SV - Is it mandatory for children to go to school?

AB - No. I can't exactly remember how the rule is written, but even if it were mandatory; nothing in Afghanistan follows the rule of law. There are lots of things said in the constitution that just aren't happening. Women are still being sold in marriage, there's still not choice, there's still not free and fair elections etc.

The other thing I wanted to say and it's really important is that a number of schools that had reopened have now closed. UNICEF just issued a report in July showing that there were 99 reported school-burnings, missile attacks, threats, closures in the first half of 2006 and this, because of the way the Afghan school years works, probably would only have been March to July, so not even a full six months. And that's six time more than the same time period in 2005, and there's also been teachers threatened and killed, there was a terrible story about a principle who was beheaded in front of his family for running a school that had girls in it, so, alot of the people who even originally might have been happy to see their children go back to school are keeping them out now because it's not safe or they aren't able to send them because the school's been destroyed.

SV - I know that there's still forced marriage in Afghanistan. Is there open prostitution now as a result of poverty?

AB - Yes, there is as well. Unfortunately, where you have troops, where you have peacekeepers, you have prostitution. There's alot of prostitutes, women who have been imported into Afghanistan into prostitution. There have been a number of Chinese prostitution rings that have been broken up over the years. But there are also women who are finding again that that's the only way to survive and of course, in an Islamic country it's a thousand times worse for a woman to have to make that choice as a last resort or be forced into it.

SV - Could you elaborate on imported prostitution, because usually it happens in the countries that are able to pay for prostitution, Afghanistan is very poor.

AB - Right. Well these are prostitutes who are trafficked for international forces, there are lots of foreigners there, and there are also some Afghans with money through the drug trade and warlords and that sort of thing. So unfortunately, there's this market in sex as well. And there's concerns about the rise of STD's and that sort of thing because of course it’s not something that’s talked about easily at all. And there's concerns about HIV because of the poppy crop and opium, which in the past wasn't produced in Afghanistan but now it's been processed into opium in Afghanistan and so there's, in some reports, a rise in injection drug use as well. All of these are problems Afghanistan didn't have in the past.

SV - I just read a report that the Ministry of Vice and Virtue, which used to operate during the Taliban, whose function was to oversee people's public conduct, has been revived.

AB - Yes. And this is a deal that Karzai struck. In late summer, he met with some Taliban and some other conservatives and agreed to reinstitute this department and it's caused an enormous uproar and when I was there, it was just before it was being reinstituted and you know no one knows where their authority comes from and what they will do. There were some people who were speaking in the most hopeful tones, you know, if the right person ran it then we could say, this is what virtue is in Afghanistan and if they didn't hassle women and they didn't respond to petty, ridiculous things well then it would be a way of saying, see, society's fine. But of course the concern is that they are go to merely re-enact the Taliban era, “your veil isn't right and your beard's not the right length and who is that you're talking to and show me ID to prove that that really is your relative”. It would be the same thing as under the Taliban.

SV - Yes, I remember, some of them used to have sticks and hit woman in the streets.

AB - And that, you know, people don't understand that that was such a degradation of Afghan culture. Women had the potential of being quite oppressed in the home, there was domestic violence in the home, but one line that wasn't crossed is that a woman would be safe from a stranger for the most part, so part of what the Taliban did was they destroyed men's sense of their control in the family because they were beating someone else's sister or mother or wife on the street and that sort of violence in a public way against women by a strange man, who has no right to criticize an unrelated woman was a real change. As someone who doesn't believe that, women or anyone should be beaten by anyone it's hard for me to say that was better. But you really see this change in a society where levels of respect and dignity and expectations of goodwill from strangers - it's not there anymore. And when I'm there, each time I see people being more suspicious of each other, I hear them more and more unsure of who to trust and certainly I saw alot more negativity toward me as a foreigner than I have in the past.

SV - What is the function of NATO forces in Afghanistan? What are they doing there?

AB - In part NATO forces are supposed to be peacekeeping but they're really quite engaged in fighting what's being called Taliban insurgents in the south and I just read an article today saying they're noting an up-tick in violence in the West as well. And when I was out in Herat, in the West along the Iranian border, I heard from people that the districts outside of the city had become quite violent and dangerous In many parts, NATO is really engaged in some fierce fighting these days it seems and there was that request by the NATO commander for 2000 more troops that yesterday it looked like he wasn't going to get it at all and then today Poland has said they're going to send an thousand, but you know every country around the world is ensconced in other things and Iraq So unfortunately again, what Afghanistan needs to actually keep the peace is just not there and the thing that is the most disturbing to me is that there was a chance for something positive here and it just keeps slipping away. I'm one of the few people, I think, who was never in favor of bombing Afghanistan. I didn't think that was the way to go about it. It wasn't that I didn't think Al Qaida needed to be punished for what had happened, it wasn't that I didn't think the Taliban who were cooperating with Al Qaida were also dangerous and I was certainly concerned about Taliban and what they were doing in Afghanistan well before Sept. 11th happened. But what I'd always heard from Afghans was that what was needed was disarmament, peacekeeping and if the West had just stopped the flow of arms and money to the Taliban they weren't producing anything there, there was no functioning sort of country government economy, whatever. And that would have made a difference, so, to me, going in and killing Afghan civilians and having a war there was not my first choice but, that being said, when the Taliban did leave, where their regime was defeated there was this window of opportunity that could have been filled with what the West really said it wanted which means with security, liberation and democracy. But instead, that opportunity was really squandered and what we have five years later is its being filled with drugs and with continued violence and with Taliban insurgents and warlords in the parliament. So, I'm not sure NATO's doing what they originally said and the US military isstill running around looking for Osama, and not really looking for the security of the people of Afghanistan.