KABUL - It was six in the morning on Oct. 3, 2009, when insurgents began their assault on Combat Outpost Keating, a remote area in Nuristan in eastern Afghanistan.  The attack started with small-arms fire, but soon escalated as up to 300 militants -- it's unclear exactly how many -- started to rush the outpost where two American platoons and a command element were positioned.  Base commanders at Keating called for urgent air support.  Insurgents were inside the wire.  Parts of the outpost were on fire. If help didn't come soon, the commanders said, COP Keating would be overrun. 

Air support eventually did arrive at Keating and the attack was repelled, but eight American soldiers were killed. 

A military investigation last week into the deaths offered harsh criticism.  The investigation said commanders on the ground had become "complacent" with base security at COP Keating once they learned that the outpost scheduled to be closed. Military commanders in eastern Afghanistan had determined that COP Keating was of no real strategic or tactical value.  In effect, the investigation blamed commanders for not continuing to adequately secure Keating once they knew U.S. troops would be leaving it.  

"There were inadequate measures taken by the chain of command, resulting in an attractive target for enemy fighters," the investigation said.

But why were U.S. troops still at COP Keating in October 2009, months after commanders decided to evacuate to outpost?  Was it complacency that killed the soldiers, or delays in leaving the outpost in the first place? 

Clearly something went wrong.  Why did eight American soldiers die defending an area the U.S. military no longer wanted to hold?

This May 2009 photo provided by the Mace family was taken by Army Spec. Stephan Mace at Combat Outpost Keating. The photo shows the base on low ground, surrounded by craggy outcroppings. Mace and seven other soldiers were killed Oct. 3, 2009.

Troubling questions?
The answer isn't straightforward and raises troubling questions about who decides where American troops are positioned on the battlefields of Afghanistan.  

Military officials familiar with decision making in eastern Afghanistan suggest that delays in closing COP Keating were motivated by politics in Kabul and a desire to appease the Afghan government. They spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject matter.

The province of Nuristan is a series of sparsely populated valleys, forests and mountain peaks.  The few people who live in Nuristan survive mostly on subsistence farming.  I was in the area last week.  It looks like Colorado, green in the summer, cold in the winter.  If it weren't dangerous, Nuristan would be a paradise for hikers, rock climbers and cross-country skiers.  But it is dangerous.  

COP Keating was part of a cluster of outposts, which also included COP Lowell and Observation Post (OP) Fritshe.  Observation posts like Fritshe are generally smaller than combat outposts and usually serve,as their name implies, as lookout posts for larger bases.

The summer of 2009 was a highly sensitive time in Afghanistan.  Violence was reaching record levels and national elections about to be held. President Hamid Karzai was facing tougher-than-expected opposition from his former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.  Karzai and his supporters were counting on winning trouble spots in the south and east.  These warzones would be key in determining the election.  

In June, just two months before the vote, the governor of Nuristan, Jamaluddin Badr, a Karzai ally, complained to the Afghan government -- and in the Afghan media -- that his province was too unstable for elections.  Specifically, the governor worried a village called Barge Matal would be overrun by insurgents.  By any standard, Barge Matal cannot be considered vital to American security interests.  It is tiny and remote, with a population of roughly 2,500.

Nonetheless, the Afghan government requested U.S. assistance in securing Barge Matal before the August vote.  The U.S. military complied.  After all, the U.S. mission was, and remains, to support the Afghan government.

In July 2009, about 200 American soldiers were dispatched to Barge Matal.  Since U.S. forces didn't have an existing presence in the area, the troops set up a temporary base in a school.   

Supply challenges in the region
U.S. troops and supplies in Afghanistan have long been in short supply.  It is especially complicated and costly to maintain outposts in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.  There are few roads in the region.  Almost everything must be brought in by air.  Soldiers need water, fuel, food, ammunition, air support, access to medevac helicopters and, above all, protection.  It is even more difficult to supply and protect men when they are operating outside a fortified outpost, as the soldiers were in Barge Matal, patrolling from a school.  At least on a base, even a small one, soldiers have a fixed perimeter.

Although U.S. commanders had decided to close COP Keating, COP Lowell and OP Fritshe, the Barge Matal mission requested by the Afghan government changed the calculation.  Military officials say with the Barge Matal operation under way, commanders on the ground simply didn't have the resources required to evacuate Keating, Lowell and Fritshe; so the outposts remained.

On Aug. 20, elections were held across Afghanistan.  I was in Afghanistan at the time.  I visited polling stations across Kabul and spoke to campaign workers and elections monitors.  Based on what I saw and reported, voter turnout was very low.  Elections observers said as few as 10 percent of voters cast ballots in warzones in southern and eastern Afghanistan.  Karzai claimed an early victory.  A U.N. investigation, however, determined that nearly a million ballots, most of them for Karzai, had to be thrown out because of fraud.  The U.N. investigation found evidence of massive ballot box stuffing, especially in dangerous areas in the south and east where there was little oversight.  International monitors simply didn't go to places like Barge Matal because it was too dangerous. With few checks in place, ballot boxes were stuffed, including those in Barge Matal. 

Around 25,000 votes were cast in Barge Matal, approximately ten for every person in the village.  A cynic might say U.S. forces were called in so Barge Matal would be secure enough for local officials to rig the vote.  I have spoken to cynics within the U.S. military leadership in eastern Afghanistan. They go further than that.  They believe the Afghan government used the military (which brought in the ballots by helicopter) to provide cover for vote rigging and that the Afghan request to secure Barge Matal had deadly consequences for U.S. troops.

Four American soldiers were killed from July through September while securing Barge Matal.  But this was only the beginning.  Five more American troops were killed on Sept 8 in nearby Ganjgal, in part because resources they required (air and drone support) were diverted to help the soldiers in Barge Matal. If air assets are sent to one area, they must be pulled from another.

The knock-on effect of Barge Matal appears to have also indirectly contributed to the deaths of the 8 American soldiers at COP Keating. 

'Inertia set in'
After the August elections, U.S. commanders -- for reasons that remain unclear -- failed to resume their plans to evacuate COP Keating.   The evacuation was initially delayed by the Barge Matal mission, and delays seem to have begot more delays.  As one military source said, "inertia set in."

Last week's military investigation into the deaths at COP Keating faulted commanders for not maintaining base security.  Perhaps they should have left COP Keating immediately after the elections.  But the mission at Barge Matal had given the entire area a perception of a greater importance.  It seemed to be a region that was on the Afghan government's radar.

Now some in the military are speaking out and believe the Afghan government's desire to secure Barge Matal, for whatever reason, may have cost 17 Americans lives: four in Barge Matal itself, five at Ganjgal and eight at Keating.  

They died, according to one officer, because senior leaders in the military working closely with Afghan politicians in Kabul were "pandering to the Afghan government." 

For more on the Afghan conflict, click here

As the U.S. looks to train Afghan police and soliders at a faster pace, trainers are being forced to compromise on quality, and at times, safety. NBC News' Jim Maceda reports.

VIDEO: Scramble to train Afghan forces

KABUL – By 10 a.m. this morning, the day looked bright. The sun was shining on Kabul, taking the chill out of the bones. I'd had my breakfast of cereal and tea and read through the rather routine on-line newspapers and news wires.

Convinced the rest of the day would be just as pleasantly quiet, I went to get ready for a TV shoot with a U.S. Army chaplain who gives group guitar lessons on the side – his way of boosting troop morale on base.

And then the day took a violent turn.

The sound of the explosion had that dreaded, deep thud that rocked our house and my spirits.

Dario Lopez-mills / AP

An Afghan national policeman gestures as he stands near the Heetal Hotel, not shown in the photo, after an apparent suicide car bomb was detonated in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday.Â

To the roof
Instantly, Iqbal, our NBC News fixer in Kabul, grabbed a camera from inside the office and before I had found my fleece jacket, he was on the roof, videotaping the thick plumes of black smoke billowing in the distance.

By then, there were loud shouts and sirens wailing in the streets. The attack occurred in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, an area favored by diplomats and Western businessmen. We could see rooftops in the area brimming with the pointing and yelling of security teams attached to embassies and aid organizations based in the neighborhood. As the security teams are all too well aware, each and every house here is a potential target.

"It looks like the Tajikistan Embassy," Iqbal yelled, still taping the scene. Before I could digest that information someone else yelled up, "It looks like the house of the former mayor of Kabul."

I was not as fast as Iqbal as we ran out. I couldn't even find my flak jacket. And Mitya, our cameraman, had to run back for his helmet – that's what two weeks without violence will do to your news instincts.

By the time we arrived on the scene, the Afghan police had just cordoned off an area about 100 yards from where the bomb went off, leaving a crater – we were told – 6 feet wide and 3 feet deep. We could see the facade of a building collapsed on itself like a stack of pancakes.

Police and soldiers were running helter skelter, while some civilians, bloodied by flying debris, and perhaps in shock, were calmly getting into vehicles and driving themselves away.

Rumor mill begins
As Mitya videotaped the whole chaotic scene, I needed, more than anything, some reliable information to put into our "on-camera" report. And that's when another kind of chaos kicked in: the Afghan rumor mill.

"The target was a VIP's house," said one young man, his face cut by flying glass from his own home. "But I don't know the VIP."

"What did you see?" I asked him.

"I saw many people running with burned hands and faces."

By now I was getting news from the wire services on my Blackberry (yes it worked even here) from my producer, Yonatan, back at the office. The reports ran the gamut. Four civilians killed. It was a suicide bomber. The vehicle did a back flip in the air and came down between a hotel used by Westerners and a house owned by the brother of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the iconic anti-Taliban leader who was assassinated by al-Qaida operatives just days before the Sept. 11 attacks. 

A spokesman for the brother was adamant that Zia Massoud, a former vice president for Hamid Karzai, was the target. The wire report quoted him: "Before, the Taliban killed Massoud. Now, they tried to kill his brother."

I asked someone in the street, "Was it the house of Zia Massoud?" They replied, "No, it's the former police chief's house."

"The former police chief?  Not the former mayor of Kabul? Or the former vice president?"

Someone else butted into the conversation. "It's the small family guesthouse of Rabbani, the former president."

The confusion was dizzying. "You don't mean Karzai's former vice president?"

It was Iqbal's turn to weigh in. "Sir, I'm hearing that the target was the Heetal Hotel, used by foreigners. And owned by the son-in-law of Rabbani, the former president.''

For the report we filmed at the scene, I opted to talk about the damaged hotel – at least we could see the hotel on camera in the background. I said something generic about the strength of the blast ripping off the front of the hotel, and Mitya pulled out from a shot of the hotel with its pancaked façade, to me on the scene. But it ends up the site wasn't the hotel. We were in fact looking at Zia Massoud's house.

I tried to redo the "standup" report, but by that time the Afghan police – now in large numbers at the scene with nothing to do – started pushing cameramen and reporters and kicking at the tripods of anyone who continued to take pictures. So we headed back to our car, and I had a couple of shaky reports with wrong information to show for the effort.

A bad day all around
The carnage – as it always is – was worse than we had thought. In the end at least eight Afghans, including four women, were killed in the suicide blast, and dozens were wounded.

But as bad as that was, the incident was dwarfed by a series of car bombings in Baghdad that killed four people and wounded as many as 15. 

And another massive blast, which killed at least 20, in central Pakistan. 

Despite all the panic and chaos and missteps, the Kabul bombing would end up being just a blip on our New York and London news desk's radar screen.

So I thought I could return to the promise of the morning – and try to catch up with our Army chaplain whose group guitar lesson was still 40 minutes from ending.

But the suicide bombing, it turned out, was not only close to embassies and expensive villas. The attack happened near the very U.S. military base which housed our guitar-playing chaplain. Now that base was in lock-down. And so was my day.

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – On the heels of President Barack Obama's announcement that 30,000 more U.S. troops will be heading to Afghanistan, it's important to remember one thing that makes the fight there so difficult and unique: Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. 

However, one of the few success stories to be found here is the slow, but steady, demining of the war-ravaged landscape by an unlikely ally – specially trained dogs. 

"We have cleared 60 percent of the country," said Dr. Mohammad Shohab Hakimi, the director of the Mine Detection Center in Kabul, referring to the Mine Action Program in Afghanistan, overseen by the United Nations. The program is focused on locating and disabling mines planted during the war with the Soviet Union (1979-89) and the era of mujahideen fighting that followed in the 1990s.

VIDEO: Dogs sniff out deadly mines in Afghanistan

Leading the way is the Mine Detection Center, whose record for accuracy, speed, and safety is rooted in its use of mine-detection dogs. The only organization of its kind in Afghanistan, the center was established in 1989 – with U.S. government funding – by Hakimi and other Afghans refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan. 

"We thought this is our country," said Hakimi, a former professor of agriculture whose colleagues on the project were other university professors, engineers, and doctors. "And we should work on this particular subject, and we should solve this problem."

When the opportunity finally came to safely return home, Hakimi and his colleagues went back to Afghanistan in 1998. "In those days, the Taliban were in power," he recalled. "When we had discussions with them, they were very positive about de-mining operations in this country."

In fact, the Taliban donated a large swath of land up on Nadir Khan Hill overlooking the capital for the project to use. The Mine Detection Center quickly set up shop, with Hakimi making sure that trees were planted everywhere. The open compound now feels like a national park – dotted with fir trees and carpeted with grass. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

An instructor at the Mine Detection Center in Kabul engages in some "ball training" with German shepherd puppies.

The first group of dogs ever trained by the center came from Thailand and only obeyed commands in Thai. Afterwards, the dogs came from Germany so the instructors and handlers now use primarily German commands. (Although we heard a lot of praise in English – "nice, easy, good dog" was a common refrain.)

Today the animals are mostly German shepherds and Belgian Malinois – known for their keen sense of smell. And all of them are bred in Kabul by the center, which now receives grants from a number of foreign governments to keep their work going.

There are 107 dogs stationed at the center while 151 more are currently deployed across Afghanistan. "And we have now about 21 puppies," said Jabar Baser. (Typically, most dogs work until they are nine years old and then are retired.)

Among the 1,700 Afghan staff employed at the center are technical experts, field workers, de-miners, paramedics, veterinary experts, and instructors who focus on both personnel and, of course, dogs.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A dog handler watches his partner scout the area at the Aynak Copper Mine.

We watched as Bismullah trained the puppies. The 55-year-old former dog handle, who goes by just one name, used to go out into the field with the dogs, but he lost his left eye in a de-mining operation in 1993 and has been an instructor ever since. He was firm but affectionate with the animals, teasing and directing them the entire time.

"This stage is the most critical," he told us as the one-month old animals nipped at one another around our legs. During this period, the dogs are socialized and become used to interacting with humans and accustomed to vehicles. (Judging by the amount of attention my boots were getting, the dogs were quite socialized.) After six months, the animals are introduced to "ball training."

"This stage is so important for us that the dogs – or the small puppies – are so eager, and they're [interested in chasing] the ball," said Baser.  The ball is used as a teaching tool and as a reward for locating explosives (the dogs sit when they find one). If the dog shows a great deal of interest in the ball, fostering an association with finding explosives is that much easier. 

The animals are paired off with handlers at the next level of training, and the two are given a couple more months to grow familiar before they're finally sent on missions. By that point, the dogs are about 20 months old and, on average, will work until they're nine years old.  Throughout their career, all members of dog teams are given refresher training on a regular basis – even when they're out on in the field. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The Aynak Copper Mine is one of the Mine Detection Center's most critical projects.

The thorough training has paid off.  Not just in reputation – the center has posted dog teams overseas, most recently to assist on operations in Yemen and Tajikistan – but also in safety.  In 20 years, the group has lost only five dogs, and up to 20 personnel in de-mining operations.

In fact, recent casualties are mostly due to insurgents who accuse the Mine Detection Center teams of working for the U.S.-led international security force in Afghanistan. And as the war has intensified in the past two years, more and more of the staff have come under threat from insurgents, mostly in southern provinces like Helmand and Kandahar.

The turn of events is ironic, given that the Mine Detection Center was once welcomed by the Taliban, who "consider mines are 'haram' ("forbidden" in Arabic)," according to Hakimi. "Still…we face security problems."

The de-miners repeatedly argue they are neutral in the current war and remind everyone their mission is not to clear IEDs (improvised explosive devices) but anti-personnel or tank mines and unexploded ordnance planted during the Soviet and mujahideen eras. (Although a report on Afghanistan by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines noted that the Taliban insurgents have been accused of using antipersonnel mines.) 

The de-miners, added Hakimi, are "peace workers."

For a monthly wage of $350 that includes a food allowance, they're more than peace workers.  They're patriots.

"It's my duty to do this job," said Saifullah, a 42-year-old dog handler who joined the Mine Detection Center nine years ago, and also goes by just one name. The former farmer has lost 20 relatives and friends in mine blasts and believes by doing this work, "I am serving my country."

KABUL, Afghanistan – Despite the fact that President Barack Obama's speech on Afghanistan was broadcast in the middle of the night for troops watching from the war zone, there was a sense of excitement among U.S. troops watching the announcement at Camp Eggers, a NATO training base in Kabul.

There is an almost universal feeling among those in uniform that this surge is the United States' last chance to turn around what is increasingly seen as a failing war. 

But how can the United States turn the war around?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, believes the way forward is to implement what the military calls its counterinsurgency strategy or "COIN" for short. COIN has become an almost sacrosanct buzzword among military thinkers and strategists, but it is relatively unknown to most Americans.

Now that more Americans troops are going to war, perhaps the public should take a look for itself at what exactly the United States is getting into in Afghanistan. What is the strategy?  How do the most senior commanders plan to "get it right" in Afghanistan?

According to an unclassified military document from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff obtained by NBC News, the COIN strategy has a basic goal. The document says to successfully conduct a counterinsurgency, U.S. and NATO forces "must accomplish three tasks simultaneously":

"Influence insurgent-minded individuals to adopt a neutral disposition."

"Influence neutral-minded individuals to adopt a supportive disposition."

"Retain supportive individuals."

In other words, COIN's goal is to convince militants to stop fighting and to persuade Afghans sitting on the fence – those unsure whether to back the Taliban or President Hamid Karzai's government – to throw their support behind the U.S.-backed government and its security forces.

It sounds simple. But an attempt to visualize the strategy reveals how immensely complicated it is for U.S. forces to accomplish.

Below is the military's schematic, a map of the counter insurgency strategy, that shows what U.S. troops hope to accomplish in Afghanistan. 

Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

This unclassified document from the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shows the U.S. military's plan for "Afghanistan Stability/COIN Dynamics – Security." CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE A LARGER VERSION

The slide is undoubtedly overwhelming.  For some military commanders, the slide is genius, an attempt to show how all things in war – from media bias to ethnic/tribal rivalries – are interconnected and must be taken into consideration.  It represents a new approach to war fighting, looking beyond simply killing enemy fighters.  It underscores what those fighting wars have long known, that everything matters.

But for others, the diagram represents a fool's errand that the United States has taken on in the name of national security. 

Detractors say the slide represents an assault on logic, an attempt to jam a square peg into a round hole. They say the concept of occupying a foreign nation to protect security at home is expensive, time consuming, ineffective and ultimately leads to the "spaghetti logic" of the slide. They say this slide is what happens when smart people are asked to come up with a solution to the wrong question.

Support the war or oppose it, back the surge or think it is digging a deeper hole for the United States, visualizing the counterinsurgency strategy appears to reveal one basic fact: success in Afghanistan will not be easy. 

VIDEO: Richard Engel and a panel of analysts map the surge strategy

More on President Obama's Afghanistan speech:
VIDEO: Afghan strategy outlined
Top war commander lauds build-up
Obama hints at 'more operations' in Pakistan
How will Congress pay for the surge?

KABUL – In the United States, being a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout is just one of many diversions offered to kids. 

But here in Afghanistan, it's not simply a diversion – it's a matter of survival. The worldwide scout motto, "Be Prepared" ("Tayar Osay" in Pashto) takes on a larger, more urgent, importance in this war-torn country.

We could see that clearly at the Alluhodin Orphanage in Kabul on a recent afternoon. Twenty girls, who had been selected out of hundreds at the orphanage to be Afghan Scouts, were training for their safety badges. 

A round of first aid demonstrations was being led by Zainab Ramin, a 16-year-old who came to the orphanage four years ago from Mazar-i-Sharif after her parents were killed in the war with the Taliban.

VIDEO: Scouting in Afghanistan

At first, she and her younger sister went to live with their only relative, an uncle. But he and his wife would not allow the sisters to attend school.  "[We] just worked in the neighborhood houses like washing clothes [or] taking the garbage outside," recalled Zainab. A neighbor took pity on them and suggested they go to the orphanage.

"We go to school and study our lessons.  It's so good for us, and also we are so happy," she said. 

Zainab especially enjoys being an Afghan Scout and admires its values. "A Scout has good character," she said. "A Scout is kind."

Inspired by an old scout
She joined the program after it was launched this summer by PARSA, an Afghan non-governmental organization that works on grassroots development programs. It is currently overseen by Marnie Gustavson, a Seattle native who spent part of her childhood in Kabul during the 1960s.   

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Sixteen-year-old orphan Zainab Ramin wants to be a "brave" Afghan Scout.

Gustavson got the idea to launch the Afghan Scouts from her 28-year-old son, Reese Hume, a former Boy Scout, who has lived in Kabul for the last two years working with PARSA. The pair was traveling in Bamiyan when they encountered a car stuck in snow. "Reese stopped the car to help them and actually had the materials in the back of the car to do the [job]," said Gustavson. 

She realized it was her son's Boy Scout background that had taught him to be so well-prepared.  So she asked him if he wanted to start an Afghan Scouts program.

Hume, who used to work in a children's rehabilitation center in Seattle, didn't hesitate.  "The kids here are so much more open and curious," he said. 

In August, Troop 001 was initiated, consisting of 20 boys and 20 girls aged six to 17.  The Afghan Scouts have created their own oath and rely on donors to sponsor each troop.

The Afghan Scouts actually have a long history; the first camp was established in 1931 and became a thriving nationwide institution until the communists took over the country in 1978.  The Russians folded the Scouts into the Soviet Young Pioneers, a movement started under the Communist Youth League in the former U.S.S.R. that was also notorious for encouraging children to spy on their own families, neighbors, and classmates.  

During the 1990s, the Scouts sought to re-establish themselves in Afghanistan, but their efforts foundered under the Taliban, which banned girls from joining.

The newest version of the Afghanistan Scouts Association was re-started in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, and in at least one way captures the idea of a hopeful, more contemporary society. 

"In the U.S., we have Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, they are two separate organizations, which run different programs," noted Gustavson. "It's kind of ironic really that here in Afghanistan, boys and girls are together, the same."

The Afghan Scouts also differ from the U.S. scouts programs in another fundamental way.

"Girl Scouts in America is … a learning activity," said Gustavson, who was an American Girl Scout herself as a pre-teen. "But it's not as essential as our program is right now on all different levels. We will integrate … much more adult skills."

And that, right now, is the whole point of the Afghan Scouts.

Scout medical training is a major part of the program at the orphanages. "It's very, very relevant for the Afghans, where in the U.S. they may or may not ever need to use those skills.  But with these children, it could be a matter of life or death," said Gustavson. 

It's also about preparing the children for adulthood. 

"The kids in the orphanages get schooling," said Yasin Farid, a founder and the National Director of PARSA.  "But they don't get life skills."

So the Scouts program is designed to equip them with the skills and confidence so that "by the time they leave the orphanage, they can sustain themselves," said Farid.

Still, it's not that easy for Afghan girls, no matter how much training they receive. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Shafiullah Habibi just turned 18 and will have to leave the orphanage soon.

A critical social question is what to do with the children who, according to Afghan law, must leave the orphanage when they reach the age of 18.

Shafiullah Habibi, whose confident demeanor belied his anxiety, just turned 18. "Next year, I don't know," he said when I asked him what he thought 2010 would have in store for him. He has lived at the Tai Maskan orphanage for nine years.

He said he has two older brothers who live and work in Iran, but they don't send any money home. Since Shafiullah also has two younger sisters he needs to start looking after, he will probably have to start looking for a job. "If they let me [stay] in the orphanage, I will continue my [education].  If they won't let me, I should go to work."

But he didn't know what kind of job he will be able to find.  "I am scared," he admitted.  "Because outside [the orphanage] is very dangerous."

Saliha Farid, a PARSA social worker, explained that options for young Afghan men are limited once they leave the orphanage. "After finishing their education, boys have the option to go to the military – to the government side or the insurgency side to earn money," said Farid. 

Shafiullah said that he would never join the military on either side. "I would like to die …helping my people. I don't want to go outside Afghanistan.  There are two countries I never want to go – Pakistan and Iran," said the young patriot. "I hear if I go at this age to Pakistan, they will train me as a suicide attacker and send me back to Afghanistan."

But what are the options for the girls? "Girls are not allowed to live alone in Afghanistan. Or with each other," said Gustavson. "They must be with their extended family, or they get sold off to a family, or they're married off."

Gustavson is considering setting up a boarding school for girls in this age bracket. "We're looking to pilot it and to show that it works and get the girls all into college so they can get on with their lives."

But in the meantime, girls like Zainab face a very uncertain future that too often seems without hope.

Zainab will turn 18 in two years, but she is already worried about her own future and that of her country.

"My uncle is not ready to let us study and finish our school," said the girl who dreams of becoming a psychologist.  Like Shafiullan, she believes in helping her own people.  "That's what a scout is. We are getting ready for the future of Afghanistan …We can help the people."

Click here for more information about PARSA

By Nightly News staff

It
was supposed to be a week devoted to reporting on the military and
political situation in Afghanistan, where a runoff presidential
election is scheduled for Nov. 7.

Yet
even as "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams was still in the air,
making his way toward his first visit to the country in more than a
year, assignments were being overturned. It would turn out to be a week
looking for stories amid extraordinary violence that NBC's Richard
Engel reported has reached record levels.

First came the crashes of three helicopters on Monday,
which killed 14 Americans, making October the deadliest month for U.S.
forces since the war in Afghanistan began eight years ago. Then came the Taliban attack on a U.N. guesthouse Wednesday in Kabul, the capital, which killed eight people — five of them U.N. workers — plus the attackers.

In Kabul, the vibe has changed "literally overnight," Williams observed in an e-mail interview with the Huffington Post.

"Kabul has
hardened and tightened — it's much more about security now that the
Taliban has 'entered the battle space'" with its attack Wednesday,
which has prompted a reassessment of the U.N. role in promoting the
election, Engel reported.

After the blast,
"there was nothing here to salvage," Chris Turner, a truck driver
working as a contractor for the U.S. Defense Department, told Williams,
who toured the devastation afterward.

The
situation is Afghanistan has "deteriorated extremely in the last six
months," Turner said. "I don't know why, but I think we've lost the
minds and the hearts of the people. I think they've turned against us.
And I think our task here is ... very, very difficult, if at all
possible."

For the Americans, winning back those hearts and minds is paramount.

In parts of the
country where there are no doctors or clinics, U.S. personnel and
American-trained Afghan health workers are treating the sick and the
injured — part of a strategy by Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S.
commander in the country, to build "strong personal relationships
between security forces and the local population."

At a camp in the east where U.S. special forces train Afghan commandos, as many as 100 people a day troop into a clinic,
where they receive basic health and dental services that hadn't been
accessible for years. The clinic has forged a bond between local
residents and the military personnel who are so much a part of daily
life here, said the local Afghan commander.

"The people have sensed, really realized that they are the center of gravity," the commander told Williams.

Perhaps not
coincidentally, Williams reported, insurgent attacks on the camp have
stopped now that U.S. money is being spent to help the people.

The clinic, and
others like it, are just one part of the American HA initiative. "HA"
stands for "humanitarian assistance," and food is another big part.

"We want to work ourselves out of a job," said the commander of a U.S. unit in a small town in the east,
where American soldiers supervised Afghan forces who handed out food to
local children with 1,000-yard stares and to men and women scarred by
years of war.

The key to the
operation is the involvement of the Afghan troops — pamphlets that
accompany each handout tells recipients that the food is being provided
by their own neighbors.

"We really want
the people to understand that it's the Afghans, so they can put trust
in their Afghan soldiers," the U.S. commander said.

All the while, the war is still
going on.

Eight more U.S. soldiers were
killed this week by improvised bombs that exploded by the roadside. After more
than eight years of war, October 2009 stands as the deadliest month for U.S.
forces so far.

President Barack Obama and his
top military advisers here and in Washington met in a secure conference call
Friday to continue trying to find a workable policy. Even as the Americans on
the ground here are working on humanitarian initiatives, the administration is
considering
a proposal to send tens of thousands more troops to the country.

Whatever it decides, life will
remain difficult for everyday Afghans, especially the children, untold numbers
of whom have been orphaned by the fighting.

At an orphanage
run by the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization, the executive
director, Andeisha Farid, 26, the fears and threats encroaching on
Kabul melt away. A huge flower garden adds a burst of color to the
cheerful and warm home for 67 girls and 15 boys, who are preparing to
celebrate the Friday holiday with special treats like pomegranates and
bananas.

Farid, a native Afghan who
spent most of her childhood and adolescence in refugee camps in countries
neighboring Afghanistan, recently graduated from the 10,000 Women project in
Afghanistan, which teaches entrepreneurial skills to women from underprivileged
backgrounds, and she has vowed to make life better for these
children.

"We [were] born in war, we
[have] grown up in war and we may die in war, but I really want to do
something," Farid said. "OK, we have gone through [a] very tough situation and
we [are] fed up. But we
shouldn't just give up."

Every child here has an
achingly sad story, but their smiles are testament to Farid's devotion and the
generosity of others. Each child has a sponsor, and the institution itself is
funded by donors around the world — for example, a recent fundraiser in
Brooklyn, N.Y., raised $600 for firewood.

These are lives that are being
saved and launched for the future. The children may not recognize the irony in
the title of today's English-language movie — "Home Alone" — but all of them
came here alone, and they're home now. 

"When I see all the girls, all
the boys, all the small children — when I see their happy faces, I see a future
in them, a bright future, so it gives me hope," she said. "I'm sure I am doing a
difference for the Afghan people."

Click here to see more of Brian Williams' reporting from Afghanistan, including photos from the field, and Web-only video.

I've spent much of the past two weeks – some in New York and the rest in Los Angeles – listening to the pundits and experts talk about the war in Afghanistan. From the Sunday morning network round tables to the Saturday evening interviews on National Public Radio, I've enjoyed a lot of good debate, from both sides of the issue. I've also heard quite a few jaw-droppers.

Here are five popular ideas on the war, the strategy, the nation and the people of Afghanistan – which those of us who spend years reporting from the region find a little misguided.

This is a favorite argument among left-leaning pundits, but while Afghanistan's remoteness may smack of Vietnam, there is a big difference: This is no war of national liberation, embraced by a whole population.

If there's a national "idea" sweeping Afghanistan it isn't freedom from Western colonialists, its freedom from 30 years of conflict. 

SLIDESHOW: On the front lines in Afghanistan

Many Afghans will no doubt continue to sit on the fence until they can see a clear victor – coalition forces or the Taliban. But the vast majority of Afghans do not want a return to the hellish years of the Taliban regime.

They're willing to give coalition forces a chance if that can bring peace to their lives, without fear of revenge attacks or recrimination by the Taliban. That yearning for something other than the Taliban, is one key plus for those who argue that the war is still "winnable." 

.

Those on the right side of the political spectrum love this argument. Not so fast. It's true the surge in Iraq brought breathing space, especially to Iraqis in Baghdad (where most U.S. soldiers "surged to"). And it sent out signals to Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province that the Americans were serious about the fight.

But there are few, if any, positive signs that a similar surge of U.S. forces might trigger a rising up of some local militia, a kind of "Sons of Afghanistan," against the Taliban. In fact, U.S. commanders go to great lengths to deny involvement in the only anti-Taliban militia, the "Peoples Protection Force" based in Wardak province, calling it an "entirely Afghan project" (even though the trainers are U.S. Special Forces).

And that's because, in a nation of warring tribes, this experimental militia has had little success: Local Pashtuns have been unwilling to join forces against fellow Pashtun Taliban in Wardak.

Whereas Iraq saw a Sunni uprising against al-Qaida, there's no such unity of purpose among Afghan tribes, some of whom attack U.S. forces primarily because their tribal rivals have struck deals with the same U.S. units. How do you reach a "tipping point" in a land where tribes are still killing each other over blood feuds that can date back centuries?

VIDEO: New evidence shows Taliban, 9/11 link

3) The Taliban is fighting a local jihad and poses no threat to the U.S. We should focus our troops and resources on al-Qaida, which poses a direct threat from inside Pakistan, and disregard Afghanistan.

This is probably not a good idea. First, al-Qaida and the hard core Taliban share the same ideology: they want to impose strict Islamic religious law or sharia law. The Taliban's goal is to spread sharia law regionally, while al-Qaida wants to spread it globally and kill all infidels along the way.

It doesn't matter if they are Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, foreign fighters, or former Afghan mujahedeen commanders like Jalaluddin Haqqani (based in Pakistan's tribal North Waziristan) or Gulbuddin Hekmetyar (inside Afghanistan proper). They are all part of a holy warrior network supported by al-Qaida money, camps and expertise.

Secondly, these jihadists make no distinction between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For them it's a battle over the land of Pashtuns or "Pashtunistan" – the area that straddles the boundary line drawn by the British in 1893 between what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan – which they have never recognized.

Al-Qaida moves foreign fighters – Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs – in and out of this remote, amorphous land. Along the porous border with Pakistan, I've heard U.S. forces pick up a stream of languages – not just Urdu from Pakistani fighters, but Arabic and Uzbek, as well as the Dari and Pashto of local Taliban – in intercepted radio transmissions. In fact, Afghan officials now estimate there are at least 4,000 foreign fighters, supported by al-Qaida, inside Afghanistan. And there are perhaps more on the way: police recently broke up an al-Qaida ring in Morocco that was preparing to send fighters to Afghanistan.

And in the same breath, Afghan Taliban commanders pledge allegiance to al-Qaida's number one, Osama bin Laden, and Taliban leader Mullah Mohamed Omar.

In other words, the Taliban and al-Qaida are blood brothers on the same holy battlefield. So, targeting al-Qaida in Pakistan, while tolerating the Taliban in Afghanistan, looks like a losing strategy. Doing so, it seems, would only create a larger safe haven for al-Qaida and the Taliban, while destabilizing the whole region.

SLIDESHOW: Saving lives behind the front lines

4) Sending more troops for counter-insurgency and more civilian experts for nation-building is a waste of time and resources if there's no national afghan leader in place.

This may seem like a solid point, but think again. In reality, there has never been a tradition of strong central government in Afghanistan.

When I spoke to tribal elders in Helmand province just before the Aug. 20 elections, many told me they had never even seen a politician from Kabul before. In Afghanistan, politics are truly local. District and provincial councilmen are the powerbrokers whose faces matter to most Afghans, not President Hamid Karzai or his rival candidate in the run-off elections Abdullah Abdullah.

U.S. military and aid officials certainly get that. Since 2006, they've directly invested millions of dollars in discretionary funds into local programs, like alternative farming or the opening of schools and clinics, all on the village level, thus circumventing the corruption-tainted government. Their logic? Seven years of failed top-down reconstruction has turned Afghanistan into one of the donor world's deepest money pits.

So, while the West rightly hopes for a legitimate Afghan leader back in Kabul, some local programs are making a difference on the ground. It may be surprising, but progress is possible without a presidential fiat…or even a president.

Well, not exactly. In fact the British Army resoundingly defeated the Afghan tribes in the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War of 1878, only to be withdrawn by myopic British ministers back in New Delhi and London.

But that's not the point. History really doesn't repeat itself. Only the conditions for success or failure do. And it's perhaps worth remembering that, throughout the annals of the so-called "Great Game" (the period in the nineteenth and early twentieth century when the British Empire and the Russian Empire battled for control over Central Asia) those foreign nations had only their own self-interests at heart. The needs – or wishes – of the Afghans themselves never mattered. 

But this time the Afghan people do matter. In a counterinsurgency, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, would no doubt argue, it's the Afghan people who must rise up against the Taliban. And the only reason they would do so is because they've gained something – security or a better life – which they don't want to lose. The challenge, of course, is convincing the Afghans that, this time, it's not the same old story.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has reported from Afghanistan extensively since the U.S. invasion in 2001. He is currently on home leave in the United States.

See more of NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams reporting from Afghanistan this week.

HERAT, Afghanistan – We watched a teenage girl die last Friday.

Seventeen-year-old Shirin had been brought to the Herat Regional Hospital Burns Unit a few days before we met her. Ninety percent of her body was covered in third-degree burns.

Her mother-in-law said Shirin had burned herself by accident. The girl was preparing a meal in the kitchen but somehow confused cooking gasoline with petrol, she said. 

But Dr. Mohamed Aref Jalali, the director of the burns unit, said Shirin told him in private that she had set herself on fire deliberately after fighting with her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law.

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News

Rezagul set herself on fire to escape her marriage to an abusive and much older husband. SLIDESHOW: See other images of Afghan victims of self-immolation

Many girls in Afghanistan think self-immolation is the best solution for family problems, according to Jalali.

"[For these girls], it's no good to solve the problem with the father-in-law, with the mother-in-law," said the doctor. "They think self-immolation will solve the problem."

It's a "solution" that appears to be a major problem in Afghanistan, particularly among young women between the ages 13 and 25.

In the first seven months of this year, medical staff at the Herat's burns unit – the only one of its kind in the entire country – said they have seen 51 cases of female self-immolation. Only 13 have survived.   

The practice comes from Iran, where many Afghan refugees had fled to during the decade-long war with the Soviet Union (1979-1989) and the era of mujahedeen fighting that followed in the 1990s, said Jalali. But its popularity has spread among Afghan women, often from poor, uneducated backgrounds, where the tradition of child or forced marriages runs strong.

"The forced marriage is the best reason and the important reason, and it starts from the economic problem," said Jalali. 

Often in arranged marriages, women are viewed in very stark terms. 

"She is here only to wash, to clean, to give baby … and nothing more," said Marie-Jose Brunel, a French volunteer nurse at the burns unit who was full of Gallic warmth and purposeful seriousness. "If they have no freedom, no possibility to study, to be considered like nothing, it's very, very difficult."

VIDEO: Afghan girls burn themselves to escape marriage misery

Domestic violence 
Shirin was married two years ago when she was 15 years old.  

But another patient we found at the hospital, down the hall from Shirin, was Rezagul. Skinny and illiterate, the 13-year-old was married at 11 to a man who was almost 20 years older. He was abusive, she told us, beating her whenever she failed to do her housework. So did her in-laws. "My cruel sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and husband … they beat me," she said. 

Out of frustration and homesickness for her own family, Rezagul took drastic action.

"I was in very bad condition," she recalled. "I poured gasoline on myself and set myself on fire. I didn't want to be alive." The burns covered the lower half of her body.

It took several months for her skin to heal properly and she was currently back at the clinic because of chronic kidney pain. Jalali said he would need to finish reconstructive surgery on Rezagul but with physical therapy she would recover nicely.

On the day we visited, Rezagul looked well-adjusted and almost happy. She was no longer married. Her father had welcomed her back home. She was excited about starting to go to school for the first time in her life.

In fact, with her burns covered up, Rezagul looked the picture of health as Brunel, the nurse, teased her – a testament to the success of the burns unit.

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News

At least half of the victims at the Herat Regional Hospital Burns Unit are young children injured in everyday domestic accidents.

Filling a critical void
Brunel, who is usually based in the south of France and volunteers her time at the clinic through the French non-governmental organization HumaniTerra International, has been working with the burn unit's senior medical team since 2003. 

In fact, she was instrumental in starting up the unit – originally as part of the main hospital with only a handful of beds and no trained staff – after a meeting with then-governor of Herat, Ismael Khan, who emphasized the need for a place to treat burns.

In October 2007, after years of fundraising, planning, and training, Brunel and her Afghan colleagues opened the treatment center we were visiting. 

On average, it receives 600 to 700 burn patients a year, the majority of whom are victims of domestic accidents, mostly children. In fact, one ward had dozens of infants – most of them with various limbs wrapped up in gauze and bandages, usually from boiling water that had spilled over from a kettle.

Still, a significant portion of the patients are victims of self-immolation – at least 10 percent, according to statistics kept by the burn unit. "In 2003, when we started, we estimate 350 [self-immolation] cases a year for Herat," recalled Brunel. The number has decreased – at least for those victims from Herat Province – after the hospital and the local government launched a public awareness campaign.

"We have seen decreases," said Brunel. "And I hope with the second year of [the public awareness] campaign, it's better again."

But they need funding, and time. While the incidents of self-immolation from within the province may be on the decline, cases from outside Herat are on the rise. 

"It's going to the other provinces," said Jalali. "Now we have patients from Farah Province, from Nimruz, from Badgis, from Helmand."

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News

The burns unit at the Herat Regional Hospital is the only one of its kind in Afghanistan.

During our visit, we checked back on Shirin every now and then. She had long ago slipped into a delirious state and was murmuring nonstop. Her mother, Hanifa Ahmadi, hovered around her, occasionally stroking her hair. 

Ahmadi – a thin, handsome woman who looks more Persian than Afghan – said she didn't understand why her daughter had set herself on fire. "Shirin is always a happy girl and gets along with everyone," she said.

Ahmadi was convinced that Shirin would soon recover and leave the hospital, but Jalali was unequivocal. 

"She doesn't have long. Maybe she has one hour, an hour-and-a-half," he said. "It's unfortunate, but we can't do anything. Not with 90 percent burns all over the body, third-degree burns."

Brunel agreed. "We can do nothing except … we give dignity," she said. She and an Afghan orderly had taken turns trying to make Shirin as comfortable as possible – giving her a tube to make her breathing easier, feeding her, or just straightening the blankets that covered her burnt body.

The end came later than Jalali had predicted, but come it did. Six hours after we first met Shirin, she died. 

Members of her family rushed past us in the hallway, her mother, then her uncle, an aunt, and then her husband – he looked more confused than grief-stricken. They piled into Shirin's room, wailing, walking back and forth around her bed, hands wringing; even the mother-in-law, with whom the young girl had been fighting just days before.

We stepped away quietly, gathering our things, preparing to leave and trying not to intrude.

But as we walked down the hallway one last time, I ducked my head into the room where Rezagul lay. She looked up, her eyes aglow, and she waved.

The picture of health.

Click here to watch Adrienne Mong's report on Herat's burn unit from NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. See more of Brian Williams special reports from Afghanistan.

For more information about the Humaniterra organization and their work at the Herat Burn Center in Afghanistan, click here.

Afghanistan's presidential elections, marred by allegations of widespread fraud, appear headed for a runoff,  but no matter what the outcome there appears little chance it will change the government's pervasive culture of corruption and crisis of confidence.

"Corruption?  Corruption?  The entire Karzai regime is corrupt!" Dr. Wadir Safi bellows in a fit of anger and frustration.  Outside Kabul University were Safi is a long-standing professor of International Law and Politics, a large crowd of students gathers as Safi delivers an impromptu lecture on what many here see as criminal behavior by President Hamid Karzai and his administration.

Safi has little confidence Karzai's challenger, Abdullah Abdullah could win in a runoff, but insists, "If Karzai is re-elected his government will be illegitimate.  The Afghan people will have "no confidence" in the government, he says.
 
But Safi, and many others from inside and outside the Afghan government who spoke with NBC News, stress that corruption here goes far deeper than fraudulent elections, and in fact infects virtually every level of the Karzai government and Afghan society.

"It's like the mafia" and Karzai is "Tony Soprano," according to one Afghan lawmaker.  "Almost everyone is on the take," from senior government officials, to provincial governors, to the local police.

One of the president's brothers, Walid Karzai, has been publicly accused of facilitating the flow of narcotics out of Afghanistan.  Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said recently that Karzai should throw Walid out of the country. But Karzai has taken no action against his brother.  In fact, in a highly controversial move, Karzai recently ordered five suspected drug dealers released from police custody before they faced any legal action.

One U.S. official involved in counter-narcotics operations tells NBC News that convoys carrying opium and heroin are routinely waved through police checkpoints and border crossings without a second glance. "The drug dealers buy the protection at the top" of the Afghan government.

A share of the money paid in bribes then trickles down to local police commanders and their officers.  Even more shocking, U.S. officials claim that on the way back into Afghanistan some of those same convoys are waved through the same checkpoints, this time carrying weapons that likely end up in the hands of the Taliban -- guns that are then turned on American forces.

This kind of government-sanctioned corruption is not confined only to the top tiers of the Afghanistan leadership or security forces, but infects all aspects and levels of society.  Business owners are frequent targets of criminal shakedowns, demands by government officials and police for illegal "taxes or tolls."  Even common laborers are forced to hand over three days' worth of pay, the equivalent of about $30, to government officials to get a routine work permit.

In his assessment of the war that he sent to President Barack Obama, Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that "widespread corruption and abuse of power" are as big a threat to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan as the Taliban insurgency.  There's some evidence that such rampant and blatant government corruption is driving many Afghans into the hands of the Taliban.

U.S. officials also worry that the Afghan people are beginning to believe that American presence here is only making matters, and their lives, worse. In the wake of the disputed elections, there appears to be a growing perception the Americans and their military are intent on "propping up" Karzai's corrupt regime. U.S. officials can argue that could not be further from the truth, but as Gen. McChrystal knows, in any counter-insurgency perception often trumps reality, and without the support of the people the war would most certainly be lost.

This presents the Obama administration with a critical dilemma.  If Karzai wins a runoff election, as most Afghans and U.S. officials expect, Obama may be forced to pressure him to clean house --  shake up his cabinet and roster of corrupt provincial governors or the U.S. and its military will pull up stakes and go home.  In the short term, neither appears likely.

The Obama administration may consider the consequences of a rapid pullout -- the potential for an Afghan civil war that could create another safe haven for al Qaeda and other extremists --  too great.  At the same time, to many Afghans, Karzai and his regime are beyond rehabilitation.

"When you wash a black cat," says Safi, the university professor, "it only gets more black."
As Obama considers sending more American forces into Afghanistan,
prospects could not be much darker.

 

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Early on a recent morning we were driving to a shoot when an astonishing sight loomed up ahead of us. NBC News cameraman Steve O'Neill exclaimed, "It's the Great Wall of China!"

The "wall" snaking before us, easily several miles long, was made of Hesco sandbags and circled a camp for Chinese workers. Though not permitted to enter the site, we could see rows and rows of neat white buildings with blue trim; the temporary structures looked exactly like the migrant workers' housing at construction sites all across China.

Size apart, it was all somewhat unremarkable, except for the fact that we were in eastern Afghanistan.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

"It's the Great Wall of China," said NBC cameraman Steve O'Neill when we saw the Hesco sandbags surrounding the Chinese workers camp at the Aynak copper mine in Afghanistan.

The Chinese workers – several hundred technicians – are part of a multibillion-dollar Chinese investment in Afghanistan's largest-ever infrastructure project, the Aynak copper mine.

Discovered in 1974 but virtually dormant since the start of the Soviet War in 1979, the Aynak mine is believed to contain the world's second-largest untapped copper deposits and could propel Afghanistan into the ranks of the world's top 15 copper producers. 

After wooing Afghan officials from as early as 2001, a Chinese mainland joint venture finally won the rights in 2007 to develop the site over 30 years. So far, it has sunk more than $4 billion into the project. 

The joint venture – between majority partner China Metallurgical Group Corp. and Jiangxi Copper Corp. – expects production to begin by the end of 2011 with an initial annual output of 180,000 tons of copper that will eventually grow to 320,000 tons. China will have rights to half that output, which it needs to fuel its own massive economic growth.

But the mine is just outside Kabul, in Logar Province, where there has been heightened insurgent activity. Some 1,500 Afghan police are stationed on site with a new police barracks in the works. And although they say they are not attached to the project, the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division occasionally sends units to patrol the area. China – of course, not being a member of NATO – has no troops on the ground in Afghanistan. 

It's this set-up that's feeding a percolating debate about China's role in Afghanistan. 

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

The dormitories housing Chinese workers at the Aynak Copper Mine came from China.

In making the case for converging U.S. and Chinese interests in Afghanistan, Robert Kaplan wrote last week in a New York Times opinion piece that, "The problem is that while America is sacrificing its blood and treasure, the Chinese will reap the benefits. The whole direction of America's military and diplomatic effort is toward an exit strategy, whereas the Chinese hope to stay and profit."

In the op-ed, titled "Beijing's Afghan Gamble," Kaplan also noted, "China will find a way to benefit no matter what the United States does in Afghanistan. But it probably benefits more if we stay and add troops to the fight." 

No doubt the discussion will boil over after James Yeager, an American geologist, and former congressman Don Ritter, who has an advanced degree in metallurgical engineering and studied in Moscow, hold a press briefing in Washington on Thursday.  The event is provocatively titled, "Report on the Aynak Copper Tender in Afghanistan: How China Won and the West Lost." 

Ritter, now president of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, called the Aynak bidding process flawed and colored by the fact the Bush administration "didn't have the capacity or the competency to understand the importance of [Aynak]." Speaking from his home in the Washington area, he said: "We're giving tens of billions of dollars in assistance to Afghanistan, and we're getting no credit."

Ritter said the report to be presented Thursday was not done under the Chamber's auspices. 

NBC News asked the U.S. Embassy in Kabul for comment, but the mission was unable to provide anyone for us to interview in time for this article.  

Ritter says the bottom line is: "We need a policy on developing mines and minerals and oil and gas in Afghanistan. Otherwise, it will be dominated by Chinese, who are wired to the Iranians through their oil investments, and the Pakistanis, because of the China-India competition."

It all sounds like some postmodernist version of the Great Game, with the players this time being the U.S., China and India instead of Britain, Russia and France. 

But an Afghan businessman who runs a construction outfit subcontracting with the joint venture, MCC-JCL Aynak Minerals Co. (also known as MCC), sees the situation differently.

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News

The Aynak Copper Mine in Logar Province, Afghanistan.

"This project will benefit Afghanistan and bring jobs," said Nurzaman Stanikzai, a 44-year-old native of Logar Province.  His company has been helping build some of the roads at the copper mine as well as the dormitories for Chinese workers. "The American troops should start projects like this copper mine."

In addition to setting up the copper production infrastructure, which includes a smelter, power generation station, coal mine and groundwater system, the Chinese joint venture is also building roads, Afghanistan's first national railway,  new homes for villagers who will be resettled from the immediate area of the mine, hospitals and schools.

Government officials expect the copper mine to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and royalties as well as provide jobs – direct and indirect – for nearly 40,000 people.

And in contrast to many Chinese investments on the African continent, where Chinese labor is typically brought in, most of the jobs from the Aynak copper mine project are designed to go to the Afghan people.

Under the contract terms, initially some of the workers, including the mine technicians, will be Chinese, but over time training will be provided to the Afghan workers so they can take over more skilled jobs.

"The instability in our country today is due to joblessness. Poverty is the problem," said Stanikzai as he warmed to his theme one afternoon in the spartan comfort of his home in central Kabul. "President Obama should not make a decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. If the U.S. wants to help, it needs to provide more jobs or invite foreign investment into our country."

The trick, of course, is how to court foreign investors while the country is still in the midst of a war.

When we visited the Aynak copper mine to shoot a story about landmine detection, everywhere we looked security was at the forefront.

We drove through two checkpoints just to get onto the main road leading to the copper mine.  Afghan police manned tents on nearby hills. A green chain-link fence provided the outer limit to the site. And of course there were those huge Hesco sandbags that ring the police camp and the Chinese workers camp.

It turns out those buildings did come from China. Stanikzai imported most of the equipment and materials for constructing the dorms. "This was at the request of the MCC," he said, adding that he would have preferred to contract everything locally because it would have cost less.

But this was Stanikzai's only hint of criticism of Chinese management. Otherwise, he admires China for coming into Afghanistan and rejects charges that it's merely satisfying its voracious appetite for natural resources by exploiting Aynak.

 "The Chinese are not doing this illegally," he said. "They have a contract with the Afghan government. They benefit, of course, but we do, too. We don't have the skills or the companies or the expertise to develop a project like this."

Two of China's bigger telecom equipment manufacturers, Huawei and ZTE, have helped develop cell phone technologies and Internet expansion equipment in Kabul and several other Afghan provinces. In previous years, the Chinese have also been involved in the Parwan irrigation project and rebuilding public hospitals in Kabul and Kandahar. 

China is certainly well-positioned to help develop Afghanistan's infrastructure. In addition to having the experience developing their own vast country, the Chinese have also aggressively pursued opportunities across the African continent, from oil production in Angola and the Sudan, to copper mining in Zambia, forestry in Mozambique, and building roads and railways in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

While the Chinese may be benefiting from projects such as Aynak, they also face grave risks. Eleven Chinese construction workers were killed in their sleep by insurgents in Kunduz in 2004. At the time it was the deadliest attack of foreigners in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The workers were building a road from the Tajik border to Kabul. 

"Where Chinese companies seem to be building public infrastructure, they're seen as proxies for the Afghan government so they are easy targets," said Ben Simpfendorfer, author of "Silk Road Economy: How a Rising Arab World is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China." As a result, "Chinese companies are consistently raising security issues," he said.

How they navigate unsafe waters is also still a work in progress. Though the Chinese are known for investing in troubled or violent countries, particularly in Africa, they are relatively new to Afghanistan.

"[The Chinese government] only wants to negotiate with governments," Simpfendorfer said.  "It doesn't talk to opposition groups or civic groups, so until recently that was very difficult in a place like Afghanistan. That meant there is not a history of engagement there."

While Stanikzai admits insurgents may want to target Aynak, he thinks security does not pose as great a threat as some think. "If you don't have the support of the local villagers and the local community, you can't get security," he said. "But everyone supports this copper mine project."

Related Links:  
CFR.org: China's decade? Don't bet on it
Russia cuts gas deal with China
NYT: Biden no longer a lone voice on Afghanistan
Ben Simpendorfer's Silk Road Economy: "A New 'Great Game'"

 

KABUL, Afghanistan – I hadn't planned on writing about kites in Afghanistan; the subject just seemed too obvious after the runaway success of the novel, "The Kite Runner." But then a Western acquaintance who'd just moved to Kabul told me about an afternoon he spent shopping for colorful kites to decorate the walls of his new home, and it sounded like something I just had to do.  

I'm no kite-flyer, but having lived through a couple of summers in Beijing, I've seen the Chinese-made stuff – brilliant, elaborate and intricate – and have grown to appreciate their design. So off I went to the Jadeh Maywand neighborhood in central Kabul, where kite shops line the sidewalks – dragging along my Afghan colleague, Iqbal Sapand.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A boy shops for new kite parts in Kabul.

We had been tasked by our bureau chief, Sohel Uddin, to "buy the biggest kite possible." For weeks now, we'd see from our bureau rooftop kites flying high above our heads almost daily at sunset. Sohel was determined to try his hand.

Faced with a row of narrow, open-faced shop fronts crammed with string, spools, and of course kites, we poked our heads into one owned by Zalgai. The poker-faced 45-year-old, who goes by just one name, had caught our eye simply because he happened to be leaning on his counter. He welcomed us into his shop, beckoning to the raised carpeted area behind his counter, and Iqbal promptly sat down. On cue, a glass of simmering tea followed. 

Zalgai's family has owned this shop for 38 years (even through the Taliban years, when kite flying was banned and their business was forced underground). And like his grandfather and father, Zalgai was trained as a kite-maker. But five years ago he stopped producing kites to focus on selling them. 

"I can make a lot more money this way," he said. Making kites takes too much time, he added, all that fussing with delicate paper and the bamboo frame. Moreover, the kites he carries in his shop bring him a brisk enough business.

Among the ones displayed prominently on the walls of his store, a striking black and white piece that celebrates Eid stood out. It was designed by Noor Agha, said to be Afghanistan's best and most famous kite-maker; he was enlisted as a consultant for the filming of "The Kite Runner" movie in western China three years ago. Iqbal pointed out the artist's signature in the top right corner of the kite, and in fact many of those in the shop bore his name.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A street lined with kite shops in the Afghan capital.

But at $30, the kite seemed too expensive (and too pretty) for – what I was guessing – would be a bashing on the first go-round by our bureau chief. It also seemed quite high in a city where a family's average monthly wage is between $70 and $100.

We asked Zalgai if he had anything that cost a little less.

He went burrowing into a room in the back of his shop, where I could see stacks of kites lying in the darkness. Minutes later, he re-emerged with a handful of options in printed color blocks of red, green, black, white, purple, and red – just as well-made as the fancier designs. They cost $3 each – a bargain for some Sunday afternoon fun.

The paper is tissue-thin and handmade, according to Zalgai, and comes from India, because Afghans stopped producing it years ago. And the nylon string in favor these days is made in Pakistan. But the wooden spools are still crafted here.

As we mulled over which kite to buy, customers came and went, approaching Zalgai's counter. A handsome little boy with big round eyes stared at us while his father bought string. An elderly man eyed the spools hanging off the ceiling.

"Life here is much better since the Taliban left Kabul eight years ago," Zalgai said as he watched the brisk business. Moreover, the uptick in violence during the last several months in Kabul hasn't affected his sales, he said. "My business seems more influenced by the seasons." 

Flying a kite here, it would seem, is a tradition that endures no matter what – from being banned under the Taliban regime to the current violence.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

On the left, a design from Afghanistan's best-known kitemaker, Noor Agha.

A short flight
Back at the bureau, Iqbal strung up our new kite and, with Sohel, promptly took it out for its maiden flight as the sun dropped and the wind picked up.

When I stepped out onto the rooftop to watch their progress, the new kite was no longer – its pink corner shredded from a close encounter with a nearby satellite dish – and Iqbal was trying to scotch-tape it back together. Shortly after, the pair returned indoors, breathless with their fingers bleeding from the cutting sharpness of the string. 

"Well, we got it up pretty high," said Sohel. "But we lost it."