In one of the most riveting stories in the articles writer William Dalrymple wrote for the left-leaning British publication New Statesman, an Afghan tribal elder chats with the writer over a glass of green tea:

"'Last month, some American officers called us to a hotel in Jalalabad for a meeting,' he said. 'One of them asked me: "Why do you hate us?"

'I replied: "Because you blow down our doors, enter our houses, pull our women by the hair and kick our children. We cannot accept this. We will fight back, and we will break your teeth, and when your teeth are broken you will leave, just as the British left before you. It is just a matter of time."

What did he say to that? 'He turned to his friend and said: "If the old men are like this, what will the younger ones be like?"

'In truth, all the Americans here know their game is over. It is just their politicians who deny this.'"

Dalrymple's articles about what he calls the last days of the American-led invasion and support of a puppet regime led by Afghan President Hamid Karzai were picked by the rightwing Daily Mail in the United Kingdom.

"I did not expect that," chuckled Dalrymple, who was in New York recently to promote his newest book, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. His next book on the First Anglo-Afghan War, in which Britain suffered a humiliating defeat in 1842 when thousands of Afghans massacred the British army, has been completed. It will study the parallels between the Afghan insurgency against the British Empire and the current insurgency against the NATO forces in that beleaguered country. William Dalrymple discusses Afghanistan with Arthur J Pais.

The first part of a fascinating interview

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