SELECTED ARTICLES ON THE AFGHANISTAN WAR BY DOUGLAS WISSING
“The Juice Ain’t Worth the Squeeze”
If observers had any doubts about the failure of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, the past several days should have put them to rest. Since Feb. 21, anti-U.S. protests have erupted in virtually every major Afghan city over the revelation that American personnel had burned Qurans a…
Read the article in Foreign Policy
“It’s a Perfect War”
KHOST PROVINCE, Afghanistan — It’s payday in the villages of Zanda Khel and Shobo Khel, so the Indiana National Guard Agribusiness Development Team (ADT) remains vigilant. The ADT is paying a group of farmers for their work on a series of small rock dams, designed to reduce soil erosion and improve irrigation. But this area is a Taliban stronghold and there is a lot of cash involved — tens of thousands of dollars.
So the soldiers carefully watch the milling Pashtun tribesmen waiting to be paid. Turret gunners in the armored MRAPs scan the mountains for snipers. There are few safe places here in Khost Province, an insurgency wracked region along the Pakistan border. And with a Taliban nest three kilometers away, Zanda Khel and Shobo Khel are certainly not among them.
Read the article at GlobalPost
“War Fare”
After the second bomb blocks the road, we detour up a wadi, our convoy of five massive armored vehicles trundling along the dry, rocky riverbed like a parade of pachyderms. Bare, dun-colored mountains stretch off in the distance. Village boys come running to the edge of eroded riverbanks to silently watch us pass. We are headed to the Bak District Center, a fortified government outpost in eastern Afghanistan’s insurgency-plagued Khost Province.
Read the Indianapolis Monthly article (PDF)
“Seeds of a New Afghanistan”
It’s early June, and members of the Indiana National Guard’s Agribusiness Development Team (ADT) are rolling north in a convoy of heavily armored Mine Resistant and Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. They’re about to enter Afghanistan’s restive Bak district. The V-shaped hulls of the MRAPs are designed to deflect roadside bomb blasts, necessary for any kind of military transportation through the region. Gunners manning M240 and .50-caliber machine guns and M16 grenade launchers in open-topped turrets provide protection. The team is on its way to a meeting with local leaders to discuss veterinary clinics and agricultural training. . . .
Read the article at American Legion
SELECTED MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES BY DOUGLAS WISSING
“Tibet: An encounter with ‘the fake one’”
Last summer as our bus approached the deep tunnel the Chinese had bored through Sichuan’s Erlang Mountain to ensure access to Tibet’s restive Kham region, a phalanx of People’s Liberation Army trucks blocked the way. Public Security officers boiled out of sport-utility vehicles (SUVs). A stern-faced soldier waved us to the side of the road.
Tsering, a young Tibetan man beside me on the bus, sat up. “Police, many police,” he said, looking around with concern. Helmeted troops with semi-automatic rifles dog-trotted into the tunnel as others secured the entrance. Public Security men smoked cigarettes and stared up the road until a convoy of black SUVs with tinted windows finally rushed past. A Tibetan woman called from the back of the bus. “Panchen Lama,” Tsering reported. “The fake one. Going to Kham.”. . .
Read the article at Asia Times
“Journey to Shangri-La”
Tibet: The bus was climbing into the eastern Tibetan region of Kham, said to be the site of Shangri-la, when I mentioned the mythical utopia to the tall Tibetan beside me. “Yading is Shangri-la!” he exclaimed, saying he’d trekked into Sichuan province’s remote Yading region, where he found a Tibetan monastery surrounded by three sacred mountains. “It is there,” the Tibetan said. “On the monastery, it is written. It is Shangri-la….
Read the article at Forbes Life
“Chengdu, the Panda Capital”
The appealing animals are a big attraction but not the only reason to visit this Sichuan province city, where a bustling present intersects a rich past.
Read the article at Los Angeles Times
“Jewels of the Sea from the French Polynesia’s Gambier Islands”
Read the article in the Los Angeles Times
“The grim, lingering legacy of despot Jesuit priest Honore Laval”
Read the article in the Los Angeles Times
“Brazilian Backcountry”
Far from the thick Amazon rain forest, the African influence of Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro’s sunbaked sands is yet another Brazil. As Douglas Wissing discovers, Rio Grande do Sul is cowboy country with a Continental flair.
Read the article at Travel + Leisure
“Gauchos, Gucci and a World Beat”
Porto Alegre is Brazil’s most European city, far removed from the beaches and social despair of Rio de Janeiro to the north. Parisian fashions are often seen on the streets here, a season before New York, and democratic thinking is far ahead of its time.
Read the article at Los Angeles Times
“Dominica: Call of the Wild”
WHEN QUEEN ISABELLA asked Christopher Columbus to describe the island of Dominica, which he first encountered during his West Indies explorations in 1493, he is said to have crumpled a piece of paper and dropped it on the table. “That,” he said, pointing to the rumpled and fissured paper, “is Dominica.” A lush, rugged, mountainous land among the Windward Islands of the Caribbean, Dominica rises between the French sister islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Rivers–one for every day of the year, the Dominicans say–course through a verdant landscape. Waterfalls cascade in spumes and torrents, filling the air with the sound of arcing water. Red-orange flamboyant trees flare on the vivid green hillsides. . . .
Read the article at Washington Post
“Art; Erotica Whose Purpose was Scholarly”
Two elderly women pressed their noses to the display case of erect Japanese phallus fetishes while students peered at photographs of copulating couples and glistening musclemen in classical poses. Tattoo art of a naked woman grappling with a cobra and posters from stag movies like ”I Want More” and ”Jungle Virgin” shared the gallery walls with a Matisse odalisque and a Rembrandt boudoir scene. . . .
Read the article at New York Times
“The Man with the Naked Piano”
Eric Rosser hit the charts twice—as a member of John Mellencamp’s band and as one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, sought on sex-crime charges.
Read the article at Salon.com
“Little Columbus Builds a Reputation”
Tracking down architectural treasures, from Pei to Pelli, tucked away in an artful Indiana town.
Read the article at Los Angeles Times
“The Last Vaudevillian”
When I was a kid in Vincennes, it was a big deal when Red Skelton came to visit my grandfather, Clarence Stout. There wasn’t much going on down there in the mid- 1950s, and Red was definitely the town celebrity. He would show up in a vast car and disappear behind the pocket doors of my grandfather’s wainscoted office, which was hung with hundreds of autographed publicity photos of show business greats, and not-so-greats, from the 1920s to the 1940s. . . .
Read the article at Traces Magazine
“What’s Doing in Indianapolis”
When 19th century German immigrants joined the Southern Uplanders and flinty New Englanders already on the prairie at Indianapolis, the city’s thrifty, conservative character was forged. Hoosiers still tend to make do and reuse, gently stitching new ideas onto old. . . .
Read the article at New York Times
“A Surprising Utopia”
THIS PLACE COULD BE JUST ANOTHER SMALL HOOSIER TOWN basking on the banks of southern Indiana’s Wabash River. It has a Victorian main street, cornfield-bordered basketball courts and Kiwanis Club meetings on Thursdays. But turn down a shady street and utopia shimmers in the soft Midwestern light….
Read the article at Los Angeles Times
“Belgium”
I HAVE COME TO THE BROAD PLATTELAND OF FAR WESTERN FLANDERS to search for what some believe is the world’s best beer: the fabled ale of Sint-Sixtus, a small and remote Belgian Trappist abbey. Lauded by connoisseurs, the abbey’s rare Westvleteren 12 ale has repeatedly been ranked by the Web’s top beer site, www.ratebeer.com, as the finest on earth. And because the resolutely spiritual monks restrict their minuscule sales to isolated Sint-Sixtus, it’s also among the most exclusive….
Read the article at Forbes