The UN is worrying out

The UN is out loud about death threats, arrests, and outright murders taking place in Afghanistan which may be politically motivated.

From my read of the UN briefing, it looks like one major problem area is Herat. This is not a big shock, since Herat is under the control of Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has always seemed to be a classic example of a stereotypical warlord thug (here’s another link to an interview with Dostum. Hint: never trust anybody who with a military background who refers to themselves in the third person). I don’t think he “gets” democracy, and I don’t think he has any interest in learning.

Obviously, the Loya Jirga process is going to be extremely interesting. Not surprisingly, the press (at least, the U.S. press) seems to have totally forgotten that there’s a country over in central Asia which still needs a real government, so I think we’re going to have to rely on surfing the UN web site for a while…