Reports From Afghanistan .. Neither the landscape nor the people find their counterparts in any other portion of the globe. Valley walls rise steeply five or six thousand feet on every side. The columns crawl through a maze of giant corridors down which fierce snow-fed torrents foam under skies of brass. Amid these scenes of savage brilliancy there dwells a race whose qualities seem to harmonize with their environment....Every man is a warior, a politician and a theologian......Every village has its defence. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan its feud....Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid.... 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 was an unmitigated nuisance.... A weapon which could kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it .. Rifle thieves scoured all India to reinforce the efforts of the honest smuggler. A steady flow of the coveted weapons spread its genial influence throughout the frontier, and the respect which the Pathan tribesmen entertained for Christian civilization was greatly enhanced. -- Comment:replace breech loading rifle with AK-47, British with any nationality of yr choice, rifle thieves and smugglers with CIA and ISI -- The action of the British Government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory... seemed to be little better than a monstrous spoil-sport. If the Pathans made forays into the plains, not only were they driven back (which after all was no more than fair), but a whole series of subsequent interferences took place...No one would have minded these expeditions if they had simply come, had a fight and gone away again. In many cases this was their practice under what was called the 'butcher and bolt' policy to which the Government of India long adhered. But toward the end of the nineteenth century these intruders began to make roads through many of these valleys, and in particular the great road to Chitral. They sought to insure the safety of these roads by threats, by forts and by subsidies. There was no objection to the last method so far as it went...All along the road people were expected to keep quiet, not 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. -- Comment: Churchill was always good at Realpolitik 'butcher and bolt' policy is a good way to describe some of the things going on rite now -- ... But the tribesmen were now excited, and when our second Brigade, which was following at two days interval arrived, hundreds of men, armed with every kind of weapon from the oldest flintlock to the latest rifle, spent three exhilarating hours in firing continuously into the crowded array of men and animals....this night's sport cost them forty officers and men and many horses and pack animals...General Jeffreys commanding the Second Brigade was told to enter the Mamund valley and chastise the truculent assailants. The chastisement was to take the form of marching up their valley, which is a cul de sac, to its extreme point, destroying all the crops, breaking the reservoirs of water, blowing up as many castles as time permitted, and shooting anyone who obstructed the process... ... ...Out from the edge of the houses rushed half a dozen Pathan swordsmen. The bearers of the poor Adjutant let him fall and fled at their approach. The leading tribesman rushed upon the prostrate figure and slashed it three or four times with his sword. I forgot every thing else at this moment except a desire to kill this man..twenty yards away... I changed my mind about the cold steel, I pulled out my revolver, took the most careful aim and fired. No result...he ran back.. Not a friend was to be seen. I ran as fast as I could... ... ... Overtaken by the darkness, he had thrown his forces into some of the houses and improvised a sort of fort. The Mamunds had arrived in the village at the same time, and all night long a fierce struggle had raged from house to house...tribesmen broke through walls, or clambered on or through the roofs, firing and stabbing with their long knives. It was a fight in a rabbit warren. Men grappled with each other; shot each other in error; cannon were fired as you might fire a pistol at an enemy two or three yards away... However it was all over now. So we proceeded to shoot the wounded mules and have breakfast. ... Sir Bindon sent orders that we were to stay in the Mamund valley and lay it waste with fire and sword in vengeance. We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. So long as the villages were in the plain this was quite easy. The tribesmen sat on the mountains and sullenly watched the destruction of their homes and their means of livelihood. When however we had to attack the villages on the sides of the mountains they resisted fiercely...Whether it was worth it, I cannot tell. At any rate at, at the end of a fortnight the valley was a desert, and honour was satisfied. -- excerpted from 'My Early Years', by Winston Spencer Churchill