A review of our policy on Afghanistan is due this month.  As I have already indicated, I think this is a war that is bound to fail if the current logic of engagement does not include a planned withdrawal.  The longer American and NATO troops stay there in large numbers with great visibility, I think, the stronger the support for those who fight against occupation.   But a rapid and complete disengagement will lead to a battle between the Taliban and the highly ineffective and corrupt government of Hamid Karzai, in which the victor is not known but the victims are the Afghan people.

It is truly a dilemma.

In the face of the dilemma, I think it is important to pay close attention to the facts on the ground.  Last week, in The New York Times there is a report on an instance of what I mean by “the politics of small things,” a report on a national women’s soccer team.

They play under great restrictions.  Their fathers, brothers and uncles frequently disapprove of their activities.  They actually have to practice on a NATO helicopter landing field, because outside the military zone, they are too vulnerable to attack.  They take great pride in their physical accomplishments.  Most recently, they actually defeated the women’s team of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.  Khalida Popal, an official of the Afghan women’s soccer federation and long a team member, noted that “We wanted to show them Afghans are friendly people, not like the stupid people they are fighting.”

These women also reveal to us and to themselves the power of Afghan women to fight for themselves against great odds, and the importance of their struggle.  And as is the case of other instances of the politics of small things, such as the poetry café in Damascus I discussed in a previous post,  Afghanistan with its national women’s soccer team is a different place than it would be without these women playing and competing.  As I write this post, the Times reports, they are showing this difference in their first international competition, in Bangladesh in a tournament sponsored by the South Asian Football Federation.