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"He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher -- the Wonder House as the natives called the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that "fire-breathing dragon,' hold the Punjab; for the great green bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot."
--
"Kim," Rudyard Kipling
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Zam-Zammah breathes fire no more, replaced by F-15s and AC-130U "Spooky" gun ships spitting artillery rounds and 40mm cannon shells. The efficiency of death has evolved, but the "Great Game" is the same for the people of Afghanistan: the Pashtun, the Tajik, the Hazara, and the Uzbeks, pitted against one another in a deadly chess game played by men whose capitols lay half a world away.
How just like the old days it must be for British Lieutenant General David Richards, commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. NATO, taking over from the United States, is pouring troops into Helmand Province, 8,000 of which will be British. This ground and history is familiar for the British. It will be, after all, England 's fourth war in Afghanistan.
While the government of President Hamid Karzai is quick to blame Pakistan for the current fighting, Pashtun coming across the border from Pakistan is hardly a new development. Every day some 15,000 people cross into Afghanistan through the frontier town of Chaman, Pakistan alone. It is a "border" drawn up in Whitehall, not Lahore or Kandahar
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THE WAR IN IRAQ
POLITICS AS USUAL
