I read stuff like this, and I can only shake my head in dismay.

The Fastest Girl in Kabul

The most damning evidence against Pakistan is the fact that the Taliban aren’t trying to take responsibility. As the spokesman says, they would have been proud to take responsibility if they had done it.

(Begin quote) The Taliban has carried out a wave of suicide attacks across the country in the past seven years, but said it did not carry out the embassy attack.

Zabihullah Mujahed, a group spokesman, told the AFP news agency that the Taliban would have been proud to claim responsibility for the attack but they had not been involved.

It boggles the mind. Fortunately, international pressure has forced Hamid Karzai’s government to give him a new trial. Hopefully it will go better than the first one.

This photo was taken in 2004, near the Afghan-Tajik border.

Dan Varisco's post on gay marriage, the trade of young brides in Afghanistan, and the value of marriage on his group-blog Tabsir is so sensible it just makes me still with gratitude. Most of Varisco's writing is like this. He is one of those who combine comprehensive knowledge of an area and common sense. Here he offers a summary analysis of the historical value of marriage and suggests we might consider that there would be no loss of value should gay marriage be legitimized. Cultures have typically used marriage to build legitimate alliances between families or communities, regulate sexual access to fertile women, and consequently protect the validity of the alliance through the legitimacy of the offspring. It is only rarely about love. The child brides given over for debt in Afghanistan are symptomatic of marriage as alliance in its worst manifestation. Needless to say here, such marriages are not Islamically legal. But we all know too that few care what legal scholars have to say.