Establishing an Afghan Desk: qualified personnel only, please!

The year, 2001; the place, Pentagon.

“Professor, can you please go to the Afghan Desk, and talk to the newly appointed Afghan Head.”

“Sure,” I said to the Deputy Chief of OCPA (Civil), a political appointee, and a good friend.
“What am I supposed to be talking about?”

My friend asked me to just feel the Head out. I agreed, and went out to do his bidding. At the Afghan Desk, I introduced myself and was taken to the person in charge. I was expecting a grizzled veteran of Afghanistan; I got a young man of about 30 years, very pleasant, and very nice to talk to. Wow! He must be a real hot shot to be sitting in such a chair; probably graduated top of his class in Political Science. Boy! Was I wrong?

He was an Afghan, so I addressed him in Pashto. It turned out that he did not know a word of Pashto, and said so. I switched to Dari. His answer was more astonishing, “I am trying to learn that language, but I barely know a few sentences, so could we speak in English?”

I looked across at a white gentleman with rather grey hair, who was with him in the office. He shrugged his shoulders and in fluent Pashto said, “Don’t look at me? I just work here.” It turned out that this person had spent some time with State in Afghanistan.

“Have you ever gone to Afghanistan?” I asked the Head.

He said that he had never been; besides, he was American and didn’t like to be associated with Afghans.

I could see that the conversation was going nowhere, so I took my leave from both of them and went back to my friend in OCPA. Then I related everything to him. He looked at me in absolute amazement.

“Are you serious?”

Yes, I was; the government, I don’t know?

Am I crazy, or is the world wacky? Talk to me!!

Riaz Sahibzada