AFGHANISTAN and Austria differ drastically in every way but one. They both were neutral ‘front line’ states during the long cold war. Afghanistan, a weak border state, prudently leaned toward a watchful Soviet Union. Austria, while under post-war Soviet rule, miraculously refashioned itself from a firm fascist supporter to “Hitler’s first victim,” and wangled a 1955 agreement swapping a Soviet pullout for a pledge to stay militarily neutral.

Its capital Vienna remained a lively espionage playground — celebrated in films like ‘The Third Man’ — but that fate was far better than occupation. Of course, Austria might have benefited from more conscientious denazification — witness Joerg Haider’s barely veiled fascist presence in government — but at the time so too could East and West Germany.

Bruno Kreisky, former chancellor of Austria (1970-1983), told one of us a pertinent story some years ago. As a junior member of the Austrian delegation, he attended the historic signing of the 1955 treaty. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev took him aside and asked how he sized up the eager Austrian government-in-waiting. When Kreisky observed that this broad coalition included many hidebound conservatives, Khrushchev nodded sympathetically and remarked that he had plenty of his own kind of conservatives to contend with. He turned and patted Molotov, who was nearby, and said that his esteemed foreign minister was among the hardliners who vigorously opposed this treaty. Molotov apparently was a good sport. Austria went its own way, almost unhindered.

In Afghanistan a different and darker story unfolded. Very little that its leaders attempted went unhindered by conservatives abroad (or fundamentalists at home) playing the Great Game. Afghanistan’s recent misfortunes stem from its being sandwiched between encroaching British and Russian empires. They were beaten back but only after slicing off many slabs of territory and relegating the remainder to the useful role of a buffer zone. After the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1921 got rid of British control, King Amanullah Khan pursued ambitions to modernize his backward country along the lines of the secular Turkish model of Kemal Ataturk. The British saw no advantage in this.

So while the Afghan monarch visited England in 1928, British raj agents spread rumours among puritanical Afghan tribes that their queen danced at depraved parties in infidel London. This grave moral turpitude — along with schemes to secularize local dress and customs — were grounds for dumping Amanullah and his wicked reforms a year later. Zahir Shah, who later took the throne, was popular but no modernizer, or at least not before the 1960s. Yet his rule helped create a budding national awareness, with Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Pakhtoons beginning slowly to rise above purely tribal identities. An Afghan identity was formed. Still, the question of what to do about a notional ‘Pashtunistan’ aroused lasting enmities with the British and, after 1947, with Pakistan. Durand Line is a reminder of it.

America gradually assumed the British role in the region but their rebuffs on arms sales nudged Afghanistan toward the soviets. In 1973 Mohammed Daud abolished the monarchy, but the fragile national unity fell apart under his wayward rule. America’s regional allies Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan and the Shah of Iran tried to entice Daud away from the Soviets who understandably were nervous about such antics in border states. This was not liked by the left in Kabul. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (Afghan Communist Party), which had many military adherents, toppled Daud in 1978 and installed Taraki who embarked on a land reform campaign.

A fierce internal party struggle led to the victory of the extremist Khalq (“people”) faction led by Hafizullah Amin who, for all his rhetorical dogmatism, was given to highestbidder opportunism. Amin cozied up to the US which, with the Saudis, was busy arming wild-eyed fundamentalists along the Pakistan border. Frightened Soviet hardliners won a heated politburo debate, assassinated Amin, installed Babrak Karmal, and very unwisely invaded in December 1979. A full-scale jihad started with deeply conservative American administrations spurring it on, even though this dangerous course meant destruction of a secularizing state which made genuine advances in gender and social policy. Who says American policymakers dislike burqas and beards?

After the Soviet withdrawal, a no-holds-barred struggle among jihadis started even as they continued fighting Najibullah’s government (which took over in 1986) in Kabul. Exemplifying the supremely chameleon warrior code, which western observers today marvel at, is Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who switched from the Soviets to the mujahideen, to Gulbadin Hekmatyar, to the Northern Alliance. (The Taliban lately appear to have taken Dostum as a role model). Dostum’s defection from Najibullah in March 1992 put paid to the People’s Democratic party and signalled the fall of Kabul. On becoming prime minister-designate in 1992, Hekmatyar fought a hideous civil war against other mujahideen and their supporters, killing thousands of civilians in Kabul alone.

Russia, India and Iran backed the motley crew now known as the Northern Alliance while Pakistan and the US, after its favoured agent Hekmatyar was defeated, turned to Taliban fanatics as their successful candidates for power. Unfortunately, the Taliban’s utterly abominable human rights record in no way distinguished them from the Northern Alliance’s own tender mercies. In the American intervention, the Taliban — true to Afghani form — have been bribed, as much as bombed, away.

What does it all add up to? Americans, for all their ballyhooed smart weaponry, killed about four thousand civilians, which is hardly calculated to make them local heroes, no matter what CNN tells the American public. Collusion in slaughtering hundreds of prisoners in the fortress-prison of Qalai Janghi did not enhance America’s image, nor has its highhanded treatment of captives at Guantanamo. America could well afford to take the moral high ground, yet Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apparently revels in sounding no better than a local warlord.

A Northern Alliance victory, as the Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women sharply reminds us, was nothing to celebrate either. The US failed to cobble together a Pakhtoon leadership before the Taliban fled Kabul, which resulted in the Northern Alliance jumping in along with its key sponsors Russia and Iran — an outcome that America (and Pakistan) had tried hard to avoid. The western powers tried to rectify this problem in Bonn where about two-thirds of Hamid Karzai’s cabinet (18 of 30) remain Northern Alliance members.

The West played this latest gory round of the Great Game to diminish Soviet influence, for which the high price was paid mainly in Afghan lives and American dollars, which ever fewer of the rich fork out. The Yanks will not relinquish Central Asian bases any quicker than in Saudi Arabia. The US regional hegemony is under way. Conservative political factions have got what they wanted. Yet, for all that, Russia has returned and even Iran is deeply involved in Afghan affairs again, but it is a different Iran and its politics is not friendly towards the US.

Osama bin Ladin is unsnarled. The Northern Alliance’s poppy fields are in full bloom. America and its allies haggle over paying for the reconstruction of the country that their ‘realist’ policies helped destroy. When a generous purse is absolutely essential, US conservatives resist giving so much as the price of a single Stealth Bomber ($2.2 billion apiece). How many dragon’s teeth were sown with the cluster canisters that the bombers spread over an already devastated land?

Will the future pipeline deals serve mostly indigenous needs or the oil companies? Even if the promised economic aid and political reforms are delivered, which is extremely unlikely, it is difficult to imagine that these relatively meager measures will wield any genuine influence on the minds of battered, starved and alienated Afghans. Are we back to where we had started?

THERE has been so much bad publicity about accounting firms that I decided to check it out with my old friend Arthur Anglethorpe, who has one of the biggest bean counting firms in Houston.

When I was ushered into his palatial office, there was a giant blaze going in his fireplace.

“My, it’s cozy,” I said.

“We always have a fire in our offices — you can’t believe how cold it gets in Houston.”

As we were visiting, lawyers kept coming in and throwing paper on the fire. Arthur explained that paper burns much better than wood.

I said, “You screwed up keeping the books for Hidden Valley Gas and Power Co.”

“All we did was put the decimal point in the wrong place. Instead of the company making three billion dollars, it lost three billion. Any accounting firm could make that kind of mistake.”

“Didn’t you realize you bankrupted Hidden Valley?”

“Our computer had a glitch in it. By the time we fixed it, the company went down the toilet.”

“They also say your accounting practices cost thousands of people their pensions.”

“We weren’t working for those people. We were working for the guys who ran Hidden Valley and made off with a bundle. That is what accounting firms are for.”

One of the lawyers feeding the fire said, “Sir, we’ve burned all the records that had to do with Hidden Valley’s gas and oil business. Can we burn records that have to do with the other Hidden investments that went sour?”

“Why not? But we don’t want to do anything illegal. You can cook the books, but put more salt and pepper in them. The bankrupt stockholders tasted something sour with the last batch of books.”

I told Arthur, “You run a tight ship.”

“The integrity of our firm is at stake. Besides, if we do get into a jam, we have a lot of friends in Washington who will say we had nothing to do with the debacle.”

“What did Hidden Valley do wrong?”

“It turned stock options into gold.”

“And where did Anglethorpe fit in?” “All right. I will explain it. How much is two plus two?”

“Four,” I said.

“Right. Now how much is two billion dollars plus two billion dollars?”

I was on a roll and I said, “Four billion.”

He scoffed and said, “You can make two billion dollars anything your clients want it to be. That’s what o