Fun facts from the front lines

I've had some awful dreams lately. Although some of them have to do with my thesis advisor sending me to Siberia, most of them involve further acts of domestic terrorism. Let's just say that the government's two most prominent theories on the anthrax assault -- Al Qaeda or an American "mad scientist" -- aren't doing anything to stop visions of mushroom clouds from dancing through my head. \nLast week was particularly sleepless. The realities of war in Afghanistan are far more complicated than what President Bush described as an effort to find Osama bin Laden and "smoke him out." \nHere are just a few "Fun Facts from the Front."\n1.The smart bombs: It seems like just yesterday that we were all watching what CNN news analysts called "smart bombs" cut neat corners on winding Iraqi streets, and maneuver themselves down the chimney of some particularly evil foreigner. This myth of weaponry that can't go wrong, and that does only right and righteousness, has been pulverized by the recent accidental bombing of the Red Cross headquarters in Kabul. \nAccording to the Associated Press, Red Cross officials were stunned when "U.S. warplanes bombed its aid compound in the Afghan capital, Kabul -- for a second time." That's right, after the first bombing, which has been blamed on "human error," four of the five buildings in the compound were destroyed. All this, despite the fact that "every building had a huge flag with a red cross on its roof." \n2. Afghanistan's nosy neighbors: According to reports from CNN, last Saturday more than five thousand Pakistani tribesmen tried to cross the border into Afghanistan, in an attempt to join Taliban soldiers fighting the United States. Another group, whose numbers were reported as being in the thousands, left later the same day. The men were carrying various weapons, including rifles, rocket launchers, missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. So much for fighting a bunch of saber-waving yahoos. Not to mention the fact that Pakistan is supposed to be our ally in wartime. Then again, it's been fun to watch the administration's foreign policy team "forget" that almost all of the Taliban's international support came from Pakistanis all too delighted at the religious zealotry of their fellow Pashtuns.\n3. That's right, Pashtuns: It appears that over here on the home-front, the entire issue of ethnic group conflict has once again managed to escape us. One would think that after conflicts in Serbia, Somalia and Los Angeles, the U.S. public and government would be more attuned to conflicts between people whose ethnic differences present a time-tested challenge. Not so. We're still hung up on national boundaries, which have so often been drawn by post-war or post-colonial treaties that gave little thought to the fact that people like Serbs and Croats, Pashtuns and Tajiks, simply don't get along. That's one of the major difficulties in any cooperation with the so-called Northern Alliance. According to The New York Times, that dubious group is made up of "Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras -- minorities unacceptable to the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group." Suggestions that these people be involved in a post-war coalition government of Afghanistan are going to be pretty laughable to the Afghans we are saving from the Taliban. \n"Now that we've rescued you from religious persecution, we'd like you to band together with groups you hate for ethnic reasons."\n4. Speaking of the Northern Alliance: The United States has, in the past, teamed up with some pretty rag-tag allies, but these guys take the cake for pluck. A loose collection of warlords whom our government thought would be thrilled at the prospect of any U.S. action against the Taliban, they have begun to complain that our forces aren't doing enough to devastate Afghan targets. \nObviously, they're not too concerned about the Red Cross.