In the evenings, they gather in the Hare and Hound bar "that wouldn't look out of place in Sussex," but that is in fact in the middle of wartime Kabul. The scene is out of a novel.

On a visit to Afghanistan, Peter Bergen describes the evening's clientele in a hotel owned by an expatriate Brit: "aid workers speaking English with Nordic accents; security contractors with bulging biceps; film directors making their next big movie in Afghanistan; cameramen fresh from Iraq; and a fair number of people who aren't too explicit about what they're doing - but it must be really important, as they have to be quite mysterioso about it."

Maybe Evelyn Waugh he's not, but Bergen captured in The New Republic the scene in Kabul, where there are signs everywhere of both death and rebirth.

"The most important road in the country, which links Kabul to Kandahar, is now a suicidal drive for any foreigner without an escort of well-armed security guards," Bergen reported...

For the complete article, please visit The Advocate website.