I wish I’d thought of the phrase; it’s from Matt Rosenberg, who reports for the Wall Street Journal from here. Khost, a conservative Pashtun province where I spent the last four days, is a pretty good approximation of Barbarian Central.
This was my fifth trip to Khost, though the first where I wasn’t an embedded reporter with the American Army there. After four such trips in 2007-8, I decided to take an Afghan acquaintance up on an invitation to visit and see things here from his perspective.
