls "my mistress." It is late and he is a little drunk: At some point in the evening, a bottle of grain alcohol has appeared, to be mixed with the warm Coca-Cola on the table -- a rare event in dry Afghanistan. He sighs.

"The guys in charge now, they destroyed everything," the old man says, referring to the civil war in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. "All the beauty in this country, and in this city, Kabul. They destroyed the natural and the art-i-fice," he draws out the word, "I mean the flowers and the trees, and the architecture. It was beautiful here, then, very, very beautiful ..."

His eyes are wet. The gaslight hisses. In the distance, there is typical Kabul night noise: It sounds like thousands of dogs are barking at each other. The old man is looking down at the Picasso sculptures, shaking his head.

Sadly, I have seen this sort of thing before: grown men reduced to tears, even when sober, describing Afghanistan before the communist revolution in 1978. When the Taliban was in power in 2001, and there was a severe drought in Afghanistan, I saw tearful Kabulis pointing to the withered grass and ruined buildings, lamenting the country's fate. In Kandahar, in early 2002, I saw pomegranate farmers cry while talking about how their farms and gardens looked, before the Soviets came.

The dirges are a standard theme for many older Afghans when they discuss current Afghanistan. Before the war, older Afghans say, every garden in Kabul had a bevy of fruit trees: apricots, peaches, apples and pears. In the summer, the tree-lined streets were shady and the evening breeze was cool and fresh. In the winter, the distant mountains were tipped with snow, and you could sit by a stove with freshly sugared walnuts and tea, watching the children play in the snow.

A lot of foreigners who travel to Kabul don't seem to appreciate Afghanistan's pacific past -- the fact that the country was at peace for most of the 20th century. Many journalists, when writing about their time in Afghanistan, describe the destroyed military planes and tanks lying around Kabul's airport, the warlords, and the ruined houses that stretch for miles in south and west Kabul, as though Afghanistan has been a war zone since the beginning of time. There is not much discussion of how Afghanistan turned out as it did, of what life was like before the destruction, and -- the most sensitive subject -- who destroyed the country in the first place.

Of course, the question of who destroyed Afghanistan is a sensitive one, because some of the people who are implicated -- like Sayyaf and Fahim -- are currently in power.

It's also a complex question, because the country was destroyed by many people, with many different motives, over a lengthy period of time. Blame tends to need a focus, but in Afghanistan, truly, blame can be thrown in all directions. One person can argue that the Soviets are the prime culprits: After all, they invaded the country in the first place. But another can point out that Kabul city was destroyed not by the Soviets, but by mujahedin parties fighting with one another after the Soviets withdrew in 1989. A third might join here: "That all happened because the Americans gave them weapons, which in turn was the result of the Soviet invasion." And why did the Soviets invade anyway? Isn't it true that the country was ripe for a rebellion, since Afghanistan's feudal and paternalistic society (which the mujahedin fought to protect) was so socially unjust? Why not bring the British Empire into the equation, the Russian Tsars, Alexander the Great, and so on?

The debate can go on forever, and it probably will. But the one historic fact that seems most relevant now is that Afghanistan today is ruled, to a great extent, by some of the same mujahedin leaders who were responsible for reducing it to rubble. Many Afghans have not forgotten what happened in the early 1990s in Kabul, so they look at current leaders, like Fahim and Sayyaf, and they worry.

American officials, for their part, do not realize how important these ghosts from the past are, as they have allowed these same leaders to dominate Afghanistan's political landscape.

I have spoken to many U.S. officials and military officers about these issues, in both Kabul and Washington, and have briefed staff in the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council, describing this common Afghan perception about Kabul's current leaders. I have even testified before Congress about this issue. There are signs that opinions are starting to shift in official Washington, but for the most part the Bush administration still clings to its line on Afghanistan. When confronted with complaints about warlord-dominated Afghanistan, administration officials resort to a stock "things are better than they once were" lecture: "Look, you have to appreciate the fact that the Taliban is gone. The Taliban was terrible. The Taliban beat women on the streets, and cut off people hands for petty crimes. Under the Taliban, girls couldn't go to school and men had to grow ling beards. Today, girls are back in school and civil society is flourishing, newspapers and businesses are opening, and there is peace. Of course, there are still security problems, and remnants of the Taliban are creating problems, especially in the south and east. But for the most part, our understanding is that things are improving, and Afghanistan is on the road to recovery."

Most officials now know better, but you'll never hear them express their doubts in public. On Women's Equality Day last year, President Bush issued a glowing report on Afghanistan and his administration has adhered to this theme ever since: "In Afghanistan, the Taliban used violence and fear to deny Afghan women access to education, health care, mobility, and the right to vote. Our coalition has liberated Afghanistan and restored fundamental human rights and freedoms to Afghan women, and all the people of Afghanistan. Young girls in Afghanistan are able to attend schools for the first time."

Many Afghans, especially women, have found this sort of unfounded cheerfulness, and the comparisons to the Taliban era, annoying. (The fact is that the majority of school age girls in Afghanistan are not back in school.) One Afghan woman, an activist, put it succinctly to me in a meeting in July: "When you compare life to the Taliban, just about every situation seems like a paradise. Afghan women want their rights to be judged in the same ways women's rights are judged in other countries. Not by the Taliban standard, but by the human rights standard."

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