Excellent links. Your "pizza crust" was unleavened bread, much like the Syrian bread you can get at the deli, but completely without preservatives. Fresh, it is delicious but it goes stale within hours. Dari speakers call it "nan," and it is the staple.
If you are really in with them (or they think they can curry favour with you!) they can put on a heck of a feast. Turkey, which is called "elephant chicken" (there being no word for it in Dari or Pushtu), and guinea hen, are the delicacies. There are usually dried fruits and nuts available year round. They are very artful with spices to make ordinary rice stand out.
As far as the Guides are concerned, I guess you never met the CTPT (which may go by different names and acronyms). They are stone killers and their loyalty is to the Americans that raised the unit, to the point that personnel rotations can be... fraught. In time these irregulars will, the conventional wisdom says, be subsumed into the Afghan regular army.
In my unconventional wisdom, it would be better to simply have the Afghan authorities take over the whole operation. And yes, Afghanistan has some smart, dedicated and aggressive officers that can lead such an approach.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Never heard of the CTPT. I was a Fobbit. Dealt with ANA, saw some warlord troops, saw many unidentified armed indigs. Who are the CTPT?
From "My Early Life," by Winston S. Churchill:
"EXCEPT at harvest-time, when self-preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress...with battlements, turrets [and] drawbridges. Every village has its defence. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud.
“The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid...The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest; and his valleys, nourished alike by endless sunshine and abundant water, are fertile enough to yield with little labour the modest material requirements of a sparse population.
“Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts: the breech-loading rifle and the British government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the breech-loading, and still more of the magazine rifle, was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbour nearly a mile away...
“The action of the British government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory.
“The action of the British government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory. The great organising, advancing, absorbing power to the southward seemed to be little better than a monstrous spoil-sport.
“No one would have minded these expeditions if they had simply come, had a fight and then gone away again...But towards the end of the nineteenth century these intruders began to make roads through many of the valleys...All along the road people were expected to keep quiet, not to shoot one another, and, above all, not to shoot at travellers along the road. It was too much to ask, and a whole series of quarrels took their origin from this source...
“The Political Officers who accompanied the force...were very unpopular with the army officers...They were accused of the grievous crime of 'shilly-shallying', which being interpreted means doing everything you possibly can before you shoot. We had with us a very brilliant political officer...who was much disliked because he always stopped military operations. Just when we were looking forward to having a splendid fight and all the guns were loaded and everyone keyed up, [he] would come along and put a stop to it."
Entertaining, eh? And still accurate a hundred years on.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F