I have a piece in the current issue of Rolling Stone that depicts the end of a wild era in Kabul as Afghanistan faces a violent, uncertain future. It's partly an elegy for a cynical boom town and partly a meditation on what comes next, in the face of a wave of attacks that have the city's expat community fearing for their future:
The killings continued this summer: Two Finnish aid workers were slaughtered in July, and then on August 5th, U.S. Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene was gunned down in Kabul – the highest-ranking officer killed in the war. The violence brought to the surface what has been growing more and more obvious: The West is desperate to get out. NGOs and embassies, already in the process of drawing down their activities, have closed up like clams under drastically heightened security restrictions. The boomtown Kabul of the Surge has come and gone like a dream. But even a president's promise to end a war can't lop history off into neat little chunks. We are leaving behind a country whose fate is more uncertain than ever, where during a contentious election, two rival candidates have declared themselves the rightful president, where murders in broad daylight go unsolved. The American Era is ending in Afghanistan, but what will we be leaving behind?
You can read the full piece here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/last-tango-in-kabul-20140818?page=4