agog

Israel Is Real, Rich Cohen, 2009

A 350 page history of the Jewish people from Abraham, Moses, David, through to Zionism and today’s Israel is tough sledding for the reader. Cohen is American, doesn’t speak Hebrew, at one point claims he is Christian to be allowed into the Jerusalem old city, and writes with a strange mixture of empathy and puzzlement at the Jewish story and fate.

Jerusalem – Layers of History

His history is fleeting with special attention to the life arch of King David, from Shepard, to hero, to king, to wife stealer, (he sends the husband to die as a soldier), to sad old man yearning for his lost son. He credits David with the transition from wandering tribe carrying the Ark of the Covenant everywhere to building a permanent temple on the Temple Mount, thus fixing Jewish fate to a single geographic location. He also gives special attention to the Roman conquest and role of the warrior Jewish Zealots in the death and destruction of Judea including the second temple. The Roman built a temple to Jupiter on Temple Mount but within a few hundred years, the Caesars had converted to Christianity as had many Jews.

Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum

He discusses the 2000 year plight of the Jews with alternating pogroms, assimilation, ghettos, leading up to the Holocaust, which he says has been turned into a new religion with its own temples (museums now include Berlin and Washington) throughout the world centered by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem, leading via Zionism to the formation of Israel.

He says after the Roman conquest, the Jews succeeded in turning the lost temple with its rituals into a book (or really several books) that they could again carry with them everywhere in their wanderings. Unlike the Ark, the book could be multiplied so every Jew could have his own copy wherever he went. He attributes the strength of the Jewish identity to possession of this book.

One interesting section deals with the rise of the notion of race which was intended to doom the prospects for assimilation since the Jews would never be considered Arlan even if they converted to Christianity. So, to counter the race argument, some Jews discovered a lost tribe of red headed Jews who for a short time around 700 AD ruled a small kingdom called Khazaria. But the concept of race somehow got buried deep in the psyche and today Jews are themselves very race conscience with their distinctions between Ashkenazi Diaspora-Caucasian Jews and Sephardic Jews from the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain.

He traces the origins of Zionism, the movement to return and create a Jewish state in Palestine to people like Disraeli, the first and only Jewish British prime minister and American journalist Mordecai Noah, or more interestingly, to German-Polish Jew Moses Hess who knew and shared a coffeehouse with Marx and Engels. Credit is generally given to Theodor Herzl near the end of the nineteenth century.

He traces the arch of the State of Israel through its key leaders and heroes, particularly warrior Ariel Sharon, hero of 1948, 1967, and 1973. He draws some parallels between Sharon and David and even Sharon and Moses. Sharon’s bold aggressive style of warfare finally came into disgrace in the 1982 Lebanon invasion following the Christian massacre of Palestinians in several refugee camps in Lebanon. In the final stage of the arch, we follow embittered Sharon as he leads a band of police to the mosque on the Temple Mount during Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

Ariel Sharon Visits Temple Mount

Most memorable are his stories of the 1973 Yom Kippur war which Israel almost lost. We see once heroic one eyed Moshe Dayan losing it when it appears Syria will prevail in Golan, ranting about the loss of the third temple and scaring everyone around him; we see tough Golda Meir taking a cigarette break to collect herself at the height of the crisis then calmly declaring “Let’s go back to work.”

Tough Mother Golda and her cigarette

Force Zvika

Then there is the amazing story of 21 year old tank commander Zvika Greengold, who commands the only remaining functional Israeli tank and enters the Hula Valley alone at dusk to try to hold off hundreds of assembled Syrian tanks until Israeli reinforcements can arrive. In an all night tank battle, without lights, Greengold maneuvered among and knocked out uncountable tanks and stopped the Syrian advance for 22 hours. He was aided by the fact that his aging tank was a Sherman the same that Syria was using, and that any tank he could find in the dark would be an enemy but the Syrian couldn’t identify him as an enemy. To confuse the Syrians further, he used his radio to command his “Force Zvika” tanks during the action. When reinforcements finally arrive the Israeli commander asks Greengold “Where is Force Zvika?” and he answers “I am Force Zvika”.

Dayan and Sharon during Yom Kippur War

The other Moses-like story concerns Ariel Sharon in the Sinai dessert in 1973. Two divisions of Egyptian soldier have driven the Israelis deep into the dessert where their advance is finally stopped. Some scouts report an incredible discovery; the two Egyptian divisions have left a gap fifteen miles wide between them. Sharon asks his timid commander Gonan for permission to drive through this gap to Suez. Gonan refuses but Sharon, of course, goes anyway. He gets to the Canal by morning and asks Gonan for bridges to cross. Gonan refuses again, so Sharon finds some derelict old landing craft and manages to get several hundred troops and equipment including tanks across the canal. The Egyptians awake to discover their supply lines cut (including water), Israeli troops camped a short drive from Cairo, and two divisions trapped in the dessert. An Egyptian MiG fighter attacks Sharon’s position and Sharon is wounded. Sharon is called back to Sinai for a meeting (shouting match) with Gonan with the result that reinforcements are sent to hold Sharon’s Egyptian position but not under Sharon’s command. Anwar Sadat is forced to negotiate a peace.

Jerusalem Epicenter of Western Religions – and Graveyard

He talks about visiting Israel and of the Jerusalem Syndrome which affects most visitors to the old city, possibly excepting Asian tourists whose culture is outside the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions. Few visitors actually become psychotic but the effects of seeing all the layer upon layer of history built one upon the other and the sites that are central to the three major western religious traditions is somehow overpowering. One wishes that the entire city could be preserved as an international museum, protected from all the struggles and politics but of course Jerusalem is home to a diverse collection of people going about their daily lives, an idea inconsistent with the notion of museum.

The big dynamic today seems to be population, as the Arabs outproduce the Jews changing the political dynamic that would ultimately lead to an Arab controlled democracy. Cohen himself was criticized for being Jewish and for living in the safe US instead of returning to his Jewish homeland. If all American Jews emigrated to Israel (they automatically have Israeli citizenship) the population disparity would be instantly corrected and the Jews would dominate the country. This is the ultimate contradiction buried in the very concept of a religious state. It is something that Ataturk understood when he declared Turkey to be a secular state but that the Zionists and Ayatollahs of Iran have somehow missed.

The Places In Between, Rory Stewart, 2006

I first discovered the Scotsman Rory Stewart on the Bill Moyer’s Journal. Rory Stewart is now director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Lynn Sherr introduced Stewart as advisor to both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke. The following is a small part of the transcript:

LYNN SHERR: What do you tell them?

RORY STEWART: Again, my message is: focus on what we can do. We don’t have a moral obligation to do what we can’t. People can get very fixed by saying, “But surely you’re not saying we ought to do nothing? Surely you’re not saying we ought to allow the Taliban to do this or that?” And I just keep saying “ought” implies “can”– you don’t have a moral obligation to do what you can’t do.

LYNN SHERR: How is your advice taken?

RORY STEWART: I think what I see at the moment is that people are polite, because they imagine maybe I have some experience with Afghanistan. But I’m one of a broad community of people — we have nine people working in my center at Harvard who’ve worked there for 20 or 30 years and the problem we all have is that if the Administration has for some reason already decided that they’re going to increase troops, they’re going to do a counterinsurgency campaign, it’s very difficult for them to take on board people coming back and saying, “Look, actually, I don’t think this is going to work. It’s a great idea. I can see why you want to do it. But by trying to do the impossible, you may end up doing nothing. I’d like to present an alternative strategy, which is lighter, more intelligent, and may end up actually achieving something.”

LYNN SHERR: And again, their reaction? They listen politely, you say?

RORY STEWART: They listen politely, but in the end, of course, basically the policy decision is made. What they would like is little advice on some small bit. I mean, the analogy that one of my colleagues used recently is this: it’s as though they come to you and they say, “We’re planning to drive our car off a cliff. Do we wear a seatbelt or not?” And we say, “Don’t drive your car off the cliff.” And they say, “No, no, no. That decision’s already made. The question is should we wear our seatbelts?” And you say, “Why by all means wear a seatbelt.” And they say, “Okay, we consulted with policy expert, Rory Stewart,” et cetera.

So much for being an expert today.

Rory Stewart’s biography sounds like fiction. Born in Hong Kong in 1973, he was educated at Eton and Oxford. He was tutor to Prince Harry and Prince William. In the 90’s he joined the Secret Intelligence Service and served in the embassy in Jakarta dealing with East Timor. He was next appointed British representative to Montenegro dealing with Kosovo.

Rory Stewart in Afghan garb with Mastiff Babur

This book recounts a small part of an amazing walking journey historian Rory Undertook over 20 months to recreate the 1514 journey of Babur (descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan) from Samarkand, Uzbekistan to Kabul which he conquered. By 1527 Babur had conquered all of Northern India establishing the Mogul dynasty with Agra his capital.

Rory spent 16 months walking from Iran to Nepal. The government of Iran took his visa away and he was refused entry to Afghanistan by the Taliban so he resumed his journey in Pakistan, crossing to Katmandu where, in December 2001, he heard that the Taliban had fallen, so he returned to Herat to pick up his journey from Herat to Kabul. Babur had made his journey through the mountains in the dead of winter and Rory seemed to find the prospect of doing the same thing in 2002 appealing. U.N. workers called him “a nutter” for his walk which he took as a complement.

This book recounts the kind of travel that is far more common in Europe than in America. Herman Hesse in Narcissus and Goldmund describes a young man wandering around medieval Germany indicating that this coming of age European “Walkabout” has been a tradition for a long time. Overland trips from Europe to India and Nepal by motorcycle, van, and bus were common in the 1960s and 1970s but with the Iranian Revolution and Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 such journeys died down. A recent German biopic, Eight Miles High, of Uschi Obermaier features a three year trip with boyfriend adventurer Dieter Bockhorn by customize bus from Germany to India in 1973. Their adventure lasted three years and was highlighted by their wedding, complete with elephants, in India. God seems to protect the young and naive which is why most young travelers, despite taking crazy risks, seem to come through relatively unscarred by the experience.

As if walking through the mountains alone in the dead of winter were not enough challenge, Rory somehow acquires a dog, a half wild, uncared for 140 pound mastiff of indeterminate age that he names Babur. So not only does he have to beg for food and shelter in each village for himself, he must find food and shelter for his huge dog in a culture where dogs are considered unclean. A boy who is in training to become a mullah informs Rory that the Koran declares dogs to be unclean. When Rory asks to see the passage, the boy says he doesn’t know where it is. “But haven’t you memorized the entire Koran in your studies? Yes, but it is written in Arabic and I don’t understand Arabic.” Like Roman Catholics who loved the Latin mass they cannot understand, this boy has memorized the entire Koran without understanding anything in it. In many villages he has to fight off with his walking stick packs of dogs sent by children to harass him and his dog.

The journey itself is pretty bleak. Rory walks in sub zero temperatures, through blizzards with zero viability, fighting to forge a path through waist deep snow, and trying to break through thick ice to reach drinking water. Through the first half of his trek, he follows the Hari Rud river, climbing to its source. In Herat, Rory collects a series of letters of introduction which he hopes will result in offers of hospitality along his route. This plan is quickly dashed as a village headman demands the letters (for his own use) and Rory discovers that the local head men are mostly illiterate so cannot write much less read such letters. He falls back on an oral tradition where he recounts the list of men who have recently offered him hospitality and memorizes the names of important men he is likely to meet at the next villages. To make life more miserable Rory suffers from constant dysentery and headaches. He tries to document his travels by writing in his journal, sketching people he meets (some are reproduced in the book) and taking very dark black and white film photographs in which the features of people pictured can hardly be made out.

From Herat he is accompanied by two security soldiers who are ordered to walk with him halfway to Kabul. Both are wearing American camouflage overalls and ill fitting boots which damage their feet. The leader is a congenital liar who introduces Rory as an Ukrainian (Soviet), American Spy, U.N. high official with millions to disperse to the local authorities. After the two start suffering from dysentery and foot sores, Rory is finally able to bribe them to leave him and they return to Herat. With the occasional local guide as part of local hospitality, Rory completes his walk largely on his own.

Minaret at Jam

Rory comes to the ancient city of Jam, destroyed by Genghis Khan. A lone minaret remains of what was once a major trading center. In the 1970s professional archeologists were busy excavating the historic city but the Soviet invasion forced them to leave and they have never returned. Rory encounters hundreds of local villagers randomly digging throughout the ruins looking for any artifacts which they will be able to sell to collectors for $1 or $2 dollars.

Rory’s route took through all four major ethnic groups making up Afghanistan. The Pashtun posed the biggest threat to Rory’s trek. When he asks village elders who they want to lead a new Afghanistan they invariably start by naming their local strongman. When Rory persists, they all mention Ahmed Shah Massoud the Tajiks fighter assassinated by al Qaeda. When he asks their opinion of Hamid Karzai, the most remote villagers immediately respond that Karzai is America’s puppet.

Stewart encounters more U.N. and other aid workers and writes one the best accounts of this new breed that I have seen anywhere (as a footnote):

Critics have accused this new breed of administrators as neocolonialism. But in fact their approach is not that of a nineteenth century colonial officer. Colonial administration may have been racist and exploitative, but they did, at least work seriously at the business of understanding the people they were governing. They recruited people prepared to spend their entire careers in dangerous provinces of a single alien nation.They invested in teaching administrators and military officers the local language. They established effective departments of state, trained a local elite, and continued the countless academic studies of their subjects through institutes and museums, royal geographic societies, and royal botanical gardens. They balanced the local budget and generated fiscal revenue because if they didn’t their home government would rarely bail them out. If they failed to govern fairly, the population would mutiny.

Post-conflict experts have got the prestige without the effort or stigma of imperialism. Their implicit denial of the difference between cultures is the new brand of international intervention. Their policy fails but no one notices. There are not credible monitoring bodies and there is no one to take formal responsibility. Individual officers are never in any one place and rarely in any one organization long enough to be adequately assessed. The colonial enterprise could be judged by the security or revenue it delivered, but neocolonialists have no such performance criteria. In fact their very uselessness benefits them. By avoiding any serious action or judgment they, unlike their colonial predecessors, are able to escape accusations of racism, exploitation, or oppression.

Perhaps it is because no one requires more than a charming illusion of action in the developing world. If the policy makers know little about the Afghans, the public knows even less, and few care about policy failure when the effects are felt only in Afghanistan… A year before they had been in Kosovo or East Timor and a year later they would be in Iraq or offices in New York and Washington.

Murad Khane District of Kabul

A year after his Afghan trek, Rory Stewart was appointed Coalition (civilian) Deputy Governor of Maysan and Senior Adviser in Dhi Qar, two provinces in southern Iraq. From this experience he penned his second book The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. For this he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire at age 31. In 2005, he founded an NGO, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation and spends much of his time in Afghanistan. Chalk one up for the neocolonialists.

House of Cards, William D Cohen, 2009

This account of the rise and fall of Bear Stearns reads like a novel. It is even structured like a novel, opening in Part I on Wednesday March 12 2008 as Bear realizes it can’t borrow enough at the “Repo” daily market to make it through the week, starting a whirlwind of activity resulting in the sale of Bear to JP Morgan Chase (JPM) on Sunday March 16.

As the book opens, a full scale run on Bear has started with massive short selling, other firms refusing to back large trades, and massive investment withdrawals. On Thursday, fearing a systemic meltdown, the Fed, unable to lend directly to Bear, arranges to lend money to JPM who in turn will loan to Bear in an attempt to assure the markets that Bear would be able to borrow sufficiently to stay in business. The attempt fails to stop the run on Friday and unless the Fed and Treasury can negotiate a buyout, Bear will declare bankruptcy Sunday night.

This first part underlines just how shaky and unstable the financial markets are and is a good counterpart to the previously reviewed Connected: 24 Hours in the Global Economy which highlight the demise of Long Term Capital Management in 1998. Bear alone did not join the other 9 wall street firms who purchased LTCM positions to assure that LTCM’s demise didn’t blow up the entire financial system. Bear was widely resented for this refusal at the time.

The entire of wall street has become dependent for the past 30 years on short term borrowing through the so called “repo” market. Much of the borrowing is day to day so the entire of wall street is one day away from insolvency and bankruptcy. Banks have the FDIC to insure deposits, and the Fed discount window to assure access to short term money in hard times. Wall street firms have neither of these backstops. Banks are limited in the degree to which they can leverage deposits and assets; wall street is not and Bear ran itself leveraged to as much as 50 times their holdings. This means that any downturn or decline in asset value will require the borrowing of short term money or the raising of capital, at precisely the time that no one want to loan or invest.

Unknown firms and individuals were also massively shorting the stock then trading in the $60-65 range, betting that it would fall to $20-$30 within 8 trading days. Cohan believes much of the shorting was done by firms holding investments in Bear as a way of “hedging” their bets and limiting their losses if Bear continued to decline. Cohen says many believe Kyle Bass of Hyman Capital, who made a fortune betting against mortgage securities, triggered the run on Bear. To the outsider this betting both sides as a way to “hedge” the gamble of an investment seems strange but this has become a central feature of investing and dramatically increases the volatility of the system. When a firm catches a little cold, everyone jumps on to run the firm out of business by shorting its stock and can do so in a matter of days if the firm is massively leveraged.

When the extension of Federal credit did not stop the run on Bear, the Fed and Treasury went into overdrive to force the Sale of Bear by Sunday night. Only JPM was available and able to move this fast. JPM’s CEO Jamie Dimon had attempted to buy Bear a couple years earlier for Bank One and failed. The big issues were price and the unknown amount of toxic assets at Bear. The government agreed to buy $30 Billion in toxic assets but someone in government (widely believed to be Treasury Secretary Paulson, former CEO of rival Goldman Sachs and no lover of Bear) insisted on a price of $2 using a moral hazard argument that the stockholders should be punished for the problems of the firm. Unfortunately for JPM and Dimon, the negotiators – lawyers screwed up. Any purchase must be approved by a majority of the stockholders of the acquired company and this approval takes time. The agreement gave Bear up to a year to approve the sale and during this year JPM would guarantee all business and finance for Bear. Bear’s executives, reeling from the $2 price (they were led to expect at least $10) quickly realized that if they voted no they could give themselves up to a year for market conditions to approve and for a better offer to arrive, all under the umbrella of JPM protection. Dimon, when he realized his contract drafters mistake threatened to not honor the deal unless the contract was changed. He basically said, sue us, we’re not honoring this contract. It looked like Bear was headed for bankruptcy after all. In the meantime, the market also didn’t believe and $2 price and Bear stock started trading in the $10-$13 range. Dimon started buying as much stock as he could at market prices and Bear stockholders were happy to sell and avoid the $2 price until Dimon accumulated almost 50% of the shares. The vote, of course, approved the sale. The government also came down with a case of buyers remorse and renegotiated with Dimon so that JPM was liable for the the first $1 Billion loss in the $30 billion toxic asset pool.

Part II focuses on the three successive CEO s at Bear who built the company after WWII and set its culture (sharpest elbows on Wall Street). The first, Cy Lewis, was a former football pro with a volatile temper. He based his reputation on cornering railroad bonds during WWII when the government took control of the railroads to move war materials and railroad bonds fell to as low as 5 cents on the dollar. Lewis purchased all he could personally and became instantly wealthy when the bonds returned to par plus interest accrued after the war. The second, Ace Greenburg, was a canny trader who’s basic principle, learned from his father, was to never hold a loser. He also was obsessive about cost controls, at one time outlawing the purchase of paper clips and instructing secretaries to lick only one side of envelopes so they can be reused. He was a renowned philanthropist with a strange sense of humor. He paid for the remodeling of the restrooms at the Jerusalem museum and placed a plaque in each dedicated to his brother. He set up a charitable fund to provide Viagra to homeless vagrant men.

Ace was a pretty good bridge player and seems to have hired the third CEO, Jimmy Cayne, because Cayne was among the top 100 bridge players in the world. Cayne immediately used his bridge contacts, landing Larry Tisch, a huge investor for the firm. Unfortunately Tisch was Cy’s client at the time but Tisch insisted on giving his business to Jimmy. Cayne wanted to buy up NYC bonds as the city teetered on the brink of insolvency in 1976. Ace refused so Cayne went over his head to Cy who recognized the play as similar to his railroad bond purchases in WWII. The bond deal catapulted Cayne into the number two spot in the firm. Cayne eventually becomes CEO and the company went public but continued to be run like a partnership. The CEO at Bear is solely responsible for setting compensation each year and derives his power from this fact.

All three Bear CEO s had limited educations, limited business ethics, unlimited egos, and unlimited greed. They really don’t like one another. At one time Bear offered bucket shops like the one depicted in the movie Boiler Room. in return for handling trade settlement. Much of their sleazy reputation and many legal problems came from this activity though the LTCM decision didn’t help.

All three shared the same strategic goal; make as much money as you can any way you can. They developed a culture that is the antithesis of the MBA cultures at other firms. In Bear’s hiring, having an MBA is almost a viability rather than a virtue. Playing bridge well is a big plus for new hires and bridge seems to be about the only common pattern to the incompatible personalities at the firm.

Rogue Trader Ralph Cioffi

Part III looks at how the once successful Bear came to find itself driven out of business in two days in mid March 2008. Quite simply they gave free reign to their very own internally grown Roque Trader (Book and Movie about how one roque trader brought down Barons). Ralph Cioffi was a much loved smart trader at Bear, but he suffered from advanced attention deficit, meaning that the firm couldn’t count on him remembering much less documenting his trading activities. To compensate, Bear assigned a team of women to follow him around and get approvals and complete the legal paperwork required to record his trading activity. They were bad at this and most trade were done without approval and the paperwork was done after the fact. The legal liabilities of this problem were never explained to the women trying to do the work.

Schwartz, Cayne, Ace as Bear Burns

Almost half of Bear revenues come from the fixed income side of the business and Cayne organized Bear into two divisions each with its own president, Alan Schwartz, a specialist in Mergers and Acquisitions headed the division with all other business and Warren Spector headed the fixed income division. Five levels down, Cioffi is tasked with creating hedge funds to invest in mortgage backed securities. Unfortunately Cioffi runs true to form and by 2006 76% of his trades are made without prior approval but his funds are doing so well everyone covers for him. When it becomes clear that sub prime mortgages are a problem, he assures his investors verbally and in writing that his hedge funds have only 6% sub prime mortgage securities and that he is hedging these. Unfortunately his funds actually have more than 60% sub prime securities plus CDOs CDO squared and even more obscure investments and he is unable to hedge much of anything. After Bear, the parent company, became concerned that Cioffi was not getting approvals they ordered that Bear stop buying into the hedge funds. This resulted in the firm completely dropping any scrutiny the hedge funds might have received from other traders and watchdogs and risk analysts in the parent company. These hedge funds continued to generate massive revenues for Bear until fixed income accounted for 90% of total revenue. Bear stocks peaked in 2005 at $172. Only when the hedge funds turned in early 2007 did Bear come to realize that these funds contained some real problems.

Still, Bear had a year to live and get its house in order or find a buyer before the final run in March 2008. Cayne did nothing to find a serious buyer or to deal seriously with the toxic funds or to reduce leverage and increase capital. He was clearly over his head but would not step aside for a successor. As it turned out neither Schwartz (who finally became CEO weeks before the run) nor Spector would likely have been more successful in turning the firm around had they been given the time to do so. Cayne, in the middle of the crisis over the mortgage hedge funds, left town for a two week bridge tournament during which time he has unreachable. During a phone conference on March 12 dealing with the final run on the firm it was discovered Cayne had left the call to return to his bridge game. This guy was worth $1 billion at Bear’s peak in 2005 and couldn’t be bothered to interrupt his bridge game to try to save the company. Cohen mentions that Cayne reportedly pays world class bridge players $500,000 year to play with him bragging that it is like playing the pro am with Tiger Woods. These guys clearly live in a different world.

The epilogue covers the collapse of Lehman Brothers. This time David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital (another bridge player) was the major player to short the stock and start the run on Lehman. The executives at Lehman credit him with killing them. By this time, September 2008, the government had moved to take over Freddie Mac, Fanny May, and AIG. Like Bear, the Lehman crisis had to be resolved over a single weekend, only this time Merrill Lynch was in the same situation so the government had to deal simultaneously with two potentially disastrous failures, both much larger than Bear. Bank of America indicated an interest in both firms but at the last minute chose to purchase Merill. Barclays was interested in Lehman and negotiated an agreement in principle which had to be approved by British regulators. The British refused because of the unknown financial risks in Lehman’s holdings and Lehman was out of time to seek another buyer. They filed for Chapter 11. Barclays saw bankruptcy as an opportunity to pick up just those pieces of Lehman they actually wanted and did so. This saved perhaps 10,000 wall street jobs but left the toxic Lehman assets for the court to deal with.

Cioffi and Tannin

Ralph Cioffi along with his bosses boss Mathew Tannin, who Cohen says gave performances worthy of an Oscar instead were indicted on June 16, 2008 in New York on charges of conspiracy, securities fraud, and wire fraud.

The big shortcoming in the book is that it was written by a wall street insider who assumes the reader understands wall street terms and nomenclature. A tutorial for dummies should have been included in an appendix so the reader doesn’t constantly have to go to the web to figure out what he is talking about with his wall street shorthand.

The Ginseng Hunter, Jeff Talarigo, 2008

Old Ginseng Root

Austere tale of a third generation Korean living just across the border in China near Yanji. The grandfather was moved to China by the Japanese for labor. The father and uncle become Ginseng hunters and teach the son their secrets. The first part of the novel is a compact but detailed look at the art of hunter for wild Ginseng plants in the mountains. Once found, the Ginseng plant must be very carefully dug up without damaging the often crooked and complex root. The value of the plant depends on its age but any damage will leave the root worthless. It may require hours to dig a single root.

Written in the first person by the son, we are taken into an austere self sufficient life. The hunter lives alone and enjoys his solitude. He tried living with a woman once but it didn’t work out. He visits a brothel during his monthly trips to Yanji in the warm seasons to sell his ginseng and buy supplies.

During one one trip he meets a Korean prostitute and for the first time can’t get her out of his mind. They start meeting in parks during his visits and we learn her tragic story and the start of the novel’s preoccupation with the story of the Korean people under the incompetent rule of Kim Jong-il, son of North Korea’s founding dictator. We learn of the constant reeducation and intimidation as the country falls apart and the people starve. The Korean prostitute had a husband who worked in the mines and a daughter who attended school. The mine closed and her husband was detained and never returns. The daughter dropped out of school to help her mother scrounge for food. They spot the daughter’s former teacher scrounging for food and realize the school is closed. The daughter is killed by government authorities and the woman runs away to China where she is taken to the brothel by a trucker. She realizes she will be fed and sheltered so stays in the brothel.

As things deteriorate in Korea, more and more cross the shallow river to China looking for food, jobs, or trade. The Chinese government offers rewards to return illegal Koreans to the border and pressure businesses to get rid of their Korean workers. A young Korean girl visits the ginseng hunter’s garden to steal corn and the hunter decides to try to take care of her. He realizes he will need help to raise a young girl and goes to the brothel to try to buy the prostitute but she is no longer working there. He travels downriver looking for her as winter sets in. He realizes that the industrial plants built on the river on the Korean side are all shut down.

The hunter is loaned a hand gun by his neighbor to help protect himself from encroaching Koreans including armed and starving soldiers, who are starting to cross the river looking for food. He can’t bring himself to use the gun, but he does assist in turning over some Koreans to be returned to the border for which he receives money. For penance he buys all the seaweed from a Korean woman using his bounty money so she can take the money back home.

Bridge to North Korea

The author spent considerable time in Yanji and the surrounding region learning about ginseng hunting and hearing the takes of terrible happenings in North Korea. He assembles some of these stories into a compact, compelling, story. It is not a story of hope but a testimony to the strength and endurance of people under harsh and trying circumstances.

The Pearl Diver, Jeff Talarigo, 2004

Aerial View of Nagashima Leprosarium

The author’s first novel follows the life of a Japanese pearl diver who contracts Hansen’s disease (Leprosy) as a young woman in 1948. As was the practice then, she was sent to an isolated Leper’s colony on a small island at Nagashima. The first drugs that stabilize the disease have just been discovered and she is able to live a full life without the disfigurement of the disease. This being Japan, the disease comes with a shame and stigma that attaches to her whole family and prevents her older sister from marrying. The family abandons her. We follow conditions and treatment in the colony where the patients are treated more as prisoners than as sufferers of a horrible disease. As time passes more drugs are discovered and doctors learn to differentiate contagious from non contagious carriers. It eventually becomes possible for individual patients to reintegrate into society if they wish, but as with prisoners, it takes our heroin some years and several experiments before she tries to return – but never to her home island. Will she remain in society or return to the colony to live out her life? Very readable and a reminder of what it was like to contract an ancient disease that is all but eradicated in much of the world today.

Nagashima Paper Money

The Elephanta Suite, Paul Theroux, 2007

Taj Mahal Hotel and Gateway to India Mumbai

A collection of three short stories explores tourism and global business in contemporary India. The first, appearing first in the New Yorker, follows two wealthy fiftyish Americans, married for 30 years, who vacation at a spa purposely isolated from its surrounding community in a luxurious but totally artificial environment. When they become sexually involved with their masseurs, both native employees are fired. Somewhere along the line, the Americans buy some scarfs made from the hair of endangered antelope. Explores tourism as an isolated and insular world created artificially for the wealthy westerner.

The second story follows a divorced American lawyer, sent to Mumbai to negotiate product outsourcing for American companies. He becomes involved with street prostitutes, falls in love with India and finds excuses to remain. His Indian associate, a Jain from a successful family slowly replaces the American and then delivers him to an ashram where he appears content to remain.

The third story concerns two young American girls out to see India. One meets a rich young Western man and never gets out of Mumbai. The other continues traveling by herself until she meets an aggressive, nasty, fat Indian guy and comes to grieve.

Only the second story retains your interest as the lawyer goes native and we see a reversal of roles. At least each story is short.

Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China, Kang Zhengguo, 2007

A biography and history of Communist China from the Mao revolution of 1949 to the present through the life of a stubborn, naive, innocent young man who wanted only to be left alone to study ancient Chinese literature, to write about it, and maybe teach. Instead, two innocent letters drew him down the rabbit hole from college to a brickworks laborer to a labor prisoner to a forced labor orchard worker to an adopted peasant with a peasant wife and family.
Xi’an Bell Tower<>
Hua San near Xi’an

Kang grew up in Xi’an the capital of Shaanxi province and one of four capital cities of ancient China. Kang’s father was a heroin and alcohol addict but remained a fully employed engineer. His mother was a college graduate and full time teacher. Kang spent much of his childhood in the two acre Silent Garden home living with his respected Buddhist grandfather who supported the Communist revolution and saw Communism and Buddhism as compatible. Initially his grandfather held important committee positions in the local party. It was his grandfather’s personal library that led Kang to his lifelong long of ancient Chinese literature.

Things seemed all right for the family until the Great Leap Forward campaign of 1958 after which there was widespread famine and purge after purge, slowly reducing his “landlord” family to increased hardship and poverty. For a time, his grandfather was forced into a tiny apartment but when the owner wanted it back he was returned to a small space in Silent Garden which was allowed to fall into ruins. The most disastrous campaign after the Great Leap Forward was the 1966 Cultural Revolution. This campaign effectively closed schools for ten years and an entire generation of Chinese grew up without much education. It also resulted in sending record numbers of city people to the countryside, some of which were never able to return.
Dr Zhivago
Kang was a mischievous child and so-so student but was accepted to Shaanxi Normal University. When another student in trouble with the authorities was discovered with a letter from Kang, Kang was expelled from College and forced to work in a primitive brickworks. He taught himself Russian and read any Russian literature he could find. When Doctor Zhivago was published, he naively wrote to a university in Russian asking to borrow a copy. This letter got him three imprisonment with forced labor. The title Confessions refers to the numerous confessions and struggle sessions he was forced to undergo. The hardened prisoners helped him learn not to give up information the authorities didn’t already know and to write minimal confessions needed to survive. After release from prison, he was unable to find work in Xi’an and was forced into a job at a remote orchard. While his family suffered greatly from the Cultural Revolution, Kang himself was going through his own nightmare and had little contact with the rampaging students.
Shaanxi Peasants<>
Shaanxi Wheatfields
The book spends a lot of time on the residency registration system which forces everyone to stay where they are registered. The system allowed the regime to keep peasants away from the cities and to exile dissidents to the countryside where they would be unable to return to the cities. Kang was registered in Xi’an, but without hope of finding work, he was a burden on his family. They attempted to arrange a marriage with a peasant girl but could find no-one willing to marry a former political prisoner. Finally they located an old bachelor, in 1972, who was willing to adopt Kang, then 28 years old. This allowed Kang to change his name and become a peasant, hopefully escaping his past. Several years later he married a peasant girl and they had two children. In preparation for his life as a peasant Kang studied clock and electric motor repair in Xi’an before moving to the village. These skills allowed Kang to travel to other villages and supplement the communes meager pay.
Tianamen Square Protest
Finally Mao died in 1976 and subsequent reforms allowed Kang to return to Shaanxi Normal University and have most of his dossier purged. As a graduate student, the ever non conforming Kang chose to write his thesis on an ancient erotic work. His advisor failed him and refused to allow him to graduate. He kept appealing and eventually was allowed to graduate and was later granted his masters degree. Kang taught English at Jiaotong University. In his usual naive blundering fashion, towering over other protesters and appearing clearly in the photos wearing a headband reading “Aim Your Guns Here“, Kang protested the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Kang had managed to keep and listen to short wave radio through much of his ordeal and kept up with events across the country during these protests via radio.

He published a monograph, A Study of Classical Chinese Poetry on Women and by Women, and in 1990 received a letter from Professor Chang of Yale University praising the work. In 1991 Yale University invited Kang to participate in a conference on Women and Literature in Ming-Qing China to be held in 1993. It took Kang the full two years to get the passport and documents needed to attend the conference. Professor Chang turned out to be a woman. Kang returned to China after the conference to the amazement of his friends.

In 1994 Yale invited Kang to become a Chinese language teacher at Yale. To get the documents this time, Kang had to quit his job and give up his apartment before authorities would consider his application. He wanted to bring his family this time and Yale sent documents to support this. The American embassy in Beijing at first refused a visa for Kang’s 18 year old daughter, but Yale pressured them to relent. His wife adjusted well, first working in a day care center, then getting a job at a surgical supply manufacturer in New Haven. His children also adjusted well and have done well in America, which Kang considers his best legacy.

This work is also a reminder that China hasn’t changed much today in human rights terms. Kang was detained for several days in 2000 during his last trip to China for an academic conference. His Tiananmen Square protests and correspondence with friends again came back to haunt him. If not for the pressure from the president of Yale through the State Department, he might have disappeared down the rabbit hole again. After this experience, Kang became an American citizen. Kang points out that economic interests keep human rights news of China to a minimum and we tend to forget how repressive the regime still remains. His conclusions about modern China:

I took these clandestine scenes (illegal mahjong gambling) as a metaphor for the Chinese society in the post-Mao, post-Deng era; it was a large-scale producer of material, spiritual, and even human garbage, hidden behind a curtain of propaganda.

Good thing he no longer goes to China.

For a more detailed indictment of Mao Tse Tung’s reign June Chang, author of Wild Swans, has written Mao: The Unknown Story. see

Ghost Wars, the Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Steve Coll, 2007

Lengthy but meticulous study focusing on the CIA role in Afghanistan, this book is a long delineation of little known detail with a minimum of interpretive conclusion: “Just the facts, ma’am.” Treatment is quite sterile and it is easy to imagine the equally sterile environment and personalities of American policy makers in air conditioned offices in Washington trying to formulate a policy toward a place about which they don’t care, don’t know, and have given almost no thought.

Ronald Reagan and William Casey

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to shore up their communist client government from mujahedin insurgents, Reagan officials saw a golden opportunity to kill Russians by funneling money and arms to the insurgents. After winning Reagan the Republican nomination assuring himself of any cabinet post he wanted, William Casey, who ran spies inside Germany in the closing days of WWII for the OSS, chose to become Director of the CIA. The militant Jesuit trained Casey liked the idea of militant Isamic jihadist fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

He found a close ally in Prince Turki al-Faisal, son of king Faisal, the Georgetown Jesuit educated Saudi head of intelligence the GID. Together they funneled as much as $500,000 a year to the mujahedin. To maintain plausible deniability, (although everyone knew) the money and arms were fed largely through the Pakistan intelligence network, the ISI, giving them enormous power and influence inside Pakistan and out. Compared to the billions Afghanistan was costing the Soviets, the CIA and GID programs seemed an efficient bargain at the time. Afghanistan became the most costly covert effect ever for the CIA.

Ahmed Shah Massoud

The ISI, operating largely independently of Pakistan political and military control was dominated by Pashtun Pashto speaking personnel. They made sure the lions share of money and arms went to loyal Pashtun mujahedin, largely to Hekmatyar. Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen and other Shia minority mujahedin received relatively little support until the CIA started dealing directly with these minority leaders like Ahmed Shah Massoud, who dominated the Panjshir Valley and was in the position to cut off the all important Salang highway, the central supply route from the Soviet Union.

A side effect of all this largess was the establishment of training camps for jihadists from Algeria and Morrocco all the way to Indonesia and the Phillipines including a heavy weighting of Arabs. An entire generation of holy warriors was prepared to return to their home countries to fight for the establishment of Ismamic states. The CIA was indifferent to this and only one American, the multilingual Edmund McWilliams voiced any concern over the long term implications of this radical training and indoctrination. At least one school near Peshawar, the epicenter of this training activity was funded and headed by Osama bin Laden. bin Laden was an unfavored son of a powerful family involved in construction for the Saudi royal family. While his half brothers attended school abroad, Osama attended a radical Islamic school at home. After school, in 1981 Osama went to Pakistan to join the jihad. The authors found evidence of only one skirmish between bin Laden’s funded group and the Communists in which a few followers were killed and bin Laden may have been shot in the foot. This small skirmish seemed to have ignited bin Laden into the megalomaniac he became.

At the time of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan there were 33,000 madrassas teaching fundamental Islamic faith and jihad in Pakistan. For an account of a lone American building secular schools in Pakistan see

Firing Stinger Missile

The Soviet Union had spent $48 billion and the US, China, and Saudis spent $12 billion. Afghanistan was in ruins. Afghanistan had more personal weapons than India and Pakistan combined. Anti tank rocket launchers were everywhere, and of 2500 Stinger anti aircraft heat seeking missiles shipped into Afghanistan, over 600 were unaccounted for. The CIA abandoned all efforts in Afghanistan except to attempt to buy back Stinger missiles at $150,000 each to keep them out of Iranian hands. despite CIA efforts, at the time of the Taliban takeover an estimated 100 Stingers were in Iran and the Taliban had 50 or 60 which they refused to give up.

Much of the $12 billion from the US and Saudis had been funneled through the Pakistani ISI. The US cut off most of its other aid and imposed sanctions on Pakistan to try to stop the development of atomic weapons. Pakistan went ahead and tested their first nuclear bomb in 1998. The influence of the US was at a very low point during this period.

After the Soviet departure, Afghanistan descended into a guagmire. The stalemate with the Najibullah communist government was broken when Uzbek communist commander Aburrashid Dostum defected to Massoud’s Supreme Council. Kabul fell to Dostum and Massoud but Pashtun rival Hekmatyar took a portion of Kabul and the two groups proceeded to destroy much of the city and kill thousands of civilians.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991 and the US joined Saudi Arabia to expel them, extremist jihadists throughout the world including bin Laden and Hekmatyar denounced the Saudi royal family for inviting an infidel army into the holy land of Saudi Arabia. Surprised, the GID and Turki started funneling even more money to the extremist groups in a effort to neutralize their anti Saudi sentiments. As one GID official put it, “we don’t do operations, we write checks.” One result of the controversy over Kuwait was the Saudi falling out with Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden proposed to the royal family a plan to send 60,000 of his own private fighters to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. When he continued to criticize Saudi policy, he was expelled from Saudi Arabia and later lost his citizenship. He fled to Sudan which was the new safe haven for jidahists after Pakistan.

Mullah Omar

This new stalemate in Afghanistan continued until Durrani Pashtun English speaking Hamid Karzai, living in exile in Pakistan, threw his support behind the Taliban, a disciplined, principled, effective fighting group of radical, rural, Islamic fundamentalists. The ISI and GID started funneling support and weapons to the Taliban who quickly gained control of Kandahar and Herat in the west.

The reentry of the US and CIA was engineered by (what else) oil and gas, this time from Turkmenistan with Houston based Unocal proposing a pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. This crazy idea which even Kissinger called “the triumph of hope over experience” attracted Clinton White House interest. Unocal got an agreement with Turkmenistan but the Benazir Bhutto government preferred an alternative proposal from Bridas of Argentina. The CIA was convinced Bridas had bribed Benazir Bhutto’s notoriously corrupt husband Zardari. Bridas may also have funneled as much as $1 million to Massoud to gain his approval for their pipeline proposal in north Afghanistan. Unocal approached the Taliban.

The US and Saudi Arabia warned Sudan that harboring terrorists would be bad for them. The Sudanese asked Turki of GID if the Saudis would take back bin Laden but they were unwilling. It is still unclear if Sudan offered to give bin Laden to US authorities. In any event, Sudan expelled bin Laden who moved to Jalalabad in Afghanistan. When the Taliban took Jalalabad bin Laden offered $3 million to the Taliban to bribe mujahedin commanders. Defections mounted and the Taliban took Kabul forcing Massoud to retreat to his Panjshir Valley in the north. Bin Laden moved to Kandahar. When the Taliban took Kabul, former communist president Najibullah was completing his translation of the British era history The Great Game into Pashto saying “Afghans keep making the same mistake.” The Taliban executed him. For an account that blames the partition of India to create Pakistan and drew the Afghan border on the British Great Game see

GID’s Turki flew to Kandahar to meet personally with Mullah Omar to try to convince the Taliban to deliver an increasingly Saudi embarrassing bin Laden to the Saudis. Omar seemed to agree but then nothing happened.

Unocal opened a permanent office in Kandahar right across the street from bin Laden’s compound. Unocal built a facility to train Afghani workers to build the pipeline right next to a bin Laden training facility. The CIA which by now had a dedicated bin Laden group never talked to Unocal officials or asked them for help watching bin Laden. Instead, CIA covert operations trained a group of Afghani fighters to try to intercept and capture bin Laden. This group may have ambushed a bin Laden convoy but failed to capture him. The CIA next planned an elaborate scheme to storm bin Laden’s Tarnak farm but the plan was never approved by George Tenet and the Clinton administration.

Where earlier American policy toward Afghanistan was motivated solely by the attempt to kill Soviets, now the policy was motivated solely by attempt to get or kill bin Laden. Nothing else mattered to policy makers. The special group at the CIA assigned to deal exclusively with bin Laden were nicknamed the Manson Family for their rabid maniacal obsession.

Then bin Laden blew up two US embassies in Africa. The administration which was unwilling to endanger civilians in the Tarnak farm plan were suddenly willing to send missiles into Afghanistan to kill who knew who. Relying on typical bad CIA intelligence, Clinton authorized two missile strikes, one on a near empty training camp in Zawhar Kili and one on a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. The CIA had wanted to hit more targets. Critics called the strikes Clinton’s Wag the Dog strategy to divert attention away from his sex scandal and impeachment. A covert ground operation suddenly looked more attractive. Despite several opportunities including bin Laden’s presence in an isolated hunting camp for a week, the administration never authorized another strike. When CIA bad intelligence caused the US to blow up the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake in 1999, Tenet and Clinton never authorized another serious attempt on bin Laden.

Throughout the Taliban and bin Laden Afghanistan era, the US continued to rely on Pakistan and Saudi intelligence even though both countries were actively supporting the Taliban and bin Laden was actively training Arab fighters that Pakistan could deploy in Kashmir in their conflict with India. Moussoud, who fought al Qaeda troops regularly and once trapped bin Laden behind his lines, never received serious US arms and support. Moussoud had to rely on Iranian and Russian support to stay in action. Moussoud was assassinated by jihadists on the eve of the September 11 attacks.

A new deal on the oil and gas pipeline was signed on 27 December 2002 by the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan and in 2005 Asian Development Bank submitted the final version of feasibility study. The pipeline is currently stalled because the Taliban is still operating in areas crossed by the proposed pipeline.

For a complete look at the CIA’s failures see Legacy of Ashes.

For a closer look at the CIA’s efforts in Tibet see the CIA’s Secret War in Tibet.

Certainty, Madeleine Thein, 2006

Bike Path

Philosophy, (Bertrand) Russel had said, was a means to teach one how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation.

Vancouver

An excellant first novel is a complex interwoven world ranging epoch of families over several generations compacted into a neat 300 pages. Particularly well done is the avoidance of referring to individual character’s race or group. Only by inference do we assume that central characters are Chinese, Malay, Canadian, or Dutch.

Included are Sandakan, British North Borneo, a small rubber plantation sea port, capital of Sabah, and site of a notorious Japanese prisoner of war camp, Hong Kong, site of another Japanese prisoner of war camp where a British soldier kept an encrypted diary, Jakarta, Melbourne, Vancouver, the Netherlands.

Jakarta

Characters are a Sandakan rubber plantation manager, his wife and son and the son’s best friend, a girl who becomes a talented fisherman and later becomes a photography shop assistant in Jakarta. The son goes to university in Melbourne where he meets the daughter of a Kowloon restauranter. They marry and move to Vancouver. Their daughter becomes a radio documentary maker and marries a Canadian pulminary disease specialist. The novel explores the costs of surviving the war and Japanese occupation, the end of colonial rule, both British and Dutch, in the region, the resulting family secrets, and the efforts of the younger generation to find those secrets. Also an exploration of death and loss.

Ysbrechtum Cottage

A Thousand Splendid Suns, 2007 Khaled Hosseini

This is the second novel by the author of The Kite Runner. Hosseini left Afghanistan as a child in 1980 during the Soviet occupation and is now a U.S. representative on the U.N. Refugee Agency.

This novel follows the lives of two Afghan women through the turbulant years from the 1960’s to the present. The older woman grew up near Herat, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy merchant and a house maid. She lives with her mother in a small isolated hut and her father teaches her to fish on his occasional visits. A kindly old imman teaches her to read and write a little and to memorize prayers from the Koran. It will be her only education. When her mother dies in 1974, the father arranges for the girl to marry a much older Pashtun widower from Kabul, a cobbler with his own business. The cobbler has a violent temper and his abuse and mistreatment of the girl increases as she is unable to give him a son or any child.

In the meantime the Shah is overthrown and Afghanistan becomes a republic. Communists gain influence and by 1980 the Soviets have occupied the country. The Soviet period in Kabul represents a high water mark for women in Afghanistan with equal opportunities in education and professional careers.

The second girl in the novel grows up during this time. Her father is a professor and she attends a good school where she exels. Her best friend is a boy who lost a leg to a land mine. As they grow their friendship turns to romance. Her much older brothers have joined the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets. Reagan supplies them with Stinger missles and anti-tank weapons. The brothers die but the Soviets leave Afghanistan as their empire self destructs.

The Mujahideen now break into tribal factions fighting each other in the streets of Kabul, their leaders, Sayyaf, the Hazaras, Massoud, Hekmatyar, with the treacherous Uzbek Dostum waiting to choose sides. Civilians die as rockets hit houses and business in Kabul, women and children are raped, and civilians beaten and killed because of their tribal origin.

The one legged boy leaves with his family for Pakistan. A rocket hits the girl’s house killing her parents and wounding her. The cobbler and his wife rescue and take care of her. The cobbler asks the girl to become his second wife. The girl knows she is pregnant by her one legged lover and agrees to the marriage. The cobbler’s business is burned in a rocket attack and the family become destitute. By 1992 the Mujahideen are in control and name Afghanistan an Islamic state. Fighting continues.

The Taliban, led by illiterate Pashtun radicals educated in Saudi financed madrasas in the tribal areas of Pakistan emerge as a unified fighting force, taking city and region one after another. By 1996 they enter Kabul. Among their restrictive rules, girls are no longer allowed to attend school. The Mujahideen retreat to form the Northern alliance in northern Afghanistan. Bin Laden sets up Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

The one legged boy returns to Kabul and meets the girl, the cobbler tries to kill her and the first wife kills him. She is arrested by the Taliban and tried for murder while the one legged boy, girl, and children flee to Pakistan.

The Taliban destroy much of the cultural heritage of Afghanistan, and in 2001, they destroyed Bamiyan’s colossal Buddhas which stood for 1,500 years. Al-Qaeda attacks the U.S. and the U.S. declares war in 2002 against Afghanistan and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Some refugees, including the one legged boy and the girl, now married, and their children return to Kabul to assist with orphans and other refuges.

For more on the tribal areas of Pakistan, the arbitrary British border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Durand line drawn in 1893, and the story of the creation of Pakistan at the start of the cold war see.

A lone American former mountain climber, Greg Mortenson, worried about the absense of educational opportunities in isolated areas of Pakistan, has started a series of secular schools as an alternative to the radical madrasas which trained the Taliban. Mortenson has even negotiated successfully with Afghan drug warlords to be allowed build schools in isolated areas of Afghanistan.

The Lizard Cage, Karen Connelly,2005

This Canadian’s first novel is drawn from her experience living for two years on the Thailand Burma border. The cage is a fictional Burmese prison where the songbird, a songwriter singer, has been kept in solitary confinement in the teak box for seven years. His father died in prison while a political prisoner and his brother is a freedom fighter near the border. His mother sends him food and supplies, most of which are stolen by the guards. The songbird is reduced to catching and eating the small lizards that live in his cell, hence the name of the novel.

The novel is populated by a psychopathic, stupid guard who endangers everyone with his violence; by a humane guard who helps the songbird when he can and comes to know the songbird’s mother; and by a twelve year old orphan who has lived in the prison since his father, and employee at the prison, was killed by a truck when the boy was seven. Also figuring are other prison characters, the tiger, boss of the criminals, the fat corrupt cook, the huge silent Indian, and various other guards and inmates, and of course Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s symbol of democratic freedom.

The novel could be compared to the works of Alexander Solzenitzen on life in the Soviet Gulag; dark, soulless godless, places. Connelly’s songbird sees his imprisonment as an opportunity to meditate, fast, and seek enlightenment or Nirvana. The influences of Buddhism are everywhere in this novel as they are in Burmese life in spite of the repressive military dictatorship. The prison has an ancient tree that the inmates have turned into a Buddhist shrine.

The novel centers on a simple pen, originally intended to entrap the songbird and thus extend his prison sentence but instead becomes the mechanism changing the life of the orphan and allowing a poetic account of the cage to be smuggled to the world at large. The novel is well written and captivating.