Volume 49, Number 6 · April 11, 2002
Tyrants on the Take
By Christian Caryl
Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia
by Ahmed Rashid
Yale University Press, 281 pp., $24.00
Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise
by Martha Brill Olcott
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 320 pp., $44.00; $24.95 (paper)
In mid-January, in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, I watched as soldiers of the Northern Alliance swung open the doors of a metal shipping container and set about unloading it. They hauled out bushels of automatic weapons, tangled gas masks, and olive-drab crates stenciled with Cyrillic letters. They stacked the crates in haphazard piles, sometimes flinging open the lids to reveal mines and cartons of bullets and small brownish bricks of explosives that looked like bars of soap. There were sheaves of paper bull's-eyes for target practice, and rolled-up wall charts diagramming the use of artillery.
Review, 4232 words
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